To some people “adaption” is a dirty word. The idea of a
story told in one medium being transferred to another is seen as a slight on
the original. To an extent I can understand this view. Ironically it’s adaptions
that slavishly adhere to their source material that tend to fare worse. This
tends to be because the people working on the adaption are trying to recreate
something using a different set of tools. They want to do the original justice
but don’t have the means to do so. A good adaption will take the core concept
and story points from their source and rework them in their new medium. Finding
new ways to show what makes the original so enjoyable is the sort of approach I
think suits adaptions best.
While I can understand this feeling it’s not one I tend
to agree with. I think if something is adapted well then there’s a point to
doing it. It can find new things to say or new ways of saying things the
original already said. It can lead to a better understanding of the original.
Most importantly no adaption takes anything away from its source material. If
it fails the original is still around to be enjoyed.
The reason I mention all of this is that I thought it
would be a nice change to write about something other than a good or bad comic
book. There are loads of comics out there that I think would work well as
television shows. Twenty-odd pages a month is rarely enough space for a writer
and artist to fit in plot, character development, interesting ideas, and a bit
of mystery (all those things that are so
important to something being enjoyable). Television adaptions would create
opportunities for exploration that comics deny, and would also make more people
aware of some very good series.
I’ve picked out ten comics, as much because I like round
numbers as for anything else, that I think would be interesting TV shows. They
are listed below.
Fables
I’m not keen on the comic book but the general idea of
it, characters from fables, myths and nursery rhymes are all real, is
incredibly strong. Certainly strong enough to support a TV series for a few
series. The original plot is a meandering mess though. That would be best left
behind. A show showing how Humpty Dumpty gets by living on a farm in North
Carolina is what I want, not an attempt at a modern epic.
Sandman
A straight adaption of Sandman could work but it would
need a pretty beefy budget. A vaguer adaption would work better, taking the
general concept and more interesting characters of the book and doing a show
more about dreams and reality than the machinations of Morpheus. The Sandman is
often only a bystander in the comic. There’s no reason he couldn’t be someone
who appears in a minor role in every episode of a TV series, having his own
plot (based on Gaiman’s original) revealed over time.
Powers
Superheroes have been popular with moviegoers for over a
decade now. There have been successes, like Smallville, and failures, like
Heroes from series two onwards, on TV screens during this time. Right now there
are no superhero themed shows that mean much to anybody and Powers could change
that. It blends superpeople thrills and spills with the police procedural genre
and does it well. It works very nicely as a noir flavoured comic but a
different tone would probably be needed for television. The basic idea of a
police department that focuses on superpeople, and the main characters of Walker
and Pilgrim, seem ideal.
American Vampire
A new strain of vampire (an American vampire, obvs) is
created in nineteenth century America. The comic follows that strain, in the
form of first-of-the-new-breed Skinner Sweet, through the following decades. It
might sound a little True Blood but it needn’t be. The focus being on a new kind
of vampire, rather than the love lives of vamps that must adhere to the rules
we’ve all become familiar with from fiction, would set it apart, as would the
historical setting.
Ignition City
I noted when I wrote about this that it felt as though
Warren Ellis had treated it like a TV show. At only five issues long there are
loads of things about this world that aren’t explored in enough detail. The
book is set on a steampunk island that used to be a rocket base, an interesting
location for a TV show (it strikes me as very BBC Three). In just five issues
Ellis created a cast of characters that you could easily imagine interacting
for a dozen episodes before newbies were required. Plus there are aliens. It’s
a very broad canvas for a TV adaption.
DMZ
This is a comic series set in New York City during a
civil war between the United States of America and the secessionist Free States
of America. The central figure is a reporter named Matty Roth, who’d make an
ideal lead character in an adaption with an ensemble cast. Or an entirely new
cast could be created, because what makes Roth ideal as a lead character is
that he is suitably bland and uninteresting. It’s the general idea of America
going through a civil war that would make this an interesting adaption, not any
particular character. An ideal adaption would just use the broad premise and
focus on the mayor’s office, the police, the army, and the secessionists struggling
for control of the city, with only hints as to the wider picture.
Y: The Last Man
Two things would make Y worth turning into a TV show. The
first is the relationships between the characters. Brian K Vaughan did a good
job of writing friendships that grew over time and natural dialogue. The other
would be the central mystery of how Yorick survived the plague that should have
killed every male on the planet. A TV adaption would be the ideal opportunity
to create a new ending that does the series as a whole justice. The one we have
is too confusing and at odds with what’s gone before to be completely satisfying.
Also in Y’s favour is that it’s a story that has affected
the whole world. It can be as big or as small as people writing it want it to
be. A big budget could see parts filmed in Israel and Europe (like the book)
while a smaller adaption could simply focus on the trek across America. The entire
plot of the original could be scrapped and the idea could be reworked to focus
on a small town harbouring the last surviving man.
Preacher
Preacher is a very rounded comic book, making it one of
the better suggestions on this list. It’s known for being humorous, violent and
having a cast full of grotesques. What it’s less noted for is being a love story,
which it is, and for being pretty heavy on action in places, which it is. Jesse
Custer is a genuinely likeable protagonist (or at least he is when written,
careful casting would be needed to retain that), something that I find pretty
rare in TV shows. Cassidy, Assface, the Saint of Killers and Herr Starr are a
supporting cast who feel like they were created to be seen on TV.
The central plot is something that would probably need to
stay. Without it Preacher doesn’t work. But the journey that’s taken and the
interactions between the central characters could be altered to make something
new and interesting. Preacher is one of the best comics out there for TV
adapters.
There’s been talk of putting Preacher on TV for years.
The latest news on that is that it’s happening and Seth Rogen is involved.
Personally I’d cast WWE star The Undertaker as the Saint of Killers. But that’s
me.
100 Bullets
Crime dramas and ongoing mysteries have become big parts
of TV schedules over the last several years. So have mobsters. 100 Bullets has
all of this (obviously, I wouldn’t mention it otherwise). None of the shows mentioned
here could run indefinitely but 100 Bullets would come the closest. The basic
idea of a shadowy cabal having secretly controlled the United States for
centuries is easy enough to understand but complex enough to spend time
gradually revealing. And of course the Minutemen are the sort of thing modern
television viewers seem to love.
There are so many stories from the series that would be
great on screen and there are lots of original things that could be done with
the idea of people being made the offer of the untraceable gun. In fact all new
offers and how they play out would make nice to or three minute pre-title
sequences.
Locke & Key
Read a review of the first volume here.
A feature length pilot was made years ago but nothing
came of it. Apparently Fox didn’t think it would work as a series. They’re
wrong. Locke & Key is perfect for a TV show, so much so that I’m amazed a
series doesn’t already exist. There’s a worthwhile plot that runs across the
book’s six volumes that would be ideal as a programme’s central focus, with
each volume having its own arc that could be used for either an entire series
or multiple episodes. There’s a great template waiting to be used.
But what would really make a TV version of Locke &
Key worth it would be the ability to do something new with such a great
concept. It was always very clear in the comic that there were other keys that
hadn’t been used or even seen. Filler episodes or new arcs could be created to
make the most of that fact. There’s so much that could be done with the idea of
the keys.
