Comics, or the concept of little animated squares in your daily newspaper, have been around almost as long as mass-printed newspapers themselves. Over the last seven decades, comics and comic books have evolved into multi-billion dollar franchises that have launched the careers of writers, artist, video game designers, and movie directors.
Today, in 2009, a year where the printed word is on life support as newspapers struggle to stay afloat and bookstores and libraries dangle by an even thinner thread because of the massive development of the World Wide Web, comic book developers have looked to other mediums to keep their artistic form of storytelling not only alive, but also thriving. As mentioned, the film director is one type of artist that has thrived because of stories already immortalized through comic books. Just like any other medium adaptation, he has very important decisions to make regarding how he wants to show his vision and interpretation to the moviegoers. The director now has a very delicate balancing act on his hands because when making a movie based on stories that have such dedicated followers, his choice to follow the original storyline or not becomes a form of interpretive Russian roulette.
Comic books were first printed as a collection of duplicates of old newspaper comics. It wasn’t until (more…)