The Forgotten Parcel

A year and a half ago, I wrote a letter to Pia Guerra. Pia was the artist for one of my all time favorite comics, Y the Last Man. This comic was important for another reason besides just being one of my favorites - it was arguably the comic that got me back into comics. No less, the letter I wrote was two and a half pages telling her my story about getting out of comics and getting back into them after someone at Bosco's suggested Y. I also happened to send a comic backboard and asked for a drawing of Yorick and Ampersand, the main character and his pet monkey.

A year and a half later, I still thought about it time to time, but I never really expected to get any response. Predictably, just when I stopped thinking so often about it, it came in the mail and my parents surprised me with it this morning. Contained in it were a handwritten response from Pia, letting me know my letter was well received and why it took so long. Also enclosed was a wonderful drawing of Yorick and Ampersand, which to me (I of the rather untrained eye) looks like it took a good amount of work. It's really hard to tell what I loved more - the letter or the piece of art. Either way, I'm taking them both in to get framed together so I can treasure them forever.

Thank you so much Pia for the truly special gift.

Closer look on drawing

Adaptation Alley

This is how you make a comic movie

While perusing the movie site Aint It Cool News I came across two exciting things for comic book fans. There was the premiere of the new trailer for what I will call the Wolverine movie (aka the absurdly and unnecessarily long titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and the first review for Frank Miller's film adaptation of the Will Eisner comic classic the Spirit.

On one hand, you have the Wolverine movie, filled with comic delights such as Gambit and Deadpool finally making it into a movie, a plot delving into Wolverine's very interesting life and origin, and old man Logan getting down and dirty with some good ol' violence. Like he should be. As a movie fan, you have Liev Schreiber flat out dominating the trailer with his portrayal of Sabretooth, you have Danny Huston chewing the scenery as Stryker (I contest that Michael C. Hall would have filled it better, but that's neither here nor there - at least we can save Hall for Arcade further down the line), and you have Jackman looking as in his element as you can get.

In short, get excited folks. I get the feeling that Gavin Hood may actually deliver another good installment of mutant related comic adaptations.


Then on the other hand you have the review of the Spirit, a movie rife with challenges, not the least of which is an amateurish (at best) director in comic god Miller and an absurdly hyperstylized trailer. This review compares Battlefield Earth (one of the worst adaptations and movies ever) favorably to the Spirit.

Words used in that previous sentence did in fact include "compares," "favorably," and "Battlefield Earth."

You there? You five guys (I used to be one of you) who were holding out hope that Miller's adaptation could possibly be serviceable? Give up. Regardless of how poorly written or ridiculous the actual review may be, odds are this just confirms the worst - this movie is going to suck, and badly at that.

That's what always gets me. These movies have great source material. How can you not take decades of material and craft the best stories into something everyone wants to see? I just don't get it. Especially with the Spirit as it adapts one of the best comic stories ever in the "Sand Serif" arc. With all of the confidence the Wolvie preview gets me, movies like the Spirit take it away.

I really want to believe that Mendes and Caruso will do right by Preacher and Y the Last Man. While I can't expect perfect, please, please, please take us towards Wolverine and ignore everything that comes from the Spirit.

Creative License

My boys Yorick and Ampersand

Sometimes when adapting something to film, liberties must be taken to make something work in the scope of the project. A great example of that happening are with the Harry Potter movies. They have managed to cut massive books into very entertaining films that capture the essence of the books very well. It is very possible to make these extremely pared down versions of the story work, and work well. It just takes a group of people who are passionate about the project and know what it takes to make it work.

With the film adaptation of comic series Y the Last Man, I thought we had someone who was really trying to make it work in DJ Caruso. He was saying all the right things in interviews, talking about how he was dealing directly with series writer/creator Brian K. Vaughan, how he was looking to make a trilogy so he can capture everything into the series, and how he is just a passionate fan of it. Even with his seemingly unflinching desire to have Shia LaBeouf star as Yorick Brown, I liked what I was hearing.

Until recently that is, when I read a couple interviews with him. In this article, Caruso talks about how he is going to separate Yorick and Ampersand (his pet capuchin monkey) early on to increase dramatic tension - both in the fact that the partnership is broken and in the fact that Yorick will become sick. Extremely frustrating.

Even more frustrating? In this interview, Caruso discusses removing the entire Beth "subplot." Beth subplot? You mean the entire driving force behind the series? You mean the entire reason why Yorick and his motley crew travel around the world? Subplot! Excuse me, but my faith in this project is all of a sudden extinct.

To top that off, word on the street (from people who have been to screenings for the film) about the new Harry Potter is saying that not only are we not going to get a funeral at the end of Half Blood Prince for one of the biggest characters in the story, but the entire structure of the finale has pretty much been altered to form an entirely new finale - and by that, I mean they might as well have erased the last 150 pages of the book and rewritten it. Because you know, that's what they did.

I understand having to make hard decisions to make the movie palatable to the average viewer (you know, the one who doesn't want to watch 4 hours of Harry Potter), but come on. There must be 300 pages of snogging in the sixth book. Can't we cut some of that? Can't we trim the fat elsewhere, as opposed to butchering the most important section of the book?

Creative license is a necessary evil in almost every adaptation. It just has to happen and with every beloved project that comes to fruition (because face it, Hollywood is out of original ideas), we face the possibility of the project falling into the wrong hands. Two personal favorites are looking hard at questionable futures, and it's disappointing. In my opinion, these stories worked so well the first time through, why can't they work well on the screen under the current alignments (especially Y, which is based in a visual medium)?

Perhaps that would just be too easy.