5 Summer Blockbusters That Should Be Comics
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Pirates of the Caribbean
Disney has tried several times to turn its theme park rides into franchises. Pirates of the Caribbean is the only time that it has ever worked.
Thanks in large part to the charisma of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow and four incredibly successful movies, Pirates of the Caribbean is one of Disney’s biggest success stories. You may or may not have liked the movies, but people came out to see them and the series kept breaking franchise box office records.
That’s why it’s astonishing that there haven’t been any Pirates of the Caribbean comics yet. Disney purchased Marvel Comics in 2009 and that still hasn’t changed in the five years since that deal went down!
Sure, it may be difficult to recapture some of the charm of Pirates of the Caribbean as a comic book... but it can be done. Look at the milage that Dynamite has gotten out of Army of Darkness!
As long as there’s an appetite for more adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow, then there will be room for a comic book based on this franchise.
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Despicable Me
Despicable Me is so much like a comic book that it’s hard to believe that it hasn’t already made the leap to print.
This is one of the biggest animated franchises out there, with two blockbuster films centering on the super-villain, Gru, his adopted daughters and his amusing Minions. The Minions are even getting their own spinoff film before the inevitable Despicable Me 3. There’s even a Despicable Me theme park ride at Universal Studios and Universal Orlando.
Comics books need new readers to survive as a medium. A Despicable Me comic could be a great gateway to bringing in a new generation of comic book readers. Plus, if you put the right creative team on a Despicable Me comic, it could be a lot of fun for older readers as well.
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How To Train Your Dragon
There are franchises and then there’s How To Train Your Dragon.
Cressida Cowell’s mashup of Vikings and Dragons has spawned 12 books, an animated TV series and two feature films. The first How To Train Your Dragon was a monster hit for DreamWorks and the upcoming sequel is also expected to be one of the biggest films of the summer.
It’s incredibly shortsighted that a comic book adaptation of How To Train Your Dragon isn’t ready to take advantage of the sequel. This is the rare franchise that resonates with younger and older fans, so there’s no excuse for not even trying.
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The Expendables
Believe it or not, there was actually a comic book adaptation of The Expendables that was published by Dynamite Entertainment back in 2010. But it focused mailing on the characters as portrayed in the original Expendables film starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews and Mickey Rourke.
Unfortunately, that adaptation lacked the imagination to do something truly special with The Expendables comics. It would be nearly impossible to create a new action film that included convincing representations of classic action icons like Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood and Bruce Lee in their prime. But a comic book artist is only limited by his ability to draw likenesses (and the permission of the actor or the actor’s estate).
Why settle for a Sylvester Stallone near the end of his career when a comic book could show him at his peak? We’ve never gotten a full movie with Stallone, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger back when then they were the action gods of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Comics and video games are the only mediums where that’s even a possibility at this point.
There’s a lot of untapped potential in an Expendables comic. Hopefully that will be realized by someone in a position to actually publish it.
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Men In Black
Everyone knows the Men In Black films starring Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Very few people remember that Men In Black was once a comic book series created by Lowell Cunningham.
There’s a reason for that. The last time a Men In Black comic book was released was 17 years ago, just in time for the first Men In Black film!
Through the subsequent sequels, animated series, theme park rides and video games, there hasn’t been a single Men In Black comic. That is amazing and completely unacceptable.
And do you know who has the rights to publish Men In Black? Marvel Comics. They bought the publisher (Malibu) that bought the publisher (Aircel Publishing) that first published The Men In Black comics. For nearly 20 years, Marvel has done nothing with the franchise.
We can only speculate about why Marvel hasn’t taken full advantage of a successful franchise that it owns. The fact remains that Men In Black could still have a strong shelf life as a comic, even though the franchise has peaked. Sony is reportedly considering a reboot, and that would be the perfect time to bring Men In Black back to comics where it belongs.
