Last week I stumbled across this Economist article on Stan Lee and how he is attempting to address the challenge of running out of well known characters to make the leap from comic book to the big screen (i.e. the superhero blockbuster). The story points out an obvious hitch in Lee's plan to generate new ideas from Purveyors of Wonder (POW!), a firm he created to generate storylines for films. From the article:

Mr Lee’s most celebrated creations appeared at a time when comic books were widely read. The heroes were honed over many years by other writers and artists. As a result a great many people of diverse ages are familiar with them and will happily spend $10 to sit in a cool cinema and renew their acquaintance. Blockbuster audiences are built not of enthusiastic fans—there are never enough—but of people who are vaguely aware of a character or a story and want to see what a studio does with it.

These days it is extremely difficult to propel new characters or stories into broad public consciousness, and therefore hard to mobilize a mass audience for films based on them…

I "tweeted" this story and asked where people thought new characters would come from and got a few interesting responses.

Manga: While manga has proven to be incredibly popular with American teens and tweens, I don't think it has completely gone mainstream yet or has the mass appeal of comic book heroes of yore. Even the Death Note films (wildly popular in Japan) never really crossed over to American audiences (mostly dubbed versions had limited releases here).

Video games: A couple of folks mentioned video game heroes, like Super Mario, Zelda and Lara Croft. The beauty of comic books is that you have such a rich backstory (or stories) to choose from — my Twitter friend reminded me that these, too can be written or rewritten in compelling ways, i.e. J.J. Abrams' reimagining of "Star Trek."

Film characters or book characters: Captain Jack Sparrow was mentioned as having been elevated to hero status. And it's hard not to argue that Harry Potter or even Edward from the Twilight series haven't become "heroes" in a way that has crossed over to both young and old alike. Even the cast of NBC's "Heroes" could see their own movie spin-off at some point.

Lee hopes to test more new heroes on different platforms, like mobile, as well:

Next month another creation of Mr Lee’s will be unveiled at Comic-con, a huge San Diego convention that has become an important marketing platform for films. “Time Jumper”, an animated comic about a boy who can travel in time using his mobile phone, will be released in stages on the internet and mobile phones, free of charge. This is a relatively cheap way of testing an audience’s response to a new character. If it is hard to ram a new tale into public consciousness, it might just be possible to sneak it in.

What do you think? Can you "sneak in" a new hero? How important is a hero's story as a foundation or can you just take richly drawn characters and create new stories? Are there other heroes you have seen embraced by this generation?

Update: I watched "Comic Books Unbound" a documentary on the relationship between comic books and Hollywood over the years and am now pretty convinced that comics, yes comic books and graphic novels, whether they are primarily read by adult "geeks" or not, will remain a major source of movie ideas (and heroes) for years to come.

For more coverage of YA books and publishing, check out the Ypulse Books Channel sponsored by The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (LB Teens).

Categorized under: Books & Print, Gaming, Manga and Visual Storyteling

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