by Martin McGrath

It seems odd that DC Comics, part of the Warner Bros entertainment conglomerate since 1969 and, as such, with a direct line to the heart of one of the biggest media conglomerates in the world has taken so long to firmly establish its cast of household name comic books into cross platform stars. True DC were first out of the blocks with big screen adaptations of Superman (1978) and Batman (1989) that turned heads and made money but the near identical path taken by the pair of franchises – opening with films of genuine quality made by directors of standing (Donner and Burton, respectively) before falling away with sequels that increasingly played things for laughs to falling critical and commercial returns suggest that Warner Bros never really knew what to do with their superheroes.

Failure to establish second string characters such as Supergirl, The Flash or Swamp Thing in the 1980s and the calamitous mis-step that was Batman and Robin (1997) might have put a stake through the heart of the concept in the final years of the Twentieth Century. Joel Schumacher’s mess of a movie and Warner Bros insipid management of their franchises seemed to put the nail in the coffin of the superhero movie once and for all. As the dust settled over the murdered corpse of the Batman franchise few would have bet money on the idea that the superhero genre was about to launch an all-out assault on cinema screens and deliver blockbuster hit after blockbuster hit. And no one would have imagined that the way would be lead not by DC but by Marvel.

Marvel track record with ‘cross-media’ promotion of its heroes was not good and the 1990s had not been a good decade for the comic company built by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and the rest. Without the financial backing of Warner Bros the House of Ideas spent the 70s, 80s and early 90s stuck on the small screen. Followed DC’s highly successful Batman serial (120 shows from 1966-1968) and the moderately successful Wonder Woman (60 episodes between 1976-1979), Marvel had hits of its own with The Incredible Hulk (87 episodes between 1978-1982 and three subsequent TV movies) and Spider-Man (only 15 episodes 1977-1979, but cancelled because of network politics despite solid ratings). But when it came to making feature length films, things were even more ragged for Marvel than they were at DC.

Prior to 1997, Marvel’s output stretches from the unspeakable ‘made for television’ awfulness of Dr Strange (1978) and Captain America (1979) to lumbering cinematic lame fowl such as Howard the Duck (1986) and The Punisher (1989).

The ‘star’ of Captain America’s 1979 incarnation, Reb Brown, was stiff enough to have passed for Cap’s shield but couldn’t convince as the Cap himself and he isn’t helped by being lumbered with a big blue motorcycle helmet instead of a sleek mask. Stunningly, Reb survived for a sequel, shot the same year. The sequel is, if anything, worse than its predecessor but has the distinction of being, perhaps, the most wrongly named film in history. For those forced to sit through Captain America II: Death Too Soon death couldn’t come soon enough.

But the success of Warner’s Superman and Batman franchises saw other studios sniffing around the comic world looking for properties. Sadly for fans of Marvel Comics and decent cinema the two projects that saw the light of day were George Lucas’s infinitely unfortunate Howard the Duck (1986) and Dolph Lundgren murdering both the English language and the idea that The Punisher (1989) might be an interesting character.

And that was almost it for Marvel. The company teetered on the verge of bankruptcy in the 1990s and the movie adaptations were limited to another embarrassing Captain America television movie, Corman’s humiliating Fantastic Four (unreleased) and pilots for television versions of Power Pack, Generation X and Nick Fury (infamously starring David Hasselhoff) that were never picked up.

Which brings us back to 1997, Joel Schumacher’s Batman and Robin and the end of superhero cinema. And perhaps, given the track record of what had gone on before, there things should have ended.

But under the surface, things were starting to move the superheroes way. On television Batman: The Animated Series was demonstrating that it was possible to sell a version of superheroes on television that could be as complex and dark and stylish as its modern comic book incarnations and opened up a whole ‘DC Animated Universe.’ Marvel was having similar success with animated versions of The X-Men and Spider-Man made via its own subsidiary Marvel Films Animation. These series saw the arrival of Avi Arad at Marvel and the beginning of the comic company’s taste for producing it’s own material rather than relying on other producers.

Meanwhile, technology was also moving fast and the development of computer generated imaging meant that effects which would have previously been impossible – or impossibly expensive – were becoming feasible. It suddenly seemed possible to believe that a man could fly.

In business terms the early in mid-nineties were a disaster at Marvel, but from the seeds of near destruction would come hope. In 1989, Ron Perelman – CEO of Revlon – had bought Marvel comics and set about attempting to create a publishing and entertainment conglomerate based around Marvel’s characters and intellectual property. The move almost destroyed the organisation – the comic book bubble burst, sales collapsed and deals went disastrously wrong. In 1997, a bankrupt Marvel was snatched up by Isaac Perlmutter who, with his business partner Avi Arad, set about rebuilding the company.

One of the strategies they adopted was to extend the franchising of Marvel’s characters to film and television through the creation of Marvel Studios. Arad would become head of that company for almost a decade and he would usher in an era of unprecedented success.

It started quietly enough – the first film to bear the Marvel Studios logo was Blade (1998) – made, ironically, in partnership with a subsidiary of DC’s owner Warner, New Line Pictures. Blade was a relatively low budget horror/action movie that might have slipped away unnoticed but which became a cult hit thanks to a smart script by David S Goyer, tight direction by Stephen Norrington and an unusually strong performance by star Wesley Snipes. Blade was well received. It made money and it started Marvel Studios on a roll.

The fledgling studio (in a deal with 20th Century Fox) practically guaranteed the first X-Men (2000) movie a solid critical reception by attracting Usual Suspects director Bryan Singer to direct and co-write the first in the franchise, while Sam Raimi, stepping up from his horror roots, proved an inspired choice for the kenetic thrills and teenage angst of the first Spider-Man (2002 – with Sony).

Blade II (2002 – again with New Line) drew in horror auteur Guillermo Del Toro to take the directing seat and made even more cash. And Ang Lee became the most unlikely director to take on the direction of a superhero film with his stylised, critically-praised but relatively uncommercial take on The Hulk (2003 – with Universal Pictures).


Marvel in this period were doing a number of important things right. First, of course, they were making money by making films that people wanted to see. But crucially they were doing it by making films that placed an emphasis on the quality of script and direction – in Singer, Raimi, Del Toro and Lee they had attracted film-makers of skill, vision and intelligence and, if the Lee approach to The Hulk was too cerebral for many, at least it was clear that the intention was to make quality films.



This period might be seen as a direct reaction to the schlock of DC’s later Batman films – which appeared to have buried Warner Bros only ongoing superhero franchise. Further failures to bring DC comics successfully to the screen, such as the poor League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003 – actually a Fox production), the woeful Catwoman (2004) and the utterly inexplicable Constantine (2005) – contrasted sharply with Marvel’s success. The Warner/DC approach seemed to be to attract big stars but attach them to inferior scripts and weakened directors who could not challenge the studio executive’s meddling. Whatever the reasons, DC were demonstrating that despite Marvel’s run of hits, simply tossing comic book characters at the screen was not enough.

Marvel probably benefited from its independence in this period. It wasn’t tied to one studio but could take its characters to producers and creative teams who were genuinely passionate about getting their characters on the screen. Warner Bros executives seem to have been caught completely by surprise, were unwilling to cast aside their ongoing projects to pursue the comic book trend and didn’t really know what to do with the characters in any case.

There were notable exceptions – where properties originally published by DC Comics or its imprints – were turned into successful movies, but none of these were straightforward superhero comics. Fox snapped up the graphic novel Road to Perdition (2002), New Line turned A History of Violence (2005) into a memorable film and Warner Bros had some success with V for Vendetta (2006) making a spectacular looking film while muddling the political message and infuriating creator Alan Moore.

But, if anything, this emphasises the importance of the quality of the creative teams involved in the production of successful films. Where Warners had Pitof behind the camera for Catwoman, New Line worked with David Cronenberg on A History of Violence and Fox gave Sam Mendes the freedom to make Road to Perdition.

Meanwhile, after its initial flurry of successes, Marvel was entering a stickier patch. Although the sequels X-Men United (2003) and Spider-Man II (2004) took their respective franchises to new heights critically and financially – with Raimi and Singer both returning – films like Daredevil (2003) and Blade: Trinity (2004) put screenwriters David S Goyer and Mark Steven Johnson behind the camera for the first time and saw both films stumble. And these were followed by Rob Bowman’s awful Elektra (2005) and Jonathan Hensleigh’s even worse The Punisher (2004).
While Marvel seemed set to repeat the mistakes made by Warner Bros with Superman and Batman a generation before – making films quickly, with weaker creative teams and poor scripts – DC and Warner Bros seemed to have learned their lesson. Now they set about bringing their two most identifiable characters back to the screen with movies guided by quality directors given creative freedom.

Batman Begins rebooted the Dark Knight franchise through excellent casting, the prestigious and inspired capture of Christopher Nolan as director and a strong story by superhero veteran Goyer. The film was a commercial and critical hit and Nolan’s direction and the down-to-earth grittiness of the action helped wipe away the embarrassment of Joel Schumacher’s 1997 disaster. The big blue boy scout got a relaunch too – and this time Warners pinched X-Men director out from under the noses of Fox and Marvel to helm Superman Returns. The film is po-faced and stodgily-paced but it was a big critical and commercial hit. Sequels to both are in the works although The Man of Steel seems to be in trouble – with both director and writing team having already abandoned ship.

Still Warner Bros are steaming ahead with plans to turn a vast range of their DC superhero properties into movies. Batman sequel, The Dark Night, will be back with cast, director and writers from the original intact in the summer of 2008. Watchmen, directed by attention deficit disorder victim Zack Snyder, has already completed principal photography ahead of a 2009 launch. A Justice League outing seemed likely, with a cast and director (Mad Max’s George Miller) in place before creative and financial difficulties caused it to splutter and run into the brick wall of the writers’ strike – though it may eventually go ahead with a new director and cast. The future of a number of other franchises – including The Flash and Wonder Woman – all seem to hang around the fate of the Justice League movie which was planned to spin off a number of characters into their own films.

And what of Marvel? Spider-Man III and X-Men 3: The Last Stand continued their franchises phenomenal box office success. But the X-Men movie, without Singer at the helm, was widely dismissed by critics – and in truth while journeyman director Brett Ratner delivers a more than serviceable action movie, the film is stripped of all the subtleties of the earlier outing. Raimi’s third Spider-Man film was also coolly receive by critics but it rounded out one of the most financially successful trilogies in cinema history.

Marvel too has a hefty development schedule in the works – which, like DC, seem tied to an ambitious plan for a team movie. Avi Arad left Marvel Studios in 2006 and since then the studio has been working to bring as many of its properties back under its own control, presumably with the aim of being able to develop the kind of crossovers and shared continuity common in the comic books but impossible when one character appears in a film produced by Fox and another in a film developed by Universal. The plan appears to be to roll out Iron Man and a retconned Incredible Hulk without Ang Lee’s intellectual baggage (both in 2008) and to follow those with outings for Ant-Man, Thor, Captain America and Nick Fury perhaps with the aim of creating a truly massive team-up in The Avengers. Other productions will include a third attempt to make a decent Punisher movie (Punisher: War Zone), mutant mayhem in Wolverine and Magneto spin-offs from The X-Men franchise and Silver Surfer and Namor: The Submariner movies (perhaps).

There have been triumphs and disasters along the way for both Marvel and DC characters as they attempt to shift from page to screen, and no doubt there will be many more. In a future where cross-media exploitation of characters and intellectual property is likely to become more important and where, in truth, declining sales of comic books mean that big companies like Marvel and DC must diversify if the wish to survive in any form. And they might be the big two in the comic book industry, but they don’t have the adaptation market all to themselves.

Projects developed from independent comics or smaller publishers – like Sin City, GI Joe, 30 Days of Night, Hellboy – have been successful and demonstrate an ability for comic book movies to be taken seriously by producers and audiences. Sequels to Sin City and Hellboy along with future productions such as Y: The Last Man, Speed Racer and Wanted are likely to continue to demonstrate the lucrative nature of the cross-over between comic and screen. Meanwhile there’s a growing industry of products that take the form of superhero stories without ever having been comic books – from Unbreakable (2004) to The Incredibles (2004) and the huge hit that has been Heroes.

Neither the House of Ideas nor their Distinguished Competition can afford to rest on their laurels. The whole comic industry has refocused itself over recent years, increasingly properties are being developed solely (or at least primarily) with a view to their possible exploitation as cinema properties. Marvel may have grasped the new possibilities early, but it must beware devaluing its properties by chasing quick cash-ins. DC appear to have learned from Marvel’s recent successes – focussing more on quality and taking their own properties seriously – but will the reliance on Warner Bros prove to be an advantage or a millstone?

Whatever the relative merits of their TV and cinema outings these two comic book heroes are tightly matched in the struggle for the best superhero music. Both struck early with powerful opening gambits – the 1966 live Batman TV serial delivered the cheesy but irresistible ‘dinna-dinna-dinna-dinna-BATMAN!’ But Spider-Man was not to be easily outdone – a mere year later and the badly animated Spider-Man television show would showcase the unforgettable ‘Spider-Man! Spider-Man! Does whatever a spider can!’ and go on to win further bonus points by having the song covered by punk legends The Ramones and deliver by far the funniest moment in The Simpson’s Movie (2007). Batman Returns (1992) struck a funky note with a soundtrack from mini-pop maestro Prince while Spider-Man surely loses points for cringe-making mess that is Chad Kroeger’s Hero on the soundtrack of Raimi’s first Spider-Man (2002).

At first this must seem like a no-brainer. The big blue boy scout has five cinema outings to his name, a TV serial starring George Reeves that ran for 104 episodes, a groundbreaking animated serial (1941-43) and a successful teen TV remake, Smallville, currently in its seventh season. Against this all Marvel’s unjolly green giant can offer only a single cinematic release (so far), a 70s TV serial, three dodgy made-for-TV films and a really badly animated cartoon series. But wait, True Believer, for on closer inspection only one of the Superman films is any good – and that one ends with the one of the stupidest moments in cinema history (Supes spins the world backwards and turns back time? Eh? How does that work?). George Reeves made about as convincing a man of steel as I do, and Smallville is just creepy – that ‘Clarke Kent’ is still hanging around pretending to be a teenager when he’s obviously at least 40 years old (okay 31). Meanwhile the Hulk’s 70s TV serial had that haunting piano tinkling at the end of every episode and Robert Bruce Banner got to say “Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” – plus that 60s cartoon might be badly animated but it also features real live artwork by artistic genius Jack Kirby – and no one complains because the Sistine Chapel isn’t animated, do they? And the Ang Lee film does look pretty.

Again, on first glance, this davok* should be no match. But while the X-Men films have smart writing making allegories about the treatment of minorities (and a 1990s animated adventure that is one of the best of its time) Wonder Woman has an ace up her sleeve (or rather tucked into her gravity defying corsetry) – Linda Evans – beloved of teenage boys and their furtively peeking fathers. * Male Klingon from 'the Next Generation' era of Star Trek.