RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Comic Authors are only Fanfic Writers

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Let me start you up again.

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Without a test audience for concepts, we'd be getting a lot more "Wild Wild West" movies.

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Mainstream film is hard to argue with, but there is plenty of indie quality out there to keep most of us happy.

Indie comics too, for that matter.

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Plenty? Let me give you a recent example: The film Bubba Hotep, written and directed by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm) based on the short story by Joe R. Lansdale. The storyline concerns an aged Elvis living in a Texas retirement home. He traded places with an impersonator years back, and now has a cancerous growth on his genitals. He makes friends with a black man who believes himself to be JFK, and eventually they do battle with an Egyptian redneck mummy.

Now that you know the plot, genrewise, what do you market this film as? If you're not familiar with the story, it's incredulous, yes, but Coscarelli managed to make a film that stayed true to Lansdale's short story and worked as a nice little film, but doesn't easily fit into big studios pre conceived notions of what movies are.

Is it a horror movie? Is it a black comedy? Is it a treatise on the fears of growing old? Yes, it's all that. But a big name studio isn't gonna touch it because they can't plug Will Smith into it and have him spout his usual one liners.

Coscarelli had to get the financing for the film himself (which isn't a new thing, he did the Phantasm films himself as well) and even when picked up by a distributor (Lions Gate) still was only able to get a limited theatrical release. Even so, the film was a critical hit, and got a larger release date.

Bruce Campbell, who starred in the film, was advised by his agents, up and down, not to do the part as it would ruin his career. Standard Hollywood thinking. He did the part because he liked it, and while it may not have put his name on more marquees or made him an A list actor, it garnered him a lot more credibility and respect.

Now with lesser talents, this film could have easily been crap. (Some may still be of the opinion that it is, I'm not.) But even with a talented cast and crew behind it (Ossie Davis played JFK, and he's fantastic) they still had considerable troubles getting the film made and put out for people to see.

My friends and I had to drive over an hour out of town just to see the film in a cinema. And the release date was pushed back two months. It's just one of many examples of what indie films have to struggle through just to get noticed.

Big studios are too busy churning out crap like Will Smith in "I, Robot" (Asimov turns in his grave) or Keanu's latest thespian masterpiece. A film like Bubba Hotep can't get attention because of this type of shite.

But maybe it's different in Australia. Maybe you have multiple indie film studios and they're all doing quite well and you have no trouble getting to see their work.

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Huh? There are some excellent books out there.

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Books have the most rigorous content filteration system of any mass media because the margins are so low. Unless its actually good, or written by someone with a reputation, it won't see print.

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Setting aside Vertigo, the content of both publishing houses is virtually interchangable.

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You're trying to tell me Identity Crisis couldn't have happened as an Avengers book, or Disassembled as JLA book?

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You're just trying to antagonise me now, aren't you?

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Everyone knows I love JSA and wouldn't miss a heartbeat of its high quality legacy goodness.

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This is going in my sig.

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Examples? Because on the one hand you cite Catwoman and Constantine as missing the point, and now you say other media steal comics' good ideas.

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Laughable, counsellor, laughable. Book companies produce content to fill space on shelves, not to put out quality work. You're telling me trashy romance novels are routinely published because they're actually good? Or that the many third generation Gene Roddenberry wannabe hacks that litter the science fiction shelves are quality writers with reputations?

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