Slylock Fox
Every generation of movie studio executives must ask itself "how much money can we squeeze from the fruit of the Giving Tree we call the public domain?" Well, I'm here to tell you that the sweetest fruit of that tree has not yet dried out. The modern age just does not have enough Sherlock Holmes variants. Fortunately, there's a demographic not yet tapped by Sherlock, nor Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, nor Elementary, nor Mr. Holmes, perhaps not even Detective Pikachu, and that is children. The youngsters are crying out for their own Holmes franchise and the time has come for Bob Weber Jr. to answer their pleas with "Slylock Fox." An animated feature about the vulpine consulting detective and his murine accomplice Max Mouse could be a huge hit with the 10 and under crowd. After that, perhaps a series on Netflix. And think of the licensing! What tyke wouldn't want a stuffed Shady Shrew to hug and squeeze at night? I know a certain 7 year old in 1999 who would have loved a Reeky Rat action figure with kung-fu grip.
Funky Winkerbean
It's not often that award bait movies are based on comics but there's one property that is built for Academy chum. There's nothing awards shows love more than comedies that are really sad except for dramas that are really sad. For the past ten to twenty years Tom Batiuk's Funky Winkerbean has been so sad that no one can tell which category it belongs in. There have been stories about cancer, teen pregnancy, cancer, gun violence, cancer, addiction, cancer, prisoners of war and cancer tumors. (That's where suspicious tumors grow on top of cancer.) It all started in the early 90's when the timeline jumped forward, then it went even farther in 2007 with another time jump. The characters just got older and their lives got sadder and sadder. Through it all the strip was still named after the character Funky Winkerbean. Alcoholic, divorced, car crash surviving father of an MIA soldier Funky Winkerbean. Cue the "wrap it up" music.
Beetle Bailey
Given the overwhelming unfunniness of Funky Winkerbean (aside from that spectacular name), it might seem like there isn't much room for jocularity in a topic as serious as the military, but what propels great comedies like Stripes and especially M*A*S*H is the idea that in the trenches a sense of humor can be a necessary survival tool, and when I say "great comedies" I mean some of the greatest comedies in history. However, the troops have been woefully underrepresented in the modern comedy landscape with the exception of the horribly short lived Enlisted series. Perhaps the time has come for a new military comedy and what better inspiration than Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey, a comic that has been around for over 60 years, since long before Alan Alda ever put on a Hawaiian shirt or Bill Murray sang "Doo Wah Diddy." From 1950 to this day Private Bailey has been slacking off and running from his bullish platoon sergeant. There's also a dog that wears clothes because it thinks its people! A track record like that deserves a shot for something bigger.
Pearls Before Swine
There's a trend in modern comedy towards self awareness. It likely started on TV with Community's reference/homage saturated rabbit hole. Then it made its way to movies like 21 and 22 Jump Street which served as a tribute to the 80's TV classic as well as a satire of reboots and sequels. It doesn't always work. In 2015 Ed Helms promised in character as Rusty Griswold that "the new Vacation will stand on its own" before, I assume without having seen it, Richard Roeper walked onscreen and vomited for fifteen minutes straight in the shape of a pentagram then summoned a demon to take all the directors and writers and actors to hell set to a creepy music box rendition of "Holiday Road". It might seem that self-awareness will reach its peak in February with Deadpool but there may be a way to take it a step farther. Deadpool is known to address the audience in his comics but the characters in Pearls Before Swine have a habit of going straight to their creator. Instead of crying "Why, God!" at the heavens when they experience a tragedy like a convoluted pun, Pig, Goat, and especially Rat have been known to express their discontent eye to eye with writer Stephen Pastis. Sometimes Pastis is even the focus of an entire strip without any appearances by anthropomorphic beasts. What are the odds that director Tim Miller will have his own subplot in Deadpool?
Honorable Mentions:
Sally Forth
Zits
Jump Start
Frazz
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