4 Comics Characters Long Overdue for an Adaptation

It might seem that with all the superheroes populating screens big and small there are no comics properties left to be adapted.  Fortunately that's not the case.  There's still an abundance of opportunities waiting in the funny pages.  For every Spider-Man, Supergirl, Flash, Dick Tracy, and Deadpool there's an obscurity rife with potential.  They already have a built in audience, all they need is for some Hollywood mucketymuck to give them a chance.  I'm talking about comic strips.

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

X-Men and the Messiah but not 'Messiah Complex'

Earlier this week comic book writer Gail Simone went on a light rant about crossovers and events (limited series with story lines that are slightly more grandiose than typical comics and/or feature several different series).

I like event books. I like crossovers. A lot of writers hate them, I love the challenge of finding a good story inside a puzzle box.

— GAIL SIMONE (@GailSimone) August 9, 2015

 It all got me thinking about my favorite crossover, X-Men: Battle of The Atom.  At the time, it helped that I was already reading three of the four books involved in the story.  However, I usually need something to latch on to like a metaphor or theme before I become invested in any story.  Battle of The Atom got my attention with one of my favorite literary devices, the Messiah analogy.  The Christ shows up in the subtext of several stories I love, perhaps most prominently in the characters Harry Potter, Superman, and Neo from The Matrix.

In Battle of The Atom the Christian themes center on Jean Grey, or more specifically young Jean Grey.  The catalyst for the crossover is the presence of the main characters from All-New X-Men, the original five X-Men who have been brought forward in time to the present, specifically Bobby "Iceman" Drake, Scott "Cyclops" Summers, Hank "Beast" McCoy, Warren "Angel" Worthington, and Jean Grey.  These five teenagers have no clue about the endless amounts of sci-fi tragedy and hi-jinks that are ahead of them.  That is until Jean Grey reads everyone's minds in our present and learns about her future, including her death(s).

Those parentheses are one of several reasons Jean Grey is perfect for a Messiah story.  Resurrection is kind of her whole thing.  She has a special connection to a strange cosmic entity called The Phoenix Force.  When Jean first died in the late 70's she was resurrected thanks to the Phoenix.  Then she turned evil and died again.  Then in the mid/late 80's it was revealed that she was in a comatose state the whole time and it was actually the Phoenix with the face and personality of Jean that turned evil and died.  Finally, the actual Jean Grey died in the early 00's.  (For more X-Planation I recommend the podcast of X-Perts Rachel and Miles.  For my purposes let's assume that every time it seemed like Jean died she actually died.)

It's worth noting that the first two times Jean died it was to save other people.  First she exposed herself to dangerous radiation to help her teammates reach Earth safely after a bit of space travel.  That's when Phoenix showed up and bonded with Jean, giving her immense power.  When Jean lost control of the Phoenix she ultimately killed herself to prevent Phoenix from hurting anyone else.

However, Battle of The Atom is less about Jean's death than it is about her destiny to die.  This is about a young Jean long before the events of The Phoenix Saga.  A Jean with near complete knowledge of her own future, which, paired with her insight into the minds of those around her makes her about as omniscient as a person can be.  Most importantly she knows that when she returns to her proper time period she will be fated to die young.  The emotional through line of the story is Jean's fear of that fate, not unlike the actual Jesus Christ who prayed "let this cup pass from me."

Although, Jean isn't the only Christlike character struggling with the concept of life and death.  In the first issue of Battle of The Atom the young X-Men from the past team up with adult Cyclops' team of young X-Men from the present to confront a new mutant and fight some giant robot Sentinels while they're at it.  Towards the end of the battle young Cyclops gets fatally wounded, causing adult Cyclops to disappear.  Young Cyclops is resurrected by a member of adult Cyclops's team with healing powers named Christopher, which is almost too on the nose to be intentional.

Even though Jean doesn't perform the act, the scene calls to mind Lazarus' resurrection by Jesus shortly before the crucifixion.

Both Cyclopseseses near death experience frightens all of the adults and they agree it's time for the young X-Men to go back to their own time.  Before the young X-Men can go anywhere another team of mutants comes through the "Time Cube."  They claim to be the future X-Men but are actually the villainous future Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.  Among them are an adult version of past Jean Grey and an older version of present Beast.

Notice Beast looking vaguely demonic with his horn and talons.
  Jean Grey is the one in the sinister skeletal mask, also slightly demonic.

These mutants have a bad plan and execute it poorly.  Their main goal is to send back the original five X-Men, which was probably going to happen anyway.  At least, it was going to be attempted, but when the Brotherhood tries to send them back they are unsuccessful for unknown time paradox reasons.  However, the collision of past, present, and future not only makes for a fun time travel story but also presents three "trinities" that almost mirror the Holy Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

There are now three versions of Beast from three different points in time.  Later a future Iceman will arrive, who has a Dumbledore/Gandalf vibe, both are God-like characters in stories dense with religious subtext.  The present version of Jean Grey is dead, but her legacy looms over the story like a spirit.  The future versions of Angel and Cyclops are presumably absent because Angel is boring and Cyclops would over complicate things.  Also, there's a guy named Angel who looks like an Angel floating around during the whole story.

The arrival of the future mutants and all the secrets they hide from Jean's telepathy freak her out.  She tries to convince young Beast to run away with her but his scientific curiosity overpowers his crush on her.  She settles for Cyclops who is unhesitant to join her.

Ok, so it's not quite as
eloquent as "die by the sword."

It doesn't take long for everyone to realize that they are missing.  When they catch up to the teenagers, Jean twice plays the role of pacifist.  Like Jesus warning Simon that living by the sword will lead to death by the sword, Jean urges Cyclops not to use his eye blasts.  Later, when all hell has broken loose Jean relents to return to the past to save the future, in the process stopping Deadpool from killing himself and ending the violence temporarily.  
          





Back at the X-Men headquarters/school chaos erupts again as the Brotherhood is revealed and half of them fight the present and newly arrived future X-Men while the other half tries and fails to send back the original X-Men.  Interestingly, while all this is going on young Jean takes a back seat, saying little more than a sentence for three issues, echoing the three days Jesus spent in his tomb.  I'll admit that this, more than anything else, is a bit of a stretch but it's still an amusing coincidence.

Finally, in the last issue young Jean accepts her fate as she fights her future self.  Almost immediately after that future Jean's powers overload and the evil version dies, fulfilling the promise of Jean's death.

There are a handful of other images that evoke religious themes.

I can't put my finger on it but there's something about the recap page in the first issue.

The next page resembles the Last Supper.

 

On the cover of the 2nd issue Scott and Jean's powers form halos of sorts.

In the same issue Cyclops trips through a clothesline and winds up looking like Mary Magdalene.

And there's future Jean kneeling before young Jean.

All comics art is by Frank Cho, Stuart Immonen, David Lopez, Chris Bachalo and Guiseppe Camuncoli.

If I missed anything let me know in the comments or Twitter or whatever.