Transmetropolitan
People have been begging for Warren Ellis’ cult classic to be brought to life for years now. It’s also the only one on the list that has made it anywhere close to actually becoming a film, which isn’t really far at all. A fusion of cyberpunk and science fiction, Trans is the tale of Gonzo journalist and professional asshole Spider Jerusalem and his quest to point out the failings and corruption of our government and the society that has resulted from their unfettered abuse of power.
Like some sort of bastard love child of Idiocracy and a lost Hunter S. Thompson novel, Transmetropolitan wasn’t shy about its opinions and criticism of a world without morals, ethics or sheer give-a-damn. It’s a clear eyebrow raised at the path our culture is currently on and its continued popularity is proof of its relevance.
While people have pitched the idea of a Trans movie, TV show and even a webseries at various points over the last 12 years, Ellis claims that this is one that can never realistically be brought to life due to the fact the production budget needed to do it justice would make unviable.
For now, Transmetropolitan will remain a perfect, foul mouthed example of the level of storytelling comics are capable of.
The Wicked + The Divine
Kieron Gillen’s fantasy comic is still pretty young, but it’s been making waves since its debut in 2014. The cast of W+D is a literal Pantheon of reincarnated gods that have taken up shop inside the bodies of twelve young people, gifting them with supernatural powers and fame with the caveat that they’ll be dead within two years.
The series not only creates absolutely memorable characters, such as a sleek David Bowie looking Lucifer, but does a really interesting job of exploring the cult of the celebrity and how, in many ways, the rich and famous have become our society’s new gods.
Gillen has stated in the past that the series was inspired by witnessing his father’s diagnosis of terminal cancer and the themes of life and death that a situation like that would entail. Given that, it makes sense that the series follows that same consideration as we witness these otherworldly beings snuffed out one by one.
The Wicked + The Divine just released its second trade back and it’s definitely worth picking up, if only for Jamie McKelvie’s gorgeous artwork, but doing so will also convince you of how translatable the story itself would be in live action.
The Manhattan Projects
This one is so goddamned weird, I have never really found a way to explain it properly. Instead, I shove my copy of the first volume into the hands of friends and say “knock yourself out.” And they’re usually hooked.
This series from Jonathan Hickman is an on going one, but shows no signs of slowing down on the wtf factor. The essential premise is that what the public knows as the Manhattan Project, the US effort to beat the Axis to nuclear might, was really just a cover job for those same scientists to be experimenting with darker stuff, including dimensions and fusing esoteric control, space colonization and even, as benign as it sounds, renewable energy.
What sucked me in, and what gets most people, is how the series upends the collective perception of the personalities that our most famous scientists had. Einstein is an absolute barbarian, Oppenheimer is a psychotic physicist with an evil cannibal twin and multiple personalities, Fermi isn’t even human and Feynman is just as lost as we are.
The Manhattan Projects is wild and fun and it would be a total treat to see it brought into a series. That said, given how absolutely out there this one is, it’s also the only one that I would suggest be treated in an animated form.
The Wake
As a kid one of my favorite movies was James Cameron’s The Abyss and ever since I’ve had a preoccupation with thrillers and horror tales that took place at the bottom of the ocean. So when Scott Snyder (American Vampire, Swamp Thing) announced a limited series that had such a setting, I was frothing at the mouth for it. And The Wake did not disappoint.
The Wake, in reality, is two comics in one, which is impressive for something that’s only 10 issues long. Half the tale takes place in the present and half in the future, but both follow the world drowning and being sieged by previously unknown sea creatures called Mers. The government’s reaction is to assemble a team to go down into the water and figure out just what the hell is going on. Much like Sphere and The Abyss before it, The Wake takes a turn for the sinister and shows that the good guys don’t always win.
Not only did it have a spectacular storyline that was compact and engaging, Sean Murphy’s art throughout The Wake’s run was amazing and I would love to see that visual direction brought to the big screen in a full movie. Though, just like 10 issues almost didn’t feel like enough, 2 hours might not do it justice either.
While superhero comics were my first and enduring love, there’s a lot of fantastic comics out there that do the the medium a world of justice that lack mutant genes and alien assistance. Without realizing it when I first compiled this list, and with the exception of one, each of these comics feature (relatively) normal people struggling with extraordinary circumstances. I also didn’t realize that each of these titles heavily took into consideration the stress seams of society and what it could take to save it or destroy it.
That said, here’s our look at five comic books that should absolutely be adapted into film or television format:
Y: The Last Man
This is a title that appears on these kinds of lists often and with good reason. Y spans 60 issues and, as such, has a lot of moving parts. Following the sudden and simultaneous death of every male mammal on Earth, the world descends into chaos. Not only has the world lost half its human population including half its skilled labor and a massive amount of its food source, but the surviving human half is grieving, scared, and facing a slow extinction themselves. This all creates a gumbo of bad that readily proves just how dangerous a human being is when the burden of society is lifted.
However, there are two survivors of the androcide- a monkey named Ampersand and a dork named Yorick Brown. Their status as the only males left on Earth and the struggle to protect them from various desperate governments acts as the central theme throughout the series. Discovered early after the gendercide, Yorick falls under the aegis of a total badass named Agent 355 and it’s their friendship and interaction that provides much of the context for the series as a whole.
Not only are we witness to a total collapse of society and a concentrated effort to figure out how and why this even happened, but Y: The Last Man also does a great job of examining just what it means to be human. The answers to that are often ugly and humbling, but the series did a fantastic job of maintaining pace and keeping you engrossed right up until the finale.
Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra’s comic won two Eisner awards and I could absolutely see this as a multi season TV show on one of the premium networks, or even on AMC where a story of society’s collapse would fit right in with The Walking Dead on Sundays.
