In this wonderful post-Black Panther world, what we need now most of all are new and diverse comic book adaptations. Not just superhero stuff (especially not any more caped-crusader flicks starring white dudes named Chris), but other comics as well. In other words, if Hollywood wants to repeat the success of Black Panther and Wonder Woman, it ain’t gonna be with a third Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
So here are a few series I think would make great television shows or movies, and the people who should adapt them. I stuck to material not already in the development pipeline—hence no Chew, Goldie Vance, Squirrel Girl, Crosswind, Locke & Key, Lumberjanes, Y: The Last Man, Sandman, Nimona, or DCEU/MCU—but it was sooooo hard to narrow down to just a few. Gimme all the intersectionality you got!
Abbott
Saladin Ahmed and Sami Kivelä’s Abbott only has two issues out, but I’m already in love with Elena Abbott. She’s a badass journalist—sometimes called the “Black Lois Lane”—in 1972 Detroit investigating the murder of a 14-year-old African-American boy by cops. Dee Rees, riding high after her wrenching period piece Mudbound, would do this comic the justice it deserves as a Luke Cage-style Netflix show.
The Backstagers
James Tynion IV and Rian Sygh’s young adult miniseries about a group of boys at an all-boys school who discover a doorway to alternate dimensions in the backstage area of the school theatre is exactly what’s missing on television right now. If Rebecca Sugar was ready to move on from Steven Universe, I’d love to see her adaptation. The Backstagers would be absolutely lovely as an animated series.
Batwoman
Bong Joon-ho may sound like an odd choice as the director of a Batwoman movie, but bear with me. Between The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja, Bong has already established himself as a fantastic director with a flair for intense action and human spectacle, with just enough fantasy to liven things up. Think of what he could do with a story like Greg Rucka and J. H. Williams’ “Elegy.”
Bitch Planet
Sing the praises of The Handmaid’s Tale all you like, but if any literary property is more perfectly attuned to 2018, it’s Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro’s Bitch Planet. Which is why I think Lena Waithe is the ideal person to develop it for television. Her personal experience combined with smart filmmaking—she has a recurring role on Master of None, produced the Dear White People movie, and wrote and created The Chi—more than make up for her having never done science fiction before. *grabby hands*
Hellcat (Patsy Walker) and She-Hulk (Jennifer Walters)
I’d give just about anything for a Supergirl-style TV series starring the most recent comic book iterations of Patsy and Jennifer. Don’t get me wrong, Netflix!Patsy is cool and all, but how can you not love Kate Leth’s adorable series or the delightfully feminist takes on She-Hulk by Charles Soule and Mariko Tamaki? If you loved Obvious Child and Landline as much as I did, you’ll be happy to know I nominate Gillian Robespierre to produce a show combining two of the bestest Marvel besties around.
Aline Brosh McKenna is another intriguing candidate. Her film Morning Glory was one of the last great traditional rom-coms (as opposed to those where the protags are terrible people doing awful things to each other). At present she’s a co-creator, writer, producer, and director on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, so I’m more than confident she can handle Shulkie and Hellcat.
Kim & Kim
Literally no one else could direct a film adaptation of Magdalene Visaggio and Eva Cabrera’s Kim & Kim except the Wachowskis. The series is dripping with intersectional diversity, sarcasm, and bombastic energy. The Wachowski siblings wowed with their bonkers theatrics in gloriously awesome Jupiter Ascending (don’t @ me) and doubled down on the melodrama in Sense8. A Kim & Kim adaptation is practically tailor made for them.
Midnighter
Midnighter definitely needs a DCEU movie, one that lets his fists do as much work as his attitude without it winding up a Deadpool knockoff. And who better than Karyn Kusama? She has the style and substance to bring him to life in the right way. Bonus points for including Apollo, either as an ex or current beau.
Justin Lin would be a good alternate director. The Fast and Furious series shows he can pull off crazy action set pieces, and Better Luck Tomorrow demonstrates his skill at complicated relationships.
Miles Morales
Miles may not be the MCU Spider-Man many of us were waiting for, but at least he’s in canon. Silver linings, I suppose. But if we were so lucky as to be blessed with a Miles movie, I can’t think of another better director than Ryan Coogler. Coogler’s films tend to be more serious than Miles’ comics are, but given the miracle that is Black Panther, I think he’ll be just fine.
I’d also happily accept Jordan Peele. We know he can do big budget and smaller personal moments, and Miles’ goofy personality would get a lot of play with Peele.
Misfit City
A girl gang gets pulled into a fantastical mystery in Kiwi Smith, Kurt Lustgarten, and Naomi Franquiz’s ’80s-style adventure tale. Smith is the talented woman who wrote most of your favorite ’90s YA/NA chick flicks—Ella Enchanted, Legally Blonde, 10 Things I Hate About You—so of course I’d pick Amy Heckerling, she of Clueless fame among numerous other projects, to direct the movie.
Aurora Guerrero is also an intriguing option. Although she hasn’t directed a blockbuster, her film Mosquito y Mari shows she has what it takes to tell a nuanced and compelling story about young women. I’m all for out-of-the-box choices to bring in new ideas.
Monstress
Monstress is a sprawling, gorgeous series about family and revenge, with a hefty dose of scathing subtext on feminism, sexism, and racism. Creators Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda aren’t messing around with this series, and that makes it unlike just about anything else currently being published. Takeda’s art is lush and mind-bogglingly beautiful, and the only director I can think of to do her work justice is Tarsem Singh. If you’ve seen The Cell and The Fall, then you know how good his visuals are. Could he be lured to television? This series is too sprawling to be limited to a single movie.
Ms. Marvel
Yet another low-hanging film fruit that Marvel has somehow managed to avoid. G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel has been on the New York Times Bestsellers List multiple times, features a pleasantly diverse cast, and comes pre-packaged with strong appeal to an audience practically begging for attention. Who to direct her feature film debut? Sydney Freeland, of course! After the utter delight that was Deidra & Laney Rob a Train, I know she could easily balance the Kamala’s charm with Ms. Marvel’s punch.
Paper Girls
Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang’s Paper Girls is also in a desperate need for a kickass TV show. Michelle MacLaren has produced and directed some of the biggest and most beloved television series of the last two decades. Tough tweens, suspicious science fiction-y happenings, creepy adults, and an ’80s nostalgia bent was successful enough with Stranger Things, but think of what a director like MacLaren could do with material with actually fully developed female characters?
On the other hand, Cary Joji Fukunaga could do some really interesting stuff with Chiang’s visuals. Fukunaga has a history of cinematography, directing, and producing in films full of powerful yet delicate moments, meaning he’d have little trouble with Paper Girls.
Redlands
Redlands features witches in a small town in Florida and is filled to the brim with sex, blood, violence, and feminist revenge. The disconcerting, pull-no-punches style of Ana Lily Amirpour—she of The Bad Batch and A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night fame—would knock a TV series adaptation of Jordie Bellaire and Vanesa R. Del Rey’s haunting series out of the frakking park.
Saga
Speaking of Vaughan, for such a layered, detailed, epic fantasy and science fiction genre smashing space opera as his and Fiona Staples’ Saga, the only director I trust to adapt it is Ava DuVernay. A series like this can’t be condensed into a two-hour movie; it demands multiple seasons on a high-end channel or streaming site. DuVernay can do quiet moments (Middle of Nowhere), nuanced takes on the best and worst of humanity (Selma), and emotional and visual spectacle (A Wrinkle in Time), as well as handle the challenges of a rigorous television schedule (Queen Sugar).
Spell on Wheels
When three young witches are robbed of some very important magical items, they set off on a roadtrip to track them down and confront the thief in this intersectionally diverse, engaging miniseries by Kate Leth and Megan Levens. What with her excellent work on True Blood, How To Get Away With Murder, The L Word, D.E.B.S., and Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, Angela Robinson has my vote to direct this movie.
Velvet
Think James Bond but starring a middle-aged woman and with a lot less sexism and misogyny. Patty Jenkins could easily turn Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s spy thriller into the next great Atomic Blonde or Haywire. She’s got the flair for the dramatic and the skills for intense action, as Wonder Woman deftly demonstrated.
The Wicked + The Divine
How SERIOUSLY AWESOMELY COOL would it be to have Bryan Fuller and Michael Green run wild with a television show based on Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s comic? Sexy celebrities, fantastic gods, massive drama…this is right up their alley. After American Gods and Hannibal, there’s nothing Fuller and Green can do wrong, as far as I’m concerned.
Young Avengers
Specifically, the Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie run from a few years back with Taika Waititi directing the movie. Like Ms. Marvel, this would have a lot of appeal for a representation-starved audience. Moreover, the story about finding your family and fixing your mistakes (and being terrorized across the multiverse by Kid Loki’s subconscious, “PatriNot,” and a matronly interdimensional parasite) would translate well from print to screen. Waititi would rock the weird, jumbly, cross-dimensional vibe with quirky ease.
Alex Brown is a YA librarian by day, local historian by night, pop culture critic/reviewer by passion, and QWoC all the time. Keep up with her every move on Twitter, check out her endless barrage of cute rat pics on Instagram, or get lost in the rabbit warren of ships and fandoms on Tumblr.
They’ve already done Midnighter, they just called it “Batman Vs Superman”.
Frankly, I think that since Paramount is rebooting the Transformers movies they should adapt Lost Light and More Than Meets The Eye for the new cinematic franchise. Goofy guys on a goofy quest with the occasional detour into mindscarring horror but still managing not to be grimdark and “badass”.
More goofiness, and more camp adventuring, that is what we need!
You know what, now we are finally understanding that white people will show up to watch non white casts, and there is no need for Ghost in the Shell style whitewashing, lets do manga. Lets go for Takahashi gold, lets see Ranma 1/2 as the next big screen adaptation!! We could even serious it up -a little- by examining some of the gender and sexuality issues that got swept under the carpet, but not too much because goofy fun adventure should still be at the heart of it.
Ex Machina.
Deadman.
Politenessman.
There are several of these that I love as comics, that I just don’t think would translate well into another medium. Saga, Monstress, and Wicked + DIvine are both too long for a film, and way too expensive to do properly as a TV series, even on HBO. They all involve characters that would have to be pretty heavily CGIed interacting seamlessly with each other in casual moments which is still difficult to do for films. They are all also wonderfully weird in a way that I don’t think TV/Film could ever do.
Paper girls and Bitch Planet on the other hand should already be in development on HBO. They would let HBO cash in on the hot 80’s nostalgia and modern political commentary that their rivals at Netflix and Hulu are doing well.
A lot of fun possibilities above. I have really been enjoying a new Marvel book called Monsters Unleashed. The premise that a youngster can summon monsters by drawing them harkens back to some of my boyhood imaginings. I love the way the optimistic young boy Kei plays off against the hardened monster hunter Elsa Bloodstone. And the monsters are a fun bunch to hang around with. That one might work best in an animated format instead of live action, but I would love to see it on the big screen.
Many of these, like Monstress, I feel would be easily and better adapted if done just in animated form. Monstress, for example, screams animated adaptation with those gorgeous original graphics. I don’t know why that adaptations be live-action should always be such a fixed rule.
I’d like to see more non-superhero stories get adapted. With the MCU and DCEU, we’re over-saturated.
I’d love to see Bitch Planet get an HBO series. That series is fantastic and rife with potential.
I’d add Black Science by Rick Remender but can’t think of who’d be good at adapting it.
I’d love to see I Hate Fairyland by Skottie Young on the screen. It could result in something like Deadpool’s movie.
1.Marshal Law/Lobo- parodies of ultra dark, violent comic book movies
2. The Light and Darkness War from Epic would make a nice movie
3. Lady Death
Wild’s End which is sort of Wind in the Willows meets War of the Worlds.
The correct answer is White Sand :) Always.
I want Love and Rockets. I’m not sure what a good standalone story would be. Maybe “The Death of Speedy Ortiz”?
Sony is already doing a Miles Morales film: https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/9/16756384/spider-man-into-the-spider-verse-trailer-animated-miles-morales-watch
There has never been a better time than now for Transmetropolitan. I’d love to see Y: The Last Man adapted, too.
@11 Yay! Hadn’t heard about that one!
Anything that could bring us more of the sadly truncated Patsy Walker aka Hellcat series by Kate Leth–that would be a great and welcome thing. Also, agree that Misfit City would make a terrific movie or miniseries! And we’re really overdue for an adaptation of Ms. Marvel. I’ve been dreamcasting (and dream-production-teaming) that one for years now.
Absolutely none. Enough with comic book adaptations. Movies based on comic books are limited by their source material. The market is over saturated and there are far better literary properties in the science fiction and fantasy worlds than comic books – think real books and short stories. There are a huge number of classics and modern masterpieces which deserve adaptations before any more comic book movies are made. And before someone says, why can’t we have both, it is easy to see that there are limits to resources: money, time, people that any production company will invest in a property. They have a money making machine in comic books and they will ride that magic carpet into mediocrity (I think for the most part they are there). How about trying something different and try some real literary properties? When done right (and I am thinking of a Lord of the Rings, a 2001, The Expanse, or a Blade Runner) the effect is so much greater than any comic book movie that has ever been made or will be made.
I would love to see an adaptation of The Girl From The Other Side: Siúil A Rún an utterly engrossing manga series that is beautiful and quiet and would make for a lovely film.
Bosco — I agree 1000%. The question is if our current Prez is the Smiler, or his opponent? I just picked up the whole run of Transmet in the collected versions because it fits scary well into the current political climate. And at one point, I’m given to understand that Sir Patrick Stewart was on tap to play Spider Jerusalem.
Sorry, I’m declaring a moratorium on super heroes. Fuck that noise. Make some real movies for a while.
Bone
Wizard of Id
The Dresden Files…
Whatat!? they make Dresden Files comic books.
ElfQuest is begging to be made into some form of moving media. Animation or live action, I don’t care. I’ve practically been waiting my whole life for it!
Thank you for the great article. I just got into independent comics two years ago and am always looking for good stories. I have read a few on this list and have found new ones to try. So thanks. One you should have on list or read if you haven’t is Southern Bastards. It’s well written and excellently drawn. I gave this to read to my father who hates comics and he loves it.
My choice would be The Secret Wars, that first big Marvel 12 issue blockbuster battle Royale. The Beyonder, a seemingly all powerful being has observed Earth for many years, and is fascinated by the struggle of good vs evil. So he kidnaps a whole whack of Marvel’s best and brightest heroes and villains, brings them to some planet far from Earth and tells them that if they slay their enemies, all they desire shall be theirs.
It’s the Avengers, Fantastic Four, Spiderman, the X-Men plus assorted other heroes vs a collection of villains include Magneto, the Molecule Man, Galactose (more neutral than “evil,”) Klaw the master of Sound, a whole bunch of others…and…Doctor Doom.
The good Dr quickly decides that not only is he not going to battle the so-called heroes for anyone’s amusement, he decides that it is the Beyonder himself that is his true enemy, and he devises a way to use Klaw to firstly take the massive power of Galactose, and then use that vast power to battle the Beyonder himself and steal HIS power.
It was the first comic series I’d read in a year or two at the time, and it got me right back into collecting. I think I was in grade 7 or 8, so 12 or 13yrs old. I wish Marvel had done this before Infinity War, but if I had one comic book series to bring to the small/big screen, Secret Wars is my pick.
PS: for those not in the know, it was in the Secret Wars mini-series that Spiderman came by his symbiotic suit, that black costume that later became Venom, one of his most dire arch-enemies. But it is a story for Dr Doom lovers like me.
So many great titles on this list! I would love to see Bitch Planet and Batwoman make it to the screen!
Omaha the cat dancer, live action would be the weirdest show of all time. with full on nudity of course. Monstress should be a three part massive movie event but only in like 5 to 10 years when the FX are better suited to capture the true essence. It deserves to be a true epic.