Don’t get us wrong, we have a deep appreciation for comics. We think it’s amazing that the medium lets great writers and artists put together innovative ideas, but it makes us sad when when such a great opportunity gets mixed up with ideas that should never be. Ideas like the forthcoming biographical comic about Twilight author, Stephanie Meyer. We can think of absolutely no reason that such a thing should exist in the first place, but even worse is the fact that it’s far from being alone in the terrible-concept category of comics.
Supersized: Strange Tales from a Fast Food Culture– No, the Supersize reference isn’t an accident, this baby is coming to you spring 2010 courtesy of Mr. Super Size Me himself, Morgan Spurlock in collaboration with Dark Horse Comics. The graphic novel will expand on stories that didn’t make it into the film, to point out once more why we should eat fast food. Important possibly, but not what we would call an artistic triumph. And on top of it all, this is only the first release of a potentially ongoing series to tie into Spurlock’s future films.
Xanadu – We cannot begin to imagine the brilliant campaign someone from the movie Xanadu made to get Marvel to go with this idea, but charisma of that level has to be a superpower. The Olivia Newton-John starring nightclub musical is mainly remembered for being so bad. Musicals in general do not translate well to the comic form (sweeping Greek-myth-inspired dance numbers don’t come across very well in animated still shots) and then there’s the little fact that you can’t hear the music.
The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man – OK, we may have been wrong about the Xanadu representative’s charisma; apparently it takes very little to convince Marvel to make a tie-in comic. In this comic the Kool-Aid mascot chases after anthropomorphic yellow starbursts aka “the thirsties” and cause huge amounts of structural damage by bursting through the walls of various buildings (we question whether the thirsties would have been less expensive). The plus side of this one is that it reminds us of the Kool-Aid mascot on Family Guy. The downside is that the issue we saw was number 2, meaning that they made it through the first issue and still thought this was a good plan.
300 II – We aren’t quite sure what to call this, 302, 300 2, 300 Part Deux? But regardless, Frank Miller has already finished a first draft of a sequel to his graphic novel 300. While nothing official has been put out yet, it’s pretty certain that the boys in Hollywood would be up for another film, considering the amount of money the first film churned out, which is part of what bothers us. Given, there’s a whole war that follows the events of 300 and one could focus on that, but that’s not really a sequel, considering that *spoiler almost everyone involved in the first one is dead by the end. We won’t accuse Frank pandering, but that little voice in the back of our head might.
Jaws 2 – Jaws is consistently considered one of the greatest films of all time, and while Jaws 2 was technically the second-best movie of the Jaws series, that’ s kind of like being the second-best marksman in a duel. The concept of turning said mediocre movie is questionable enough until you take into account that the water shots and tense music were a big part of what made Jaws terrifying, and without it, the comic is more effective as an ocean-safety pamphlet than a chilly narrative.