Thread by @GailSimone

I have a brief funny thing I remembered recently that shows how much the relationship between comics and films has changed in the last two decades. It seems positively surreal now, but it’s absolutely true. 1/

This took place sometime in, I think, the year 2000. It really shows how different the landscape was in comics, and how little awareness there was about comics just two short decades ago. 2/

I had just started writing comics professionally. It was still very much a part time thing, I felt pretty sure I]it was all a weird mistake and I would continue being a hairdresser with dreams of writing comics. My first Simpsons comics had barely come out. 3/

But because I had written a humor column about comics that was very popular with comics pros, I enjoyed occasional correspondence with editors and creators and staffers. I never asked for a job writing, that seemed like it would be gauche somehow. 4/

But here is the funny/weird/sad part. Twenty years ago, comics publishers thought the biggest problem wasn’t a distribution monopoly, an aging readership, or any of that. They thought it was awareness. They thought normies would never care about comics. 4/

Why do I mess up these numbers EVERY TIME. 6/

So, like the time when every comic fan would get excited when even a CRAPPY superhero movie like, say, Steel or Catwoman would come out, because there was so little quality stuff out there...publishers constantly were hoping for comics movies and tv shows. 7/

They thought that would have a huge impact. I think they were also tired of producing good work, but having to get shocked faces at parties when someone asked them what they did for a living. ‘Wait, you’re a grown man and you make comics? I didn’t know they still made those.’ 8/

I think they wanted the boom they thought hit movies would bring to comics, but I also think they were starved, even at the executive level, for just a SHRED of legitimacy in the eyes of Hollywood, the artistic community at large, and even just with neighbors and friends. 9/

You could sell a 200,000 copies of a Batman book, but that meant nothing to the average person on the street, it was still a junkyard art form for kids, it was felt. So it was a HUGE deal when even a crappy show or film briefly gave comics some fake validity. 10/

I was corresponding just a bit with a few higher ups at both the big two companies and a couple of the bigger independent ones. I’m not going to mention names. But in 2000, they were almost all excited, because a film was coming that they thought would change everything. 11/

THIS film, would be such an important piece of art, and such a huge hit by such a brilliant director, that it would force critics to take another look at the entire MEDIUM of comics. After they got advance screenings, they were even MORE sure this would change EVERYTHING. 12/

They thought, seriously, that this would send people to comic stores, and a couple projects were already in the works to cater to people who liked the film and wanted to read something like it. 13/

But here’s the thing. There was still a little embarrassment over the films made about actual comics. So even when they were successful, there was a little reluctance to really embrace them by comics companies. 15/

Numbers wrong again. 16/

So what movie were they so excited about, what movie did they think was going to make them welcome at cocktail parties for the artistic intelligentsia?

17/

Was it a new Batman film?

Was it X-men?

Spider-man?

NO.

18/

It was M. Night Shyamalan’s UNBREAKABLE.

I kid you not.

19/

It’s a weird choice, isn’t it?

But the director had just come off a massive hit, he was the toast of Hollywood, and the movie talks not just about heroes, but WHY we are fascinated with powered heroes, and also about the business of COLLECTING comics, as well. 20/

It made no sense to me at the time, I was proud of comics as they were, but I hadn’t worked decades in the art form only to be told it’s a ‘kids’ medium,’ over and over by friends and family. 21/

Now, I like the movie Unbreakable. But it shows how thirsty comics people were for legitimacy that a film that isn’t even based on a comic would somehow be thought of as a potential savior of our artistic standing. 22/

I thought it was a bit weird at the time, since the hero knows nothing about comics, and the people who DO are either creepy or villainous. I like the movie, but I think it shows a bit of high-level self-loathing that that is what we would cling to. 23/

Instead of, you know, a comic book movie that came from comic books.

It was odd then, now...I kinda wonder. We have completely put that sort of embarrassment about comics in the rear view mirror. Comics movies own the world. 24/

I guarantee you, NO ONE imagined that kids and adults would make Iron Man and Aquaman into billion dollar movies. Last time we were in China, Marvel and DC stuff was EVERYWHERE. It’s beyond gender and age and race, it’s pervasive. 25/

And it;a kind of questionable if all of that awareness has made any difference at all for comics themselves, as a medium. Weird. Toys, yes, Hot Topic fashion, sure. conventions, absolutely. But for comics, we haven’t really tapped that gusher. 26/

But for someone, say a teenager, who has grown up with each new Marvel film being a huge glamorous event, it’s interesting to think how fast this sea change happened. When a Catwoman film was a big deal, even knowing it would suck. 26/

And publishers really put a lot of hope that a movie that was sorta kinda about comics would give us the mainstream critical validity that movies based on our own actual properties wouldn’t.

Weird, right?

:)

Two decades.

28/

If you sit down and contemplate it, it’s kind of astounding.

Anyway, that’s Today’s Weird Comics History thread. Have a great day, everyone!

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