In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. This time, we’ll talk about superhero films not adapted from any comic book.  

Not every movie starring a superhero is adapted from a comic book but each has been inspired by or in turn inspired comic books.  Many of these non-comic book comic book films have sprung up in recent years but they have been appearing in movie theaters for over thirty years. We will dedicate the next few installments to these movies. We’ll try to talk about all of them here, but odds are one or two will slip our notice. Let us know what you think we’ve missed and maybe we’ll include them in a future installment.

One of my most fondly remembered superhero movies was 1980’s Hero At Large.

John Ritter stars as Steve Nichols, an underemployed actor who is hired to portray the character Captain Avenger at the opening of a film based on the character. A job that entailed just signing autographs for fans becomes something more when Nichols breaks up a robbery while in costume. The media grabs hold of it, and his life becomes much more complicated. Nichols is compelled to keep fighting crime as Captain Avenger while political interests want to use Nichols for their own interests.

I haven’t seen the film in a while, but it was one of my favorites as a youth. It wasn’t Hamlet, but it wasn’t awful either. Anne Archer, passed over several years prior for Lois Lane in Superman, gets to play a similar part here as Nichols’ neighbor/love interest. Kevin Bacon has a small part in the film as well.

The film made $15,934,737 at the box office that year. That might seem paltry by today’s standards, but it out grossed other, better well known films from that year such as Prom Night, Used Cars, Stardust Memories and Mad Max.

A year later, Disney came out with its take on the superhero, Condorman.

Hero At Large might have been cheesy, but it was nothing compared to this film. Condorman couldn’t have been cheesier if it was paired with a beef stick and sold at a Hickory Farms kiosk over the holidays. The film has been all but consigned to the dustbin of history by most (the above trailer was put together by a fan), those that do remember it recall it fondly in a “so-bad-it’s-good” sort of way.   Michael Crawford, five years before he would take the stage as the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s production of Phantom of the Opera, stars as Woody Wilkins, a comic book writer of a character called “Condorman” who is pulled into a spy exchange in Europe. Wilkins adopts the Condorman identity, becomes a spy for the CIA, and rescues a Russian double agent played by Barbara Carrera.

In all fairness, the film is more a Disneyfied version of the James Bond-esque spy thriller than an actual comic book, although Crawford does appear in costume as Condorman and uses many Batman-esque gizmos and gadgets. It goes without saying that the film was a critical and commercial flop.

While Condorman probably began with the noblest intentions and wound up at cheesiness accidentally, The Toxic Avenger wallowed in its inherent cheesiness to the fullest extent from the very first day of production, as is the trademark of the studio that released it, Troma Entertainment.

Whether it was intended to be or not, 1984’s The Toxic Avenger was like all of the Marvel Comics from the 1960s brought to the big screen all wrapped up in one. Toxie, as he is lovingly referred to, starts the film as a nerdy janitor bullied by his peers (much like Peter Parker was before he became Spider-Man). One day, he has an accidental exposure to radioactive materials (like, well, take your pick: Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Daredevil, any number of other heroes and villains from Marvel at that time) which causes the nebbish to grow into a superhumanly strong creature (like The Hulk). He uses his new power to fight crime in Tromaville, finding love along the way with a blind woman who loves him for who he is and not what he looks like (mimicking a plot point featuring the Fantastic Four’s Thing and blind sculptress Alicia Masters).

What separated the film from the Marvel Comics of the 1960s was the schlocky, off-center and off-color humor, the violence that was so graphic that it became absurd, and the copious amounts of sex and nudity that is the trademark of the Troma film. But the first film was a success and that spawned a sequel, 1989’s The Toxic Avenger Part II:

When Troma found they shot enough footage for two films, they released another sequel in 1989, The Toxic Avenger Part III: The Last Temptation of Toxie:

And yet another sequel, 2000’s Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV:

That last film pulled out all the stops when it came to celebrity cameos, featuring Ron Jeremy, Corey Feldman, Hugh Hefner, and Julie Strain, with Stan Lee serving as narrator.

The Toxic Avenger was also adapted into a short-lived Marvel comic book in 1991 and a stage musical in 2008. A rumored fourth sequel was planned, but might have made way for a PG-13 remake produced by Akiva Goldsman and directed by Hot Tub Time Machine’s Steve Pink.

The next film we are going to discuss was made with noble intentions but became a box office failure. Hollywood Shuffle’s Robert Townsend wanted to make a film that was a counter-point to the popular “gangsta” films such as New Jack City and Juice that dominated cineplexes at the time. So, in 1993, he came up with a film idea that presented a positive black role model that would work to stop black-on-black violence instead of glorify it. That film was The Meteor Man.

The film told the story of Jefferson Reed, a Washington, DC teacher who is struck by a meteor and given superpowers. He uses these powers to clean up his neighborhood—stopping gang violence, demolishing crack houses, and stopping robberies. While the Toxic Avenger was a mix of a bunch of Marvel superheroes, the Meteor Man seemed to borrow from a number of DC Comics heroes, most notably Superman (who shares most of the same powers and the “mom-made costume” bit) and Black Lightning (DC’s first major black superhero, who was also a teacher named Jefferson Pierce).

The film featured a veritable who’s who of the best African-American actors America had to offer, including Bill Cosby, James Earl Jones, and Robert Guillaume and did earnestly try to present a more positive African-American role model.  But the film was rather simplistic and the naive (the two gangs in the film, the Bloods and the Crips, put aside their differences to support Meteor Man in his fight against the white drug lord) script led to box-office disappointment.

Next time, we cover three popular movies that might stretch the definition of the superhero, but that had an effect on comic books for years to come.

In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. This time, we’ll look at the comic that was created using tax refunds and became a multi-million dollar international phenomenon—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The story of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is the story of America. It is the story of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. It is the story of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. It is the story that reality shows like American Idol and The Voice try to manufacture each and every season. It is the story of an underdog meeting up with fate and opportunity and taking advantage of both to find unimaginable success. It is the story of the American Dream.

It all starts in Dover, New Hampshire, early 1980s. Kevin Eastman, a comic book fan, draws a picture of a turtle wearing a mask to make his friend and fellow comic book fan, Peter Laird, laugh. The gag photo started a conversation and then an exchange of ideas. Before long, they were pooling their income tax refunds, borrowing some money from Eastman’s uncle, and printing up 3,000 copies of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1 as Mirage Studios (the mirage being that they were the only two at their “studios”).

The influences that Eastman and Laid drew on were there from the first issue. The cover design is reminiscent of the design of Frank Miller’s Ronin miniseries. The origin and history of the Turtles ties into the Daredevil mythos, primarily Frank Miller’s addition to it (the Turtles are mutated by the same canister of radioactive waste that blinds Matt Murdock and gives him radar sense, their trainer is Splinter instead of Daredevil’s trainer, Stick, and the faceoff against the Foot clan of ninjas, a reference to DD’s ninja enemies, the Hand). The age of the heroes is a play on the popular “teen heroes” trend of the era, as exemplified by The New Teen Titans and The New Mutants. And, surely, the idea of doing an anthropomorphic, creator-owned, parody of various comic book genres and tropes was inspired by Dave Sim’s Cerebus. Even the names of the Turtles—Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael—were a jab at the artistic movement in comics of the day.

Even with a miniscule 3,000 copy print run (even the lowest selling comics had print runs in the tens of thousands), Laird and Eastman believed that they’d have copies left over. Two things worked in their favor—one, Laird, from his experience working at a newspaper knew of a thing called a press kit. He created one for TMNT and sent it out to major media outlets and, two, the comic industry was on the verge of a black and white comic boom, so interest in black and white indies, which TMNT was, was at an all time high.

The first printing sold out (and it got to the point that counterfeit copies were made). Then the second printing sold out. Then a third printing sold out as well. Eastman and Laird decided to continue the series. The second issue more than tripled its print run. The pair had a success on their hands. They were able to not only pay back their debt but also actually make a living. Their parody began to be parodied—Eclipse Comics’ Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, Blackthorne Publishing’s Pre- Teen Dirty-Gene Kung Fu Kangaroos and Cold-Blooded Chameleon Commandos, even Marvel got in the act with a proposal called Adult Thermonuclear Samurai Elephants, which was eventually reworked into a book called Power Pachyderms.

Licensors then started calling. First came a long-running animated TV show. Next came a very successful line of action figures. And then came the movies.

The first film, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arrived in 1990.

The Turtle masks were made by  Jim Henson’s Creature Shop (One of the last works Henson supervised before he passed away. The sequel to this film is dedicated to him.) and were a step above what was seen four years earlier with Howard the Duck. The tone of the film was somewhere between the darker tone of the first Eastman and Laird comic and the kid-friendly cartoons that were airing on TV concurrently. In the film, New York City is in the midst of a crime wave created by Shredder and his Foot clan of ninjas. The only group strong enough to fight him is a group of mutated terrapins—the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Robbie Rist (Cousin Oliver from The Brady Bunch) and Corey Feldman would voice  two of the Turtles (Michelangelo and Donatello respectively). Their rat mentor, Splinter, was voiced by Kevin Clash, the puppeteer that helped make Elmo the star of Sesame Street. Sam Rockwell had a small role as a thug in the film, one of his first film roles.

The film was a smash success, making over $200 million against a $13.5 million dollar budget. This pretty much guaranteed a sequel, which was 1991’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze.

The sequel came out at the height of the Turtles popularity, and suffered for it. The violence was toned down and the Turtles’ distinctive weapons were minimized. There was an eye towards merchandising as well, including an awkward cameo by the then-briefly popular Vanilla Ice, who sang “Ninja Rap” (“Go Ninja, Go Ninja, GO!”) during a fight scene at a club. The song was quickly released as a single to tie in to the popularity of both Vanilla Ice and the Turtles. This single became the first nail in the coffin of Ice’s career.

What about the plot? Well, Shredder figures out what caused the Turtles to mutate and uses it to mutate two bestial enemies for the Turtles before using it on himself to become “Super Shredder.”

The film cost more to produce than the first film ($25 million) and made less ($78 million), but was enough of a hit to garner another sequel—1993’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Turtles in Time.

The film transported the Turtles back to feudal Japan, where they have to save a Japanese village from a British arms dealer.  The film doubled its production budget back, but would prove to be the last Turtles film for 14 years, until 2007’s TMNT.

This was an attempt to create a new sequel to the film franchise using the current trend for computer generated animation. CGI suited the Turtles, making them fit into their surroundings just a bit better. The film focuses on the Turtles, who have drifted apart over the years since the last film. They have to reunite to prevent the world from being conquered.

What about Eastman and Laird? Well, they drifted apart, too. Eastman moved to California, Laird to Massachusetts. Both became involved in creator rights in different ways. Eastman started up Tundra, a creator-friendly company that published Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell (which we’ll talk about later), James O’Barr’s The Crow (which we’ll talk about later), and Mike Allred’s Madman (which I wish we were talking about later) and would buy Heavy Metal magazine (which we talked about already). Laird created the Xeric Foundation in 1992, established to give money to organizations that promote literacy and grants to talented creators to help fund their comics.

In 2000, Laird bought out most of Eastman’s right to the Turtles, with the whole of Eastman’s rights being bought in 2008. Laird remained involved with the Turtles until he was involved in a deal with Nickelodeon for the characters, a deal worth $60 million dollars, finalized in 2009. Part of the deal was that Laird would still be able to create up to 18 TMNT comics a year, Eastman still owns Heavy Metal, and was married to former Penthouse Pet of the Year and B-Movie Queen Julie Strain. Last year, Eastman was involved in the Turtles reboot from IDW as well.

Eastman is also supposed to be involved with Michael Bay’s controversial TMNT revamp, Ninja Turtles. The project garnered a fair bit of controversy  last year when Bay admitted making some major changes to the concept, including making the turtles older and turning them into aliens. Eastman’s involvement has seemed to alieviate many longtime fans’ fears, but the new take might bring some new fans to the franchise.

So, there you go, the American success story. A joke amongst friends turns into an indelible piece of international pop culture. Cowabunga, dude.

Next, we begin a string of great, if somewhat underrated, comic book film adaptations.

In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. This time, we discuss the strange journey of Heavy Metal from Europe to America to the Silver Screen.

National Lampoon has given us a lot over the years. It has given us writers such as Doug Kenney, Michael O’Donaghue, P.J. O’Rourke and John Hughes. It gave exposure to comic actors like John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Christopher Guest, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray. It has even “Presented” films like Animal House, Vacation, and Van Wilder.

It has also, in a roundabout way, given us the film Heavy Metal, too. Well, at least the magazine the movie was based on.

Heavy Metal magazine began as the French magazine Métal Hurlant, an anthology graphic magazine started in 1974 by legendary French artists Jean Giraud A.K.A. Mœbius and Philippe Druillet. It presented comics drawn and written from a distinctly European point of view, along with text articles on all areas of popular culture.

National Lampoon publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to try and get Lampoon published in France when he stumbled across Métal Hurlant (which stands for “Howling Metal”) and saw it as something that might work in the United States. He licensed the magazine, renamed it Heavy Metal to have it resonate with American audiences more and started publishing it on high-stock glossy paper as a monthly magazine.

The mag gave European artists such as Giraud, Milo Manara and Esteban Maroto exposure in the U.S. as their work in Métal Hurlant was translated and reprinted in Heavy Metal. It featured work from such luminaries as H.R. Giger, Stephen King, Harlan Ellison and William S. Burroughs in its pages. And it published serials by artists like Arthur Suydam, Bernie Wrightson  and Howard Cruse, among others.

It’s these serials that got adapted into the 1981 film, Heavy Metal, which like the magazine was an anthology of stories inspired and written by creators that worked for the periodical.

The film featured six installments with a framing sequence tied together by one mystical object, a glowing green sphere of unearthly power called the Loc-Nar. The individual installments feature the distinctive variety of styles that were at home in the magazine, ranging from futuristic noir to historical horror, from imaginative fantasy to satiric humor. The film was produced by Ivan Reitman, featured the voices of SCTVers John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy and Harold Ramis. And it had an eclectic soundtrack that featured Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Stevie Nicks, Devo and Cheap Trick.  That line up of musicians was one of the reasons why the film took so long to be released on home video, as nailing down the rights to the music became an issue.

In 1992, longtime Heavy Metal fan and co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Kevin Eastman bought the magazine and set himself up as publisher and editor. Heavy Metal 2000 was released early on in Eastman’sreign as publisher, but had more to do with the man then the magazine.

Heavy Metal 2000 was not adapted from a story that appeared in the pages of the magazine, but rather from a 1995 miniseries Eastman did with artist Simon Bisley called The Melting Pot which was published by Kitchen Sink Press. The original comic was not an anthology, so the film contains only one story, not six like the first Heavy Metal. It does feature a diverse soundtrack with many songs from popular alternative and metal acts of the day, like Queens of the Stone Age and System of a Down. And a glowing green rock does play a role in the proceedings, to sort of tie it in with the first film.

The plot focuses on Julie (voiced by, and most certainly inspired by, Eastman’s then-wife, B-movie actress and former Penthouse Pet of the Year Julie Strain) fighting an evil tyrant with the power of self-regeneration. She fights to free her sister from the tyrant’s captivity, all the while trying to end his reign of terror.

There is another film in the works, at the very least loosely connected to the Heavy Metal brand called War of the Worlds: Goliath.

The film is a sequel to H.G. Wells’ novel, War of the Words, and appears to be some kind of steampunk manga film. It is voiced by Adrian Paul and Adam Baldwin, among others. It is set for a 2012 release, however, footage was shown during the 2009 San Diego Comic Con with a promised 2010 DVD release. Since it was already delayed two years, I’d say that 2012 date should be taken with a grain of salt.

There has been a planned remake of the original in the works, first helmed by David Fincher and then by Robert Rodriguez. Considering Rodriguez’s track record of getting films he is attached to made is about one in four, it might be a while if there will be another Heavy Metal film in the future.

Next time, Swamp Thing gets revitalized in the comics and a film in theaters within years of one another. Did one have any effect on the other?