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. Today, we examine how superheroes are employed in kid-friendly fare, to good and bad effect.

Comic books, especially superhero comics, were at one time thought of as being exclusively entertainment for kids. Any adult who read comic books would be considered borderline illiterate and not someone you’d want to associate with. I’m fairly certain that there are many people out there that still hold that opinion.

But comics haven’t been exclusively for kids for almost three decades. While there are some comics that are aimed at the younger set, they are becoming rarer as the years pass. This is a shame not only because there is room in comics for both kids and adults, but also because the world of film has shown that superheroes can be quality entertainment for kids and adults at the same time.

A sterling example of this was 2004’s The Incredibles. This was the sixth film released by Pixar, who were well in the run of quality films by this point. The film was a pastiche on the Fantastic Four with that team’s surrogate family dynamic morphing into a biological family dynamic. Mr. Incredible was the Thing like strong guy, who was immodestly named like the FF’s Mr. Fantastic, whose power set was matched by Elastigirl. Violet had invisibility powers akin to the Invisible Girl and Dash had the youthful impetuousness of Human Torch and Jack-Jack seemed be able to turn into flame (amongst other powers as well).

While there was an antecedent for The Incredibles in the Fantastic Four, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t original. It was, as most Pixar films are, a film that works for both adults and children, although The Incredibles gave the adults a little more to enjoy. The kids got the slapstick humor and flashy superpowers, while their parents got themes such as the Dad  balancing family life with his “secret”  identity. It was a film about the things you must give up in order to provide for the ones you love and the difficult pursuit of a satisfying balance between what you want to do and what you have to do.

The next film on our list is not quite as complex as The Incredibles, but is one of the few kid’s films to have a “Story by” credit given to an actual seven-year-old kid. That kid was Racer Max Rodriguez, whose father, Robert Rodriguez, decided to adapt the characters they both created around their house to the big screen in the form of The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D.

The film centers on a lonely outcast named Max who creates a world where young superheroes Sharkboy and Lavagirl live and have adventures. However, the line between fantasy and reality becomes blurred when the heroes ask Max to come with them to save their world.

The film takes on a Wizard of Oz like dimension as many of the people Max knows appear in the dream world he created in different forms, yet tied to the way Max views them (for example, Max’s real life bully Linus becomes the villain Minus in Max’s fantasy world and his mean teacher Mr. Electridad becomes another villain named Mr. Electricity).

The film was a critical and box office disappointment, but is known for being one of the first films to usher in the 3-D resurgence and for being the first major film role of Taylor Lautner. All those Twimoms who get weak in the knees whenever he takes off his shirt in the Twilight films should take a look at that trailer up there.   He’s practically a baby in this film. They should be overcome with shame.

If you are looking to create a superhero movie for kids, you could do worse for a plot than a superhero high school or a teenager dealing with famous superhero parents. Sky High combines both plot elements to good effect.

The film had a lot going for it. It marked Kurt Russell’s return to Disney family fare (although now as the parent instead of the kid), featured geek culture icons Lynda Carter and Bruce Campbell, had a role for Broken Lizard’s Kevin Heffernan and reunited Kids in the Hall members Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald. It was like they were doing a movie with a collection of actors with large cult followings.

The story was solid if conventional. The cast definitely made the most of the material and I really liked the end product. So much so, I am not ashamed to admit that I saw the film in a theater. However, it is with great shame that I admit that the very next year I saw a similarly themed film in the theaters, a film with a whopping 3% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

That’s not bad. For a long time, Zoom: Academy for Superheroes had a 0% fresh rating, meaning it received absolutely no positive reviews at all. I didn’t really consider the film to be that bad, I have definitely seen worse, but the film wasn’t very good either.

If you were able to get past the fact that the federal government considers a six-year-old girl with super-strength to be a good line of defense against an incredibly powerful, homicidal super villain speeding his way towards Earth, you’d find other things about the film to make you wince. Like what, you may ask? Well, the reliance on gross-out gags for the sake of gross-out gags. There is an extended sequence where the four young trainees lock the more awkward scientist/trainer/mentor (played by a Chevy Chase who either just had bad plastic surgery done or is coming off a bad allergic reaction to a bee sting) in a room used to train the potential heroes how to react to adverse weather conditions. After Chase’s character is pelted by rain, sleet, snow and struck by lightning, a robotic skunk (yes, a robotic skunk) comes out and sprays (yes, the robot skunk has functioning anal scent glands) him in the face. It’s a pretty good spraying. If I recall correctly, Chase allows some of the spray to go into his mouth, which, you know, is one way to make it funnier. Well, if the scene was funny to begin with, maybe.

On top of that,  we get a Smash Mouth-heavy soundtrack, an extended Wendy’s commercial in the middle of the film, a countdown to disaster that doesn’t countdown in linear fashion (it goes from one day to two days then one day again), and Courtney Cox trying to act nerdy and clumsy. If you take away all of that, you have a relatively harmless kids flick. But the problem is, you can’t take all that away.

It’s only fitting to end this installment with Megamind after starting it with The Incredibles, because the two films have a number of similarities beyond both being CGI animated superhero kid flicks. Both films opened on the same day (November 5^th), albeit six years apart. One is done by Pixar, the other by Pixar’s main competition in quality and profitability, Dreamworks. Both draw their inspiration from comic book mythos’ (the Fantastic Four mythos is to The Incredibles as the Superman mythos is to Megamind).  Both appeal to adults as well as kids. And both are humorous examinations on superhero tropes.

This film takes a look at the stereotypical super villain who wants nothing more than destroy the superhero of the city he lives in. What happens when he gets what he wishes for? Well, create a new enemy to destroy, become a hero himself, and/or both.

The film had a great cast that would have been perfect even if the film was live-action. I mean, wouldn’t you want to see Brad Pitt, Tina Fey, Jonah Hill and Will Ferrell together in just about anything? While it wasn’t quite as good as The Incredibles, it was good in its own right.

Next time, we discuss why it is best to use original superheroes if you want to make a superhero comedy.

The Sin City sequel news is coming at us fast and furious, and Robert Rodriguez has used an appearance at the Sundance Film Festival to announce that a big name from the original cast will be returning for Sin City: A Dame To Kill For.

Rodriguez told MTV that Bruce Wills will be reprising his role as Hartigan, the good cop with a bad heart, for the sequel coming later this year.

This is intriguing because as anyone who saw the last film knows (SPOILER WARNING!!!!!) Willis’ character commits suicide in the last film. He took his own life to protect Jessica Alba’s character, Nancy, from the minions of Senator Rourke, seeking revenge for Hartigan’s killing of Rourke’s son in the first movie.

However, since one of the segments in the new film will deal with Nancy trying to escape from Rourke’s goons, perhaps that suicide plan wasn’t quite as effective as Hartigan thought. It would be logical that Hartigan would appear in this segment as a flashback or a memory of Nancy’s character. Also, due to the nature of the narrative structure of these films, another segment could be set when Hartigan was alive and he could be featured there.

Other notes from the interview states that the filming process on the film has begun three months ago. Due to the way the CGI imagery lends itself to having footage being assembled in a piecemeal fashion, Rodriguez is shooting the film as the actors become available. As a matter of fact, even though Ray Liotta’s, Jeremy Piven’s, and Juno Temple’s casting was just announced last week, their parts are already finished filming.

Rodriguez also said that the pivotal part of Ava Lord has yet to be cast, as the role is weeks away from being shot. One expects an announcement should be made soon with the actress cast.

When the first Sin City came out, I was amazed at the cast that Robert Rodriguez was able to put together for the film. It was a star-studded mix of Oscar-worthy thespians, summer blockbuster idols, solid character actors, and young up-and-comers–a veritable who’s who of the Hollywood elite. And it looks like he’s having similar luck putting together the cast for that film’s sequel, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.

The Playlist is reporting that Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, and Juno Temple are set to join Josh Brolin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dennis Haysbert and Jamie Chung as new residents of Basin City. The website does not know what characters the actors will be playing as of yet, but, since production has already begun on the film, I’m sure details will be coming soon.

One casting announcement that should also be coming soon is who will be playing the titular “Dame to Kill For” from the original comic, Ava. With all due respect to Ms. Temple, the role calls for a more mature, classic Hollywood femme fatale in the mold of a Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner type. Rodriguez and co-director/Sin City creator Frank Miller have gone on record saying that they were pursuing Angelina Jolie for the role.

Regardless, these three actors will be a great addition to the cast. Liotta specifically seems tailor-made for the art-noir world of the film.

Two of the more anticipated genre upcoming films have finally gotten firm release dates.

Alfred Cuaron’s thriller about two astronauts stranded in orbit after their space shuttle is destroyed, Gravity, will be in theaters on October 4. It is Cauron’s first film since the dystopic future thriller Children Of Men. This project had gone through a couple of directors and actors nefore Cauron came aboard and shot it with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock. Warner Brothers hasn’t released any material yet on the film, but hopefully we’ll be seeing something soon.

And while we wait for Gravity to land in theaters we have Robert Rodriguez’s grindhouse sequel Machete Kills to look forward to on September 13. (And if that’s not enough Rodriguez for you, Sin City 2: A Dame To Kill For arrives a month later, also on October 4th.) Danny Trejo is back as the deadly Mexican Federale who finds himself recruited by the President of the United States to take out an eccentric billionaire arms dealer.

It’s looking like next fall will not be all Academy Award hopeful films.

Christopher Meloni may have played a straight forward, good guy cop on television’s Law & Order: SVU but he’ll be playing the flip side of that coin in Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame To Kill For.

Deadline broke the news that Meloni has landed the as-for-now unnamed police officer who, given the disposition of police officers we’ve seen in the original Sin City film, is most likely more than a bit bent.

Yesterday, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was announced as joining the cast which will also include from the first film Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson and Jaime King.

Although the film takes its title from the second volume of Miller’s Sin City graphic novel series, Miller and Rodriguez have devised a new storyline that has been intertwined with the graphic novel’s.

Recently, Joseph Gordon-Levitt has been rumored to be circling a couple of genre projects and he has now made his decision as to which one he will sign with. Sorry Godzilla and Guardians Of The Galaxy, but Levitt has chosen to go with Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City: A Dame To Kill For.

Gordon-Levitt will be taking on the role of a gambler named Johnny, which originally had been offered to Johnny Depp. Although the film is based on a couple of Frank Miller’s Sin City comics storylines, the character appears to be a new one created for the one new storyline Miller and Rodriguez devised for the film.

Returning from the first Sin City are Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Bruce Willis and Rosario Dawson.

Deadline broke the news, stating that Marvel is now pursuing many of their other choices for the lead for Guardians Of The Galaxy now that Gordon-Levitt has passed on the role.

Charlie Sheen’s career may not have followed a similar path has his father Martin Sheen’s, but the two will soon have a role in common – that of the President of the United States of America. The younger Sheen’s version of the role will undoubtedly be far different from the character his father essayed on The West Wing as he will be playing the President in Robert Rodriguez’s upcoming exploitation film sequel Machete Kills.

Both Rodriquez and Sheen announced the casting today on their respective twitter feeds.

Although his career first started on the big screen, the younger Sheen has been seen more on television over the last several years, first on Spin City and then Two And A Half Men and the new upcoming Anger Management. He did do a small cameo in Oliver Stone’s 2010 Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, returning as his Bud Fox character from Stone’s original Wall Street film from 1987. I have to say that I hated that moment in the film because I think it betrays the ending of the original.

Sheen’s role here is probably not going to be a big one,but it does motivate the plot. As President, he will be the one to order Machete star Danny Trejo to Mexico in order to track down an arms dealer before he can attack the US with a space-based weapon. The film should be in theaters sometime next year.

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 begin our four week “vacation” overseas with the most notable one-off comic films Europe has to offer.

Comic books are a uniquely American art form, but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t popular in other parts of the world. Europe and Asia have come to embrace the comic medium over the decades. As a matter of fact, they have been quicker to see the artistic merits of comic books than we here in the United States were. While Americans were considering comic books cheap entertainment for kids and emotionally stunted adults, people overseas were using the medium to expose on sexuality, politics and philosophy.

To cover every foreign comic book film would take up too many weeks in this here rundown, so we will be covering some of the films that have the most name value here in the States, either in their comic book form or in their film adaptation. This means that there will be a lot of great comic book films left out in these four weeks. And for that I apologize.

Our tour of Europe begins in Italy with one of the most influential Italian comic book heroes—Diabolik. Diabolik was created by sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani in the 1962 paperback graphic novel, Il Re del Terrore (“The King of Terror”). He is a highly-skilled thief who steals only from other criminals and is aided and abetted by his partner and lover Eva Kant. The character has influenced such comic writers as Mark Millar and Grant Morrison, who have created characters in their work influenced by Diabolik.

In 1968, Dino De Laurentiis brought Diabolik to the big screen in Danger: Diabolik.

Directed by Mario Brava and starring John Phillip Law in the lead, the film was a fairly faithful adaptation of the comic, with only the violence and adult themes toned down for the screen. The film detailed Diabolik going up against a crime boss who was upset about all the negative attention his organization was inadvertently getting from the police due to Diabolik’s actions.

Later that same year, De Laurentiis would bring another European comic book, this time a French one, to life on the big screen (with John Phillip Law along in a supporting role). The comic book was Barbarella.

Barbarella, like Diabolik, was created in 1962 by Jean-Claude Forest in a serialized form in the French periodical, V-Magazine and goes to show the difference in mentalities between American and French consumers.

That year saw the debut of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk in American comics, the white-bread Superman was topping the sales charts, and American comic books couldn’t have vampires or werewolves in fear of damaging vulnerable readers’ minds. Barbarella was a woman who travelled through space, getting herself into troubles where she had to use sex to get out or get into them. Nothing terribly graphic was shown, but when even the word “sex” would have gotten a comic book banned in the U.S., it shows you how far ahead of the curve Europe was.

The film was directed by Roger Vadim and starred his then-wife Jane Fonda as Barbarella. This is odd when you realize that the comic book Barbarella’s appearance was based on Vadim’s first wife, Brigitte Bardot. Dinners after a day’s filming must have been mighty interesting.

If nothing else, the campy film served as the inspiration for one of the best bands of the 1980s—Duran Duran. The band named itself after Durand Durand, a mad scientist played by Milo O’Shea in the film.

There have been several attempts to remake the film, including one by Vadim before he died with Sherilyn Fenn, then Drew Barrymore in the lead role. The most recent attempt was by director Robert Rodriguez, who was hoping the remake would be a star-vehicle for his then-girlfriend Rose McGowan. This version fell apart when Universal, the studio set to produce the film backed out over budget concerns and McGowan’s ability to carry the film. A German company was set to step in, but the thought of being away from his family made Rodriguez scrap the idea altogether. The pair would move on to another comic book adaptation, Red Sonja, with similar results.

Europe is also home to a large number of Muslim immigrants. Many of these immigrants escaped from Muslim countries when a new conservative religion-based regime takes over, but not all are welcomed fully in their new home countries, as they face the turmoil over whether to assimilate or stay true to their Muslim upbringing. One of these stories was Marjane Satrapi‘s, a story she related in the graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis 2.

Satrapi was a little girl around the time of the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, and she lived through the revolution that removed him from power and saw how that revolution had become co-opted by Muslim clerics. Eventually, at age 14, she is forced to leave Iran by her parents and relocate to Vienna, Austria. She finds a hard time adjusting to the Western world, struggling on what she should do—adapt to her new surroundings or stay true to her Iranian heritage. The graphic novels were made into a film in 2007 called Persepolis.

The film won a Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Film of 2007, losing out to Pixar’s Ratatouille. The film also garnered some controversy in Muslim countries, with Iran filing a formal grievance with the French government about the film’s inclusion in the Cannes festival.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is proof that Hollywood can also screw up adapting foreign comics as well as homegrown ones.

Based on the incredibly popular Italian comic book, Dylan Dog, the film stars Brandon Routh, Peter Stormare, and Sam Huntington (thus reuniting Superman and Jimmy Olsen from 2006’s Superman Returns), the 2011 film adaptation doesn’t quite get it. The comic book was an existential satire on the world through the lens of horror.  The film is a typical action/horror film loaded with snark and obvious humor in place of the original’s subtlety and wit. The film was hardly advertised and died a quick death at the box office, making just over $4 million worldwide against a $20 million dollar budget.

Next time, we’ll travel a little farther East as we check out some comic book films from Japan, before we cover film series from both areas.

If yesterday‘s news that director Robert Rodriguez may be jumping into production on the much anticipated Sin City 2 even before he is done shooting Machete Kills didn’t sound like he was over working himself, perhaps this will convince you. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Rodriguez stated that as soon as he is finished with Sin City 2 he should be moving right into shooting the sword and sorcery fantasy Fire And Ice.

We’re almost done with the script, we’ve got it pretty much 70 percent there – I’m really excited about that one… I think the timing is going to work out just right and we’ll have a finished script in the next month or so. So that we can start lengthier pre-production and we can go right into pre-production – well, we’re actually in pre-production, sort of, or we’ve been doing a lot of the previsualization. But that would be the next thing after Sin City.

A remake of the 1983 animated film that was inspired by the paintings of Frank Frazetta, Rodriguez announced his planned back in May 2010.

A collaboration between animator and director Ralph Bakshi and Frazetti, Fire & Ice was elevated above its script rather straight forward sword-and-sorcery pulp roots – courtesy of comic book writers Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas who had both worked on four-color adaptations of Conan The Barbarian – through Frazetta’s unique fantasy work. Fire And Ice used the same rotoscoping process that Bakshi employed in his previous films Wizards, Lord Of The Rings and American Pop. And I would say that despite the good job of world building that Frazetta and Bakshi did, a good portion of the film’s charm is the use of rotoscoping to visualize the action.

Director Robert Rodriguez always seems to be a busy fellow, so it didn’t seem to odd that he had two projects – The sequels to Sin City and Machete – prepping to shoot this spring summer. But in a story from the Hollywood Reporter, it appears as if the films are coming together so quickly, that there might be some overlap on his schedule.

Although Rodriguez worked with co-director Ethan Maniquis on the first Machete, he is hoping that for the sequel Machete Kills he’ll be able to do the entire project by himself, though that would depend on when Sin City gets scheduled to start.

Currently I am directing [Machete Kills]. But we’re checking to see if there’s going to be the need for another director if I have to go off and do Sin City. I wasn’t sure what the timing on Sin City was or if I would have to step off to do Sin City at a certain point, depending on when Machete went. But Machete looks like it’s going to go pretty quickly so it’s possible that I will direct the whole thing… But if I have to step off, I’m going to try and shoot all of the actors and all of the main sequences. But it’s such a fun movie, and it just came out even more fun than I could have imagined.

I suppose that there are some people wondering why both movies aren’t being scheduled around Rodriguez’s availability, after all he is the director for both projects. I would hazard the guess that it has something to do with working with the availability of the members of the ensemble cast for Sin City 2 more than anything else. And since Rodriguez has been trying to get the comic book adaption on to the screen for several years, he is willing to jump ship on one project, which I am sure will still continue under his very watchful eye, in order to finally get it made.