John Meitus wrote: Works for me, Mr. Reid

Not the same thing as transposing letters, but whatever floats your boat, dude!

It isn't like comic books are the only medium that loses a lot in the translation. Look at the Tom Clancy movies (Red October, Patriot Games, Sum of all Fears, Clear and Present Danger) and see how a good deal of that stuff gets screwed up in the movie version. Red October was fairly close except that they left out or just glossed over about 40% of the story, but in The Sum of All Fears, the movie has about 15% of it's content being pretty close to the book (and that includes some times having the right charachter name, but nothing else about the charachter right) and the other 85% is something that sarted off vaguely resembling the book and then spiraled off into the cosmos somewhere.

Oh, a question for John Webb: Any chance you could find out if Marvel reprints in the UK did any better during various movie runs?  Given how they are much more available to the public than American originals, it would be interesting to see if they had any sales increase.  (sounds like we are a similar age by the way, as my comics experience growing up was very much like yours)

So far I have pretty much failed to get any regular sales figures for the Panini reprints though I think I read that they average around 45,000 copies sold per month. One thing Panini did do though was launch mags to coincide with films. Batman and the Fantastic four both turned up at my local Newsagents about three months before each respective film was released.

I've been making that point now for roughly five
pages!

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I have been making it for most of my career. This is why I want to track down and kill people who say "It's only a movie!" when something like SPIDER-MAN garbles the source, or X-MEN actually scoffs at it. 40 years later, a large part of the population still thinks of Adam West when they hear the name "Batman". Even positive reviews of excellent fare like BATMAN BEGINS cannot resist references. More people will see the new X-MEN movie that read all the issues of their series (all the series!) that I worked on combined. Heck, combine ticket sales and DVDs with TV showings, and probably more people have seen the three X-MEN movies than have read all the comics combined.

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Having hardcore civilians for parents, I've discovered over time that most people go to the movies for--Surprise!--entertainment. The general public doesn't care about logic or specifics too much, as long as it's all entertaining.

So why not do comic-based movies right?

When they aren't done right, you get a handful of kids going to a comic shop after the movie and asking why the comics aren't just like the movie. UGH.

If people can accept Tom Cruise wearing a rubber Phillip Seymour Hoffman mask, they can accept a rubber Green Goblin mask, or a Batman who doesn't wear a rubber suit. Studios just don't trust the audience to have even a little suspension of disbelief.

No one complained about Chris Reeve's Superman costume. So why dress the X-Men in black leather? Answer: the embarrassment of the filmmakers/fanboys.

It's easy for a fanboy to read comics in private and not feel embarrassed for liking them. It's quite another thing for them to be in a theater with a crowd watching people run around in brightly colored costumes and not feel embarrassed.

So, the material suffers because an inherently juvenile and fun medium must be made "realistic" and "non-corny".

Speaking of the Batman in teh rubber suit....

was I the only one that was annoyed that George Clooney and Chris O'Donnel both had nipples on their suit but Alicia Silverstone DIDN'T?

Might some of those readers eventually find their way to the monthlies?

As and on and off comic reader all my life, even I struggle to carry on with the monthlies as opposed to the trades. What chance have we got with the civilians