Movie production companies and TV have been
creating feature length movies, movie serials
and TV shows for years exploiting the public
fascination with Superheroes. But as special
effect technology and costume designs became
better and better, Hollywood kicked it up
a notch with feature-length high budget
productions. Superman, the Movie and the
3 sequels started in the 1970s and the '90s
and beyond brought us Batman, The Hulk,
the X-Men and the now infamous Spider-Man,
to name a few. Why all this interest in
producing Superhero movies? Big bucks!!
The two Spider-Man movies alone have netted
about 800 million dollars apiece in worldwide
ticket sales. That's not chicken feed. This
kind of income could not be generated without
an avid public interest in Superheroes.
So if you feel you are alone in your voracious
passion for your own comic book collection,
think again.
And now a new twist has been added.
Directors, screenplay writers, and even
actors are writing for, of all things,
comic books now. Big name Hollywood writers
are helping to sell more comics. For example,
Joss Whedon, perhaps best known for creating
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has written
stories for Marvel in the series Astonishing
X-Men. Back in the 90s, who would have
known that all these fan boys had been
hiding in the Hollywood woodworks waiting
for comics to gain some cultural credibility?
If you haven't followed some of the
comic news of the last several months,
Stan "the man" Lee has been fighting his
personal battle with His life long employer,
Marvel Comics. Stan is probably one of
the most well known character creators
in the comic book industry. He has characters
like Batman, Spider-Man and the Hulk credited
to his creative imagination. Seems Stan
had a contractual agreement with Marvel
for 10% of any revenue acquired by Marvel
from movies and TV projects centered on
Stan characters. But apparently the high
dollar superstructure of the corporate
mind doesn't want to part with all their
income. Now this is nothing new, but Stan
Lee managed to win the first round for
the little guy. The judge presiding over
Stan's case agreed that Stan should receive
his share of the agreed on profits. Now
maybe Stan will get his share and maybe
he won't. Sounds like Marvel will be appealing
the decision. At any rate, if there weren't
big bucks involved in the production of
comic book Superhero movies, this case
would not have been such an issue.
I believe the near future is going to
bring many more of my favorite heroes
to the silver screen. I have already started
my own DVD collection and as more heroes
get transferred from the screen to round
disc, I will continue to increase the
size of my collection. Do you think a
DVD superhero collection will be worth
as much as a comic book collection in
the future? Probably not, but that won't
stop me from building my collection anyway.
Dave Gieber, a former rocket engineer,
has decided to take up residency on the
Internet. He is the owner and editor of
several websites, one of which was built
around one of his childhood passions;
www.comic-book-collection-made-easy.com
. You can visit here to keep up to date
on the world of comic books and comic
book collecting. Feel free to sign up
for my comic book ezine at www.comic-book-collection-made-easy.com/comic-book-ezine.html
