Please Save Webcomics From Hollywood

A recent article from Variety may sound like good news for webcomics as they’re finally getting noticed by the bigger media as sources of adaptation. That means in theory there will be more exposure for your comic and more money coming in for the rights to the comic being adapted into a movie.

In theory.

Considering what modern Hollywood has done to mainline comics, video games, nostalgic properties, and even world history, are we really sure we want this era’s Hollywood anywhere near a new thing to mess up? Even before the current nonsense you had directors slapping someone else’s names onto a script with little connection to the source material and telling the Hollywood suits it’s totally accurate, knowing they won’t check. We talked about this last week. Bad adaptations have been going on since the 1940s Captain America serials at least.

Now, as if they have run out of other properties to ruin, the lazy sods want to steal webcomic ideas, and probably twist them to their preferences. They like the plot, but rather than take time to create new characters they hope to get a short boost for opening weekend (the period movie studios care about most because it looks better to investors or something) from a popular webcomic’s readership. If you think they’re going to care, I have some bad news. If they can’t properly adapt the bigger name cultural icons of comics, especially at Marvel Studios where they don’t want you to have even read a comic book you’re adapting, what makes you think your favorite webcomic, something even more obscure than Iron Man and Black Panther before they got movies, is going to come out of this unscathed? Read on and heed my warnings, fellow webcomic makers.

From the Variety article:

Move over, novels: webcomics are here as the hottest new fodder for Hollywood adaptations.

Wattpad Webtoon Studios president Aron Levitz, Webtoon Originals creator Snailords, Skybound’s president of TV Glenn Geller, The Jim Henson Company’s president of TV Halle Stanford and pop culture journalist Kayti Burt shared their expertise on the subject matter during a panel at San Diego Comic-Con, moderated by Variety.

“We have 55 million stories available to us as a studio,” Levitz said, citing inventive storytelling and a passionate fanbase as the strongest foundations for a successful adaptation. “We know what people are reading. We know why they like it, because you comment!” Wattpad Webtoon Studios has a menagerie of projects in the works, including a Diablo Cody-produced “Death of a Pop Star” film and an animated series of “Apocalyptic Horseplay.”

I haven’t heard of any of the comics article writer Katcy Stephan lists in this piece, for the record. That doesn’t mean they’re bad, but you only know about Jake & Leon, Captain PSA, or Captain Yuletide because you’re here, and even then that’s dubious. Webcomics are not the biggest draws. A few of them have been famous, but only outside of internet-hosted comics, and even then they have to get published in a physical book to get really noticed. How many webcomics do you read that you found by accident, through an aggregator like Drunk Duck or some old webring (do webrings still exist?), or through word of mouth, either by a friend or a YouTube channel, or an article like this?

Burt, who has reported extensively on the global rise of Korean content, shared why betting on webcomics is a smart bet. “A lot of K-dramas are adapted from Webtoons,” she said. “Dramas that come from already established storytelling, that have gone through the critical eye of the audience, often produce some really impressive stuff. In this age of storytelling where there’s such a push to get so much out as quickly as possible, a lot of stories that are coming from Webtoons and preexisting IP can really have an edge.”

Like I said, not a huge one. Webcomic adaptations are nothing new, either. Anybody remember this show from the early 2000s?

I don’t even think the webcomic is up anymore since it was collected into a graphic novel. Supposedly The World Of Quest started out as a webcomic. Other notable webcomic adaptations include One-Punch Man and Marry Me, and now that I just found out season 1 of Cleopatra In Space is finally at least partly free from the Peacock pay zone, I’ll have to check that out, as that comic was fun. What, you didn’t know the Jennifer Lopez/Owen Wilson romance movie Marry Me was a webcomic? That’s why I wrote about it when a trailer dropped that clearly caught nothing of what made the comic fun outside of the base premise of a pop star randomly marrying someone with a “marry me” sign he was holding for a friend to get signed. Also, someone tell me the movie has this moment:

Because if it doesn’t, the adaptation was pointless.

Therein lies the problem. I haven’t seen the Korean webcomic adaptations, since Webtoons is not where an action sci-fi superhero comic reader like me finds what they’re looking for, but Korea and Japan actually care about comics and (usually) get relatively faithful in adaptations. Or at least more faithful than Hollywood, who probably puts webcomics even lower on the pecking order than mainline comics, which is already beneath the barrel. Netflix’s history with manga and anime specifically is suspect. And I hope you realize that an adaptation can’t lead people to your comic if they don’t promote that it was based on a comic, which the Marry Me trailer failed to do. World Of Quest probably mentioned the comic in the closing credits, but by then the credits were put so small nobody could read them so the networks could shove in an extra ad for a different show. This is not going to draw people to your comic, especially if they don’t adapt it right.

While his series “Freaking Romance” is wrapped up and getting the film treatment from Skybound, Snailords (aka Aidyn Arroyal) is currently updating his webcomic “Death: Rescheduled” weekly. “The series has to update every Friday, and on Monday, I’m drawing a new page. By Friday, it goes up and people are reading it live, so I get automatic feedback,” he said. “I can see what the audience is interested in, learn what they like and what they don’t like, and then incorporate that into the future pages, as opposed to back then, you’d have to finish an entire book.”

That’s one advantage of webcomics over the monthly ones, that have to be done two months before its published, or graphic novels, which might take a bit longer if they’re crowdfunded. Hollywood and mainstream comics seem to hate audience feedback anyway.

Geller added that maintaining the trust of fans when translating a webcomic into a film is key. “For us at Skybound, it is about connecting the creator to their fan base and making sure that that relationship is real and honestly built on trust, because you want to be able to say to your fans, ‘If you love this, you’re going to love this.’” I think that that’s why fan engagement is so important.”

Which is one of my two points: it won’t. Again, compare Marry Me to the movie and you’ll see that it’s yet another bad adaptation, no matter how good the movie itself turns out to be, and that’s par for the course when adapting “lesser media” to the top of the pecking order. Even books, which gets the closest adaptation, has a history of adaptations missing the mark, including my all-time favorite movie. I don’t see them even trying with webcomics, even if Skybound has more respect for comics since they make comics. Then again, for every Walking Dead and Invincible you get Super Dinosaur, which was still good but didn’t quite feel the same to me, and I really loved the Super Dinosaur comic. Go check my reviews sometime.

Stanford, currently working on the hotly anticipated adaptation of Rachel Smythe’s “Lore Olympus” at the Jim Henson Company, raved about working with the creator to bring her vision to life. “She’s incredible. She’s been there every creative milestone step of the way. She’s helping us build easter eggs, helping us layer those characters, telling us what kind of flowers come up in Persephone’s hair when she’s feeling something.”

Ultimately, Levitz sees the webcomic revolution taking over Hollywood sooner rather than later. “It’s fandom built into brilliant storytelling. It’s simple.”

Too bad I don’t trust Hollywood to do that simple and brilliant storytelling justice. There’s too much history of Hollywood egos leading to bad adaptations that are also bad stories. Webcomic creators should learn from One-Piece creator Eiichiro Oda and keep a close eye on the adaptation, and get as much creative control as possible. Otherwise you’ll end up Cowboy BeBop…or Marry Me. I don’t have high hopes for good adaptations, because these days I don’t have high hopes for Hollywood in general when it comes to caring about being faithful to the source material over their own “superior talent” ego strokes.