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"Wow, this would make for a great comic book!" How
often have you watched a movie or television show and thought
this or mentioned it to a friend? Unfortunately, just because a
property would or should make for a great comic series, it is
rarely the case that it follows through on its potential. Too often
what occurs when a comic company acquires the license for
another property, they are limited severely in the stories they are
allowed to tell.
One of the biggest cases in point would be a comic
adaptation like Resident Evil. While many of the stories that
appeared throughout the original run of Wildstorms Resident
Evil Magazine were decent horror tales reminiscent of classic
horror stories, they seemed to exist in a void. Most of the
familiar aspects of the video game were present, but overall the
stories felt like they weren't contributing to any greater storyline.
By no means is this problem exclusive to the Resident Evil
Magazine. Marvels Doctor Who series in the 1980s, based
on the long-running British science fiction series, was plagued by
similar problems. While some stories might have unique
gimmicks or well-done character moments, the reader could feel
assured that nothing present in the stories contributed to a
canonical ongoing story. Because of this the incentive to
purchase such a comic can be much smaller than one would
expect for a property with an established fan base. If missing an
issue means missing nothing of consequence, then does the
series even seem like a priority?
The central problem that occurs when examining the
successfulness of a licensed property seems to lie in how much
freedom the copyright owners give the comic companies to
work with. In many issues of DCs Star Trek: the Next
Generation series they were unable to feature the popular
character of Data. Although the exact nature of the situation
escapes me several years later, it seems like Brent Spiner was
unhappy with the depiction of his likeness in the series. In order
to keep a consistent feel, DC introduced another innocent
character trying to understand humanity, but it never really
excused the absence of such a key character. Thats not to say
this is DCs fault, but rather is the nature of the licensed beast.
There are exceptions to the rule, and usually these books are
published by Dark Horse Comics. Take a moment to consider
how much mileage they have gotten from the Aliens license.
Dark Horse has published Aliens tales featuring tales faithful to
the movies, religious parables, psychoanalytical character
studies, and crossovers with everyone from Superman to
Archie. Similarly the Predator and Terminator licenses have
been used under a variety of scenarios. Once Marvel Comics
acquired the Terminator license from Dark Horse, they
published 2 mini-series and then promptly discontinued efforts
with the property.
Another major success for Dark Horse has been their line of
Star Wars comics. While they have been aided by the lack of
new Star Wars material until the debut of the recent movie, they
have been granted surprising amount of leeway to produce
various stories in the mythos. Even upon the debut of Episode 1
Dark Horse has managed to produce various series that occur
near the debut of the movie, if not concurrently with the events.
Considering how strict Lucasfilms has been with every aspect of
their property, they must be fairly impressed with the work that
Dark Horse has been doing.
This is by no means meant to be a complete list of licensed
properties in the industry, or to condemn anything being
presented by DC or Marvel. However, Dark Horse has clearly
become the standard bearer in the field of licensed properties.
The key element in any successful licensed property is creating
quality stories with the property while being granted a fair
amount of freedom to work with.
J
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