I’m not really a comic book reader at all, I’ve probably bought five of them in my whole life with the last one being at least fifteen years ago.  In fact, I had to call my comic book fan friend, Jesse Hubberd (thanks Jesse), just to be sure that I had all of my facts and timing straight.  This is written from a gamer’s perspective for gamers and is just a few observations on things that our fellow geeks have gotten right and we need to learn from.

#1. THE GATHERING

Comic-Con is a legitimate entertainment event.  Last year’s event boasted 126,000 attendees and quite a few celebs.  It is a place where sneak preview trailers are shown to fans as big Hollywood players wait anxiously for the verdict of the geek.  That said, the news_this_week that E3 is trying to return to its former glory is something that should have all gamers rejoicing.  It does not mean that instantly it will rival Comic-Con in relevance, (though I hope some day it might), it just means that gaming finally has its big show back.  E3 was, and hopefully again will be, THE place each year where game developers better bring their big guns, and a place for gaming to get its time in the spotlight.

#2. THE MOVIES

And, speaking of time in the spotlight, (see what I did there), there’s the movies.  This year, two movies made over $300 million dollars at the box office. If you are reading this, I don’t have to tell you which two they were, but, just in case, here’s a hint: neither one was Max Payne.  It is no secret that movie adaptations of video games pretty much suck.  I’m not the first and I won’t be the last to write about it.  I’m also not the first to try and figure out why, but here goes: one word, reverence.

I don’t think I’m going too far in saying there hasn’t been a video game movie out yet where the makers had a genuine reverence for the material.  Any time you heard “Iron Man” director Jon Favreau talk about the movie before it was released, it was with a sort of hushed tone.  ”The Dark Knight” director, Christopher Nolan, when speaking of Batman had this to say,

“Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn’t really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He’s not from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he’s a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide.”

You heard the same tone when director Zach Snyder talked about his movie “300,” or now when he talks about his upcoming, “Watchmen.”  You can tell these guys have a true concern with staying true to the source material and with the approval of the hardcore fans.

Part of the reason for this may simply be that comics have been around a lot longer than video games, and there are, therefore, people making movies now who grew up reading comics.  If I had to guess, I would say we are probably about five to ten years from there being a crop of gifted film makers that grew up gaming and have enough Hollywood clout to get quality video game films made.  Our closest recent hope, in my opinion was David Hayter, the voice of Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid.  He is also a screenwriter who wrote the first two “X-Men” movies, as well as the upcoming “Watchmen.”  He has petitioned to write the screenplay for the Metal Gear Solid Movie and was once listed as the writer on the movies IMDb_page, but has recently been removed.

#3. FANBOYS

According to my earlier mentioned comic book expert buddy, Jesse, the height of comic fanboyism as he remembers it was in the 80’s.  If you read Marvel, you did not fucking read DC and vice versa.  However, in the 90’s things began to change.  Good writers began to flex their muscle and refused to be forced into contracts that locked them into only writing for one of the two major comic book companies.  The result was a few cross-over comics, a few combined story lines, but most importantly, an emphasis by the fan on the comic book and not the company.

The recent story of fanboys manipulating Metacritic scores to lower the scores of games on rival consoles is just the latest example of game fanboyism gone out of control.  I want to play good games and I don’t give a shit who makes them.  I have an Xbox 360 and a PS3, and if Apple came out next week with a console and software line up that put them both to shame, I would be first in line to add to my credit card debt.  Put the emphasis on great games and don’t give carte blanche allegiance to which ever multi-billion dollar company makes the console you decided to like best.

I am a gamer.  I want to play good games and I want to one day maybe go see a video game movie that doesn’t suck.  As the comic book fans have long suffered before us with many a terrible movie adaptations and fanboys that held the industry back, perhaps we can learn from their mistakes and triumphs and take our place among the geek elite.