When Graphic Novels Go From Ghost World to Tinsel Town

Legendary graphic-novel publisher Denis Kitchen remembers the quiet old days of three months ago, before the phones started buzzing with Hollywood producers. "I used to get a nibble now and then," Kitchen says. "But after Spider Man, it seems like every producer wants to know what I have."

To say these are heady times for graphic novels is an understatement as big as, say, 'Harry Potter helped give a bump to children's publishing.' Graphic-novel movies are in the can, they're in production, they're on the screen. And as with Potter, the success of one or two titles in Hollywood has given an entire town an appetite.

"It's funny how many graphic novelists stand to benefit from something that is only peripherally connected to what they do," says Kitchen, referring to the Spider Man phenomenon. Serious graphic novelists, of course, are famously touchy about the superhero stigma. But many are choosing to simply carp all the way to the bank.

The last several years have brought an unusual number of graphic novels from the book page to the screen. Alan Moore's and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, Daniel Clowes' and Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World and, now, Max Collins' and Richard Reyner's The Road to Perdition have all gotten into theaters, with two of the three enjoying plenty of success. Spider Man put on the finishing stroke; the forty-year old character's first whirl at the movies had graphic-novel publishers celebrating and producers scurrying.

There are now several other Alan Moore projects in the works--including cult favorite The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--and interest in everyone from authors like Will Eisner to more superhero fodder. "I tried pitching a project based on an Edith Wharton novel and no one at the table reacted," says Hollywood producer Christopher Darling. "But with graphic novels everyone's interested." He says that graphic novels are to the new generation of Hollywood what fiction was to the outgoing one.

Spider Man hasn't been entirely responsible for the surge. Rather, say experts, the film catalyzed a number of factors that were already in place: Producers already prefer graphic novels because they like the ready-made storyboards (easier to sell to their bosses), the built-in fan bases (easier to market) and, perhaps most important, their own tastes. The comic-book generation, after all, is now in power, even if the old-style pamphlets they remember have given way to book-length graphic novels.

Whether the movie attention will have a huge impact on publishing remains to be seen. The book industry, already disenchanted with thriller sales, now might look elsewhere for its Hollywood feeder projects. But experts say it won't happen too quickly. At the moment Pantheon and Pocket are among the few mainstream imprints to publish graphic novels, and two of the biggest non-superhero titles of the last few years--Ghost World and From Hell--were either self-published or published by a micropress.

But as the landscape changes, the concerns for authors about selling out, or living by the Hollywood sword, haven't. "It’s reverse buzz, like the stock market," worries Kitchen, whose own creation The Crow, catapulted him to fame, and The Crow II, had him crashing to earth."One bad adaptation and suddenly no producer will want anything to do with graphic novels."

In the meantime, though, cynicism gives way to something else. After all, this is the surreal world of graphic novels, that wonderful place where geeky purism and happy endings can co-exist.