Comic books have existed around for well over a century, but the origins to the "Golden Age" of comic books; the DC and the Marvel comic superheroes as we know today have existed since World War II. The very first major comic book hero was Superman, a character who donned himself with tight colourful tights and a vivid red cape. Through the next decades we've seen our most favourite comic book heroes' change and develop influenced by the world around them comicvine. Throughout the last 10 years we've seen different faces portray the type of Clark Kent and actors ready themselves for the positioning of the Dark Knight himself, Bruce Wayne. But has Hollywood displayed our most loved characters in the simplest way, or have they gone against the origins and fans and developed a character that will be a much more than its character profile predecessor and in turn be more approachable to a wider audience?
The transition from comic book strip pages to the small screen wasn't a quick one. Early life of comic book superheroes was short; emerging in the late 1930's characters became stars within the war period though the massive group of fans started initially to diminish round the 50's. The superhero genre was coming to a finish, but characters did not die off. They certainly were revamped and brought alive through the magic of TV. Captain Marvel, Captain America, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman had already begun hitting the smaller screen within the 40's but over the next decade these comic book heroes became television superheroes. This movement saw a resurrection of characters to comics, along with new breed of hero's that came along with them. The result was a snow ball effect of comic book characters to greater screen. Batman the TV series with Adam West was among the earliest transfers of action hero's to big theatre screens, and with the success of Star Wars the "Sci-Fi" genre was born. This capitalized into further feature films including the commercial hit of Superman with Chris Reeves.
This began a brand new age of comic heroes; printing became expensive so comics were minimal but the cinema provided a brand new venture and provided the expansion to a more substantial audience. Comic characters were now becoming main stream and were no further for geeks or sci-fi buffs but acceptable to the entire public domain. The momentum carried from the 80's with sequels to Superman and Tim Burton's Batman being a phenomenon along with a cult classic. However do our comic caped heroes really work when stripped from the pages of a graphic novel? Could it be a true representation of the type as we know them when they are taken to the silver screen? For many this will create a great debate. The cinematic view of Batman for example is just a theatrical and dramatic performance which provides the gothic nostalgia of Burton, but when it comes to character, he seems sadly missed. The film briefly depicts the killing of his parents that fans will all know of; however the type behind the mask has little development. We do not get to see the type step through life; we do not begin to see the stages that led Bruce to become the Bat because it is never displayed on the screen. Instead we relax and admire the theatrical display since many will know the trunk story. The Joker (as played by Jack Nicholson) is more of a namely title. The character has much greater presence within the motion picture, simply because his character is so fun to watch even though the comic character is no further developed.
I think this film had a substantial influence to future comic heroes which were progressed into film. In the event that you look into the many comic heroes that have come to the silver screen and are actually onto DVD it's easy to see how Hollywood may have changed the characteristics of our favourite superheroes, or similar to this motion picture the type was never depicted, a story of when good fought evil is told. However there is a huge new age of comic books and films. Late comic novels such as for instance "The Watchmen" (also produced in to a blockbuster hit) began a generation of "dark" comic books that displayed not merely similarities to us a character but to the world around us. We can now begin to observe how our caped crusaders are not much different to you and me. They face a minute of weakness; we observe how the type can relate with us as merely a human. In the same narrative we see a hero is also afflicted with notions of love and affection like ourselves and a hero also can face pain, grievance and other feelings. In the same way we can relate with these characteristics, we ourselves can believe that people are superheroes in our personal right when we deal with the belief justice will prevail.
Through this era and into the millennium we've seen an array of DC and Marvel comics fly onto the silver screen, even though the debate over these films will continue steadily to whether they are bad or good. I for starters enjoy many comic book characters that face the Hollywood make-over, although some have been better than others. Arguments will still occur over the fact comic book characters transfer to cinematic superheroes but the method has been around place for years. Marvel have worked long and hard to produce the very best action sci-fi films over this decade and with upcoming films like "The Avengers" and "The Amazing Spider-Man" I think they are trying to amend any previous mistakes. With prequels to these both movies, all characters from the main plot line have been displayed before so there's no requirement for a back story to them so let's hope the action storyline any negative reviews against the films. Combined with the films there will be gifts, novelty goods and figures. These is likely to be collectables for some, but for others that is their first generation of super hero so these entities brings these characters a brand new life through the face of Hollywood.