Perhaps the most visible influence of Hollywood on comics is the San Diego Comic Convention, an annual comics mecca that attracts over 150,000 fans every summer. Once focused on the actual comics, the event has become more about studio press junkets than comic book signings. Brian Michael Bendis, writer of Ultimate Spider-Man and New Avengers, recalls missing the convention after the birth of his child, and then returning only to be “startled at how Hollywood had taken it over, kind of to a douchey degree,” as he puts it. “It didn’t seem healthy.”

Niles agrees: “The danger we get into is everyone starts trying to create a franchise.” Although he calls selling his 30 Days series for seven figures a “life-changing experience,” he allows that he regrets the opportunism that followed in the deal’s wake. “I’ve met a lot of people in recent years who are doing it only to sell a movie,” he says. “It has nothing to do with comics, or even how to use it as a medium. They really think they can just slap words and pictures together, and say, ‘Look, it’s a storyboard!’ It’s really obvious when it’s an insincere effort, and people put out comics for the sole purpose of climbing to another medium. They’re like zombie comics, without a soul.”

Whether or not they inspire the occasional literary abomination or sell monthly issues, movies are doing something even more important for comics: keeping the lights on. “It’s no secret now that Hollywood is one of the things keeping comics afloat,” says Dark Horse Publicity Director Jeremy Atkins, whose company has brought 300, Sin City, and Hellboy to Hollywood. The infusion of money also helps independent creators keep working in an industry not known for paying the big bucks. “For an indie creator, when Hollywood buys a property from you, it’s life-changing,” says Bendis. “A lot of my peers fell by the wayside because they couldn’t afford to practice their craft anymore. Hollywood helps them keep making comics, which is all they want to do.” (When Bendis launched his creator-owned title Powers, his artist Michael Avon Oeming not only needed a second job, he had to draw the book at night while working in a security booth.)

The creative crossover between movies and comics doesn’t end with content, either—the writers themselves have made moves in both directions. Famously, Y: The Last Man’s Brian K. Vaughan joined the writing staff of Lost, and Lost’s Damon Lindelof, Buffy’s Joss Whedon, Clerks’s Kevin Smith, and Grey’s Anatomy’s Allan Heinberg have all tried their hand at monthly titles.

Although comics pay a fraction of what a writer can stand to make from film or television, the medium attracts Hollywood talent because of what Bendis calls “the latitude given to the creative community. It’s amazing how many of us are given the freedom to express ourselves completely.” Contrast that to the experience of many comic creators in Hollywood—Bendis once met with MTV for a Spider-Man animated series and was asked whether Spider-Man “really had to be a spider”—and it’s likely that comics won’t be losing its talent pool any time soon. In the meantime, all comic fans can hope for is that the two sides learn to play nice; crappy movies we’re used to, but crappy comics are more than we can take.
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