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Hard To Adapt Work / Comic Books

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General

  • The Marvel and DC Universes are unique in that individual characters and franchises within said universes are generally easy enough to adapt to other mediums, but the scope of those universes is hard to fully depict, partly because they contain literally thousands and thousands of characters, many of whom end up being Exiled from Continuity in adaptations (and even the comics themselves sometimes) because they've been Screwed by the Lawyers note , and both universes are essentially a series of franchises within one gigantic franchise, with each intellectual property having its own unbelievably dense lore. There's also the fact that for a long time, the more pulpy and campy aspects of comic books were considered too weird and esoteric for mainstream audiences (though this was mainly limited to live-action adaptations. Animated adaptations could get away with the more outlandish scenarios and characters, but were also beholden to the Animation Age Ghetto for years, which meant animated adaptations of Darker and Edgier storylines were almost entirely off-limits). Some aspects of this are very different now due to change in audience perception.note 
    • Another factor, as mentioned above, is the length of these universes, which consist of nearly a century's worth of stories that, in the case of some characters, have been running since the late 1930s, with over thousands of issues. A combination of Values Dissonance, Science Marches On, and audience expectations changing from one generation to the next means that both universes have gradually updated themselves over time to fit with contemporary standards of storytelling, and the countless writers and artists handling these stories and putting their own unique spins on them has led to various retcons, revisions, reboots, and wildly different interpretations of characters, even within the same continuity. All these factors mean that a 100% faithful adaptation of the Marvel and DC Universes from start to finish in a medium outside of comics would be narratively inconsistent and incredibly convoluted, if not downright impossible, and would be an extremely long production (it'd be longer than most daytime soap operas combined). This is why even the most faithful and well-regarded adaptations are loose distillations of the best parts of the source material, using the concepts and characters to tell original stories, while usually remaining faithful to the spirit of the original tales and characters.
    • Related to this, is that these universes have a huge catalogue of supervillains who are often as popular and compelling as the heroes themselves and have had as much development thanks to the size and length of the worlds. In the films, however, there's usually just not enough time to explore villains' stories as well as those of the heroes, so the antagonists are often underbaked and shallowly evil compared to their comic versions. On the flipside, when the villains do get the main focus, the titular superheroes can often feel like side players in their own films (a particularly notorious criticism of the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman movies). Additionally it's common for the villains to die or be killed at the end of the films, since getting well known actors to reprise their roles for sequels is expensive and the comic staple of sending the mass murdering villain to jail is harder for audiences to swallow in the context of a film, leading to Thou Shall Not Kill getting frequently averted — even when said heroes strive explicitly to never take another life in the comics. Granted, there is still a somewhat decent number of superhero films that keep the villains alive and don't have the heroes kill. But when the stakes inevitably get higher and higher, it's much harder to have characters be pacifistic when the literal fate of their city, earth, or even the entire universe depends on them taking lethal force.note 
  • The bright colourful costumes that superheroes are known for, have often been a struggle to adapt well to live action, especially in the Turn of the Millennium where general audiences are less tolerant of campier outfits than they were in the 60s and 70s. This gave rise to a lot of Not Wearing Tights and desaturation of the iconic outfits of superheroes (as seen in the X-Men Film Series and DC Extended Universe) which often betrays the core levity and appeal of the characters and their comics in the first place. Obviously there are exceptions, most notably Spider-Man (three times) and even edgier superhero media such as The Boys (2019), The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker commit to garish outfits, though in the latter cases it's deliberate to poke fun of the genre and juxtapose with the dark content.note  There's also lot of practical difficulties with the a lot of the more zany costumes (especially those of female heroes) in making them work and look good on screen, which is why CG has now been more regularly used, even when it comes to things like Superman's cape.
  • For a more specific example, one comic book superpower that has constantly proven to be hard to get right in a Live-Action Adaptation is super elasticity. While animated works such as Marvel and DC comics cartoons or The Incredibles can pull it off flawlessly, doing it in live-action is almost impossible without falling deep into the Uncanny Valley, as seeing a realistic-looking human body bend, stretch and distort like that in a real setting is often simply too unsettling for the brain to accept seeing outside of cartoons. The film portrayals of Mr Fantastic in particular have often been plagued with difficulty when it come to his stretchiness. The Roger Coreman version didn't use CGI and is hilariously narmy to watch, the Tim Story duology and Josh Trank film did use CGI which frequently dived into the uncanny valley especially the former. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness probably got away with it the best, due to Reed only using his superpower very briefly and his rubberiness actually serving to give him a Cruel and Unusual Death as Wanda essentially shreds him into strings. This superpower in fact is so difficult to adapt or make look acceptable in live action that the showrunners for Ms. Marvel (2022) decided to alter Kamala's powers so that she would have Green Lantern-esque Hard Light constructs rather than elasticity like in the comics. This isn't even purely a problem for superhero adaptations either; One Piece (2023) has similar trouble with its stretchy hero Luffy, despite pulling the rubber man effects off better than the Fantastic Four examples.
  • Another superpower that has proven reasonably difficult to portray in live action is Shapeshifting...or more specifically, shapeshifting into animals. While this power is easy to portray to its fullest extent in animation (especially in light of how the The Law of Conservation of Detail allows the process to be portrayed in fairly streamlined and simplistic fashion), portraying it in live action can be a real challenge to achieve. For while the related ability to shapeshift into other people or similarly humanoid forms can be easy to achieve with minimal special effects by simply using as many actors as required to portray the different forms the shifter takes over the course of the story, nonhuman animals tend to be at best incredibly difficult, and at worst extremely dangerous, to try to train and expensive to animate. And that's before one considers the headaches that would naturally come with trying to adapt the ability to shapeshift into creatures that are either extinct (such as dinosaurs) or imaginary (such as dragons). While some media like Sky High (2005) and Supernatural were able to somewhat easily work with the limitations by using easily domesticated animals (in the case of the guinea pig the shapeshifter from the former turns into or the dogs that the skinwalkers from the latter turn into) or only showing the nonhuman animal form for a single brief scene or two (in the case of Ganesh's elephant form in Supernatural), with the fact that the shapeshifters in question had only one alternate form they could change into helping, the Live-Action Adaptation of Animorphs suffered heavily from these problems when it came to portraying the powers of the titular team (with Rachel having to have her standard battle morph be a comparatively easier to train or animate lioness instead of the far more difficult to train or animate grizzly bear and elephant that she uses as her primary battle morphs in the books). And while DC's resident animorph Beast Boy was able to be shown successfully transforming into more than one type of animal in Titans (2018), even then he was limited to only being shown shapeshifting into a tiger, snake, and bat (with several other animal forms being alluded to having happened offscreen) over the course of the series due to the aforementioned problems on top of his animal forms having to be green.

DC

  • It took decades for Wonder Woman to get her own feature film or animated series. She's a part of the "Big Three" at DC (alongside Batman and Superman), which naturally makes it easy to assume that she'd be prime material for adapting to film and television as her two fellow DC trinity members have been. Unfortunately, Wonder Woman doesn't have as much of a concrete personality, lore, Rogues Gallery, or supporting cast compared to Batman or Superman,note  which left many considering her to be much more difficult to work with compared to her two fellow "Big Three" members. The fact that she was the high profile female superhero only made things worse for a while due to Girl-Show Ghetto concerns. This was not helped by legal issues surrounding the character. As a result, with the exception of a 1974 made for TV film starring Cathy Lee Crosby, the 1970s series starring Lynda Carter, and the 2009 animated direct-to-video film that sold worse than expected, she never starred in her own work until 2017 and was mostly relegated to co-starring alongside other Justice League members. Fortunately, her very first proper feature film finally came out and proved very successful, paving the way for more material starring Wonder Woman.
  • Batman:
    • Bane, much like Doctor Doom below, has had poor luck in getting an adaptation that fully does his character justice, especially compared to his fellow iconic Batman villains like Joker or Two-Face. In the comics, he has a lengthy history largely unrelated to Batman in which he's first introduced in Knightfall as kind of a Villain Protagonist with his From Nobody to Nightmare backstory heavily established and explained over multiple issues long before he even reaches Gotham, where he subsequently runs Batman ragged with an ingenious plan and then finishes him off by breaking his back. Unfortunately it’s difficult to convey Bane's sizable history and the full extent of his more intelligent and well cultured side to their fullest extent in a movie featuring him alongside Batman without risking Bane getting the lion's share of focus and overshadowing Batman himself. As a result, a lot of adaptations such as Batman & Robin and even more faithful media like Batman: The Animated Series turn Bane into an Adaptational Wimp and Adaptational Dumbass for the sake of making him a typical big bruiser with a gimmick instead of having him be a genuine foil to Batman in the Genius Bruiser department like he is in the comics. The Dark Knight Rises puts in considerable effort to better recreate this lesser shown side of Bane, giving Bane his educated menace from the comics, but still has him be Demoted to Dragon and subservient to the League of Shadows for the sake of conforming to the contained continuity of the trilogy; which results in Bane's singular Big Bad menace from the comics being somewhat lessened.
    • Robin (or more specifically, the very 1st Robin Dick Grayson), despite being a staple of the Batman comics and cartoons, has had a very hard time getting any live action adaptation that portrays him very well. One big issue is simply how he's often regarded by general audiences and creators as too silly and garish when paired with the dark and brooding Batman; a sentiment that was echoed by Tim Burton and screenwriter Daniel Waters as well as Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale who feel Robin "ruins" the tone of Batman and as such didn't include him in their films *. Another common issue is his age, as despite being a Kid Sidekick with emphasis on "kid", he's often given an Age Lift from a teenager to an adult man (as seen in Batman (1966) and the Schumacher Batman films), which is often a conscious choice by filmmakers to avoid the uncomfortable Child Soldier vibes of having a grown man make a child beat the crap out of people with him at night, but still betrays the point of the character. Robert Pattinson (who's actually on board with Robin being in his Batman films) acknowledged this recurring problem with Robin and actually wants them to cast young and highlight the fact that having Batman do this is messed up. There's also trouble in taking Robin in a hard opposite direction like Titans does, as making Dick Grayson overly dark and edgy spoils the levity his character is supposed to embodynote . And while some of his successors in the Robin mantlenote  have proven a fair amount darker and more serious than him, the majority of said successors didn't truly make a name for themselves that would be considered prime adaptation material until after they'd graduated into their own separate identities from the mantle and the sheer iconicity of Grayson himself in the role makes it incredibly tempting to use him by default while also making creators feel rather reluctant to try to adapt one of Grayson's successors in the role without adapting him first.
    • Batgirl has had trouble getting a truly good portrayal in live action for very similar reasons to Robin. The most iconic person to take on this mantle and the one people are most likely to think of upon hearing the name is Barbara Gordon, which naturally makes her a popular choice for use in the mantle in adaptations. And in the comics a good deal of Barbara's appeal is her independence and the fact she's often equal to Batman and Robin with her own dual life troubles. But this is often lost in adaptations that revert Babs to just being a Love Interest to Dick Grayson's Robin (or, rather infamously in Batman: The Killing Joke, Batman himself) due to most mainstream audiences largely considering her little more than a fanservice overloaded Distaff Counterpart to Batman, which sadly, along with Girl-Show Ghetto views, is the most likely reason why her solo movie was in Development Hell for so long and then cancelled before it could be released. Her cinematic debut, the Alicia Silverstone version had little in common with her comic counterpart beyond the costume and Action Girl status, with her backstory as Commissioner Gordon's daughter being traded out for her being Alfred's niece instead, likely to keep her tied to Batman's plot more. Birds of Prey (2002) probably has the most comic accurate portrayal of Barbara, but due to this series adapting the era where she was Oracle instead of Batgirl (thanks to her spinal injury) can't properly highlight her badassery as a roof hopping vigilante. And while she's not the only character to take on the mantle of Batgirl, her predecessor in the comics, Bette Kane, has been largely displaced in popular culture by Barbara's own iconicity in the role, and her two successors, Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain (the latter of whom herself ended up getting a rather In Name Only portrayal in Birds of Prey (2020)), spent a very long time Exiled from Continuity or unable to take the role, which makes it all too tempting for most creators to just have Barbara be the resident user of the mantle by default.
    • The Killing Joke took almost three decades to get a film adaptation, as the comic is not only very short (being a single issue that is only 48 pages long), but is drawn and written in a way that could truly take advantage of the comic medium (which is a trademark of Alan Moore's work and is precisely one of the reasons why he is against adaptations of his work), making it incredibly hard to translate into film. When Warner Bros. did get around to adapting the story into an animated film, not only were numerous changes made to make the story work better in animation, but an entirely new prologue starring Barbara was added to make the story longer. These changes and the prologue, however, only cluttered and weakened the story in the opinions of both critics and fans.
  • Green Lantern as a franchise has been a significant case of this, to the point where even the Arrowverse didn’t touch it despite incorporating several other similarly outlandish on paper concepts and characters. Granted, a group of galactic multi-coloured space troopers that have the ability to form solid light constructs through the power of their imagination and either focus on an emotion or sheer willpower, shouldn’t be such a hard sell for a movie on paper. But in practice, as demonstrated by Green Lantern (2011) it’s simply just too much to put upon an audience as even with a human protagonist like Hal Jordan the lofty Starfish Alien characters, crazy powers, and immensely dense lore usually isn’t very accessible for non-comic book followers (this would have have been a problem for Guardians of the Galaxy too, had it not wisely used more recognisably human settings, music and ironically “down to Earth” characters), with the aforementioned film adaptation largely being criticized for (among other things) containing both too much lore to allow it to be accessible for newcomers and general audiences and not quite enough to fully earn the goodwill of existing fans of the comics. Green Lantern characters and plotlines have had better success in the animated realm with shows like Green Lantern: The Animated Series as well as the DC Animated Universe. The latter franchise in particular also has the benefit of more well known superheroes like Superman and Batman for viewers to latch onto (though this can lead to Overshadowed by Awesome Popularity Power which affects the Green Lantern’s characters already mixed reputation).
  • Lobo had many standalone projects aside from the 2000 web cartoon that were cancelled (there was a rumored solo film for him in the DC Extended Universe, but it died in Development Hell) largely due to how he's an incredibly violent anti-hero with a much stronger emphasis on 'anti' than on 'hero'. The fact he isn't really the most family-friendly of DC characters doesn't help. However, the cartoon got better appreciated over time for retroactively paving the way of adult DC works such as Joker (2019) and The Suicide Squad.
  • Warner Bros. does not plan on adapting Kingdom Come to animation, viewing Alex Ross' art style as incomparable and impossible to replicate no matter how good the animation is.
  • John Constantine, though easily one of the most popular DC heroes of the new millennium, has had very spotty luck getting an accurate adaptation of Hellblazer that truly brings his character to life from the comics. The most popular adaptation: Constantine (2005), which most people can agree is an awesome movie on its own merits and did get some thematic aspects of the comic right, is still a big departure from the comics since it heavily alters Constantine‘s character from the comics to make him more “marketable” (changing his nationality from British to American, his hair from blonde to black and job from magical grifter to exorcist) to the extent where a lot of Hellblazer fans consider it In Name Only to the source. The Sandman (2022) likewise takes an extremely loose approach to the character by changing the comic profession of grifter to exorcist once again along with making John a woman (though to be fair, Neil Gaiman explained that the latter detail was really more a rights issue due to the traditional John Constantine not being allowed, so a female expy was used instead). Even adaptations that are Truer to the Text such as NBC’s Constantine (2014) (later folded into CW's Arrowverse) and Constantine: City of Demons (from the DC Animated Movie Universe) are still far more sanitised than the original comic, which was deeply gritty and a full exploration of personal horror and self-destructive addiction.
    • Another issue is that Constantine is supposed to be a Nominal Hero who (despite showcasing a few passionate humanist tendencies in some stories) is largely rather self-serving as opposed to the usual “go out and selflessly fight evil” hero archetype that most DC superheroes fulfill. And while that does make him unique, it also isn’t particularly endearing to general audiences. This is why pretty much all adaptations so far have softened Constantine into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who actively seeks out and stops demonic threats to humanity rather than waiting for demonic threats to find and antagonize him first, which though good for usual superhero affair goes against one of the core conceits of the character. The fact he was initially from Vertigo (a comics publisher primarily known for non-superhero works) before eventually being integrated over into the main DC universe only further accentuates the difficulty in how best to portray him.
  • A similarly difficult to adapt magical hero from the DC Universe is Zatanna (who, fittingly enough, just so happens to be widely known as one of the primary love interests of the above mentioned John Constantine). Similar to Batgirl or Supergirl, the common perception that she’s little more than walking fanservice with her fishnets gams is too hard to shake *. Not to mention her flashy Stage Magician gimmick, while fun and cute, is still often considered “hokey” compared to more serious superheroes or magical heroes. But on the flipside, trying to compensate by downplaying that aspect of Zatanna’s character like Justice League Dark does in order to fit the Darker and Edgier tone removes a lot of her unique identity and makes her more of a typical gritty modern fantasy sorceress. As a result, there have been very few attempts at an adaptation that has Zee herself as the primary focus beyond a 2003 web cartoon titled Zatanna: Trial of the Crystal Wand while other projects planned to feature her front and center have languished in Development Hell before ultimately ending up canned. And while adaptations in which she's featured alongside various other DC characters in a larger universe have largely proven more successful as a whole, she’s still mainly been used as a supporting character to other heroes in the majority of said adaptations (being relegated to Constantine’s Love Interest in the DC Animated Movie Universe) with only Young Justice giving her and her father Zatara more story focus.
  • Cracks at Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman (1989) have been in Development Hell for decades with only a 19 minute animated Death showcase to show for the efforts made at adapting the story before Netflix finally took a dedicated stab at it with a live-action show under Gaiman’s guidance. The biggest difficulty to overcome is that the comic is appropriately dream-like, being full of Awesome Art and general Surrealism which goes hand in hand with the often cerebral tone of the story arcs that effortlessly blend together. The show, however, is not only obligated to tell an ongoing narrative over 10 episodes (e.g the Corinthian is boosted to Big Bad of the whole season rather than being a one time antagonist as he is in the original comic), but on a modest TV budget the series is also frequently limited by what dream world special effects can be achieved (Dream’s flaming coat is replaced with a regular black one and he has normal eyes and skin), so the pacing, atmosphere and flair of the comic is often lost or at least lessened in the live action series.
  • Superman:
    • Part of why Superman has been so difficult to make happen (successfully) on the big screen in the years since the original Christopher Reeve films is because of how his stories often use him. Superman is typically written as a good and simple man who always does the right thing, and the complexity is often balancing his life as Clark Kent, and his Battle of Wits dynamic with his villains (as opposed to a struggle to survive and win), like Lex Luthor. He's the reason The Cape exists as a concept. Adapting Superman nowadays often has trouble because of the perceived notion that he is boring for being such a good guy and is too much of an Invincible Hero to be interesting. Man of Steel, the only big-screen solo adaptation of Superman since the original films (other than Superman Returns), attempted to "deconstruct" Superman by making him broody and darker, but this was criticized for making him feel harder for audiences to connect to.
      • Superman is also notoriously difficult to build a video game around. On top of the aforementioned problem of perceived Good Is Boring limiting his story potential, if a game were to feature him as an Invincible Hero, it would require somehow managing to make the game challenging despite his vast powers; while lowering his power level to create a challenge defeats the whole purpose of playing as a Flying Brick. While not all Superman games are bad and his powerset has been decently realized in some team-up games (such as the LEGO DC games), it's telling that while games based on Spider-Mannote  and Batmannote  are remembered for redefining the superhero game genre, the one Superman game everyone remembers is Superman 64, widely considered to be among the worst games ever made.
    • Lex Luthor, much like his Arch-Enemy, has proven to be quite difficult to be put to screen in ways that fully recreate him as he is in the comics, if not even more so since he lacks a definitive portrayal on film *. He's supposed to be a truly serious antagonist and businessman with a pure hatred and envy of Superman and in some ways (as noted by Grant Morrison) can be admirable to a degree in his plight against a god-like rival, he's also prepared if it comes to it to get his hands dirty and try and kill Supes personally by using Kryptonite, traps, empowering technology, and plain old cunning. The Gene Hackman version while iconic, has little in common with his comic counterpart due to being a Large Ham blowhard who isn't particularly threatening at all. The Kevin Spacey version while a little more sinister has the same problems of being too ridiculous, when the point of Lex is that his darker nature offsets Superman's boyscout behaviour perfectly. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, influenced by The Dark Knight Trilogy (and Heath Ledger's Joker in particular) has Jesse Eisenberg's Luthor be an insufferable Psychopathic Manchild with No Social Skills, which is at odds with the coolly efficient and charismatic Lex of the comics, making this Lex Luthor have more in common with the Riddler. Lex's Iron Man-esque willingness to go toe to toe with Superman in Powered Armour, is also not touched upon in film adaptations in favour of making him a Non-Action Big Bad who lets others do all the work for him, while in the comics he does equal amounts of both. Worth noting is that the Lex Luthors of Smallville and Arrowverse are Truer to the Text in terms of conveying his threat, but still have trouble doing his character justice in other aspects (in the former it takes him over 7 Seasons to discover Clark is Superman).
    • Supergirl, much like her best friend Batgirl above, has had poor luck when it comes to movies and not exactly ideal coverage in cartoons compared to other DC heroines either. In the comics, while having plenty of Narm Charm like her cousin Superman himself, she's still supposed to be taken seriously and has plotlines (especially in modern comics) that certainly aren't all silly and "girly". Unfortunately, Kara's 1984 first cinematic outing, due to limited budget and 80s cheese, and despite Helen Slater’s great performance, failed to do her the same level of justice that Richard Donner had achieved with Superman and only cemented the view in audiences that she was little more than the Barbie equivalent for the Man of Steel, with its plot being closer to Valley Girl than anything from the comics. Audiences also generally struggle with accepting her in Superman's stories since her existence blatantly contradicts the popular tragic perception of Clark being the "Last Kryptonian". For example, despite there being more than enough room for her to be included in as much, Zack Snyder was adverse to putting her in his DCEU films as a result of his desire to emphasize the tragedy of Superman being the Last of His Kind. And when Kara finally did show up in the DC Extended Universe after all in The Flash (2023) she was retooled into being a Darker and Edgier character (hair included) to fit the tone set by Man of Steel; which, while appropriate for the Bad Future events of the film, was still at odds with what people liked about the comic version. Further not helping matters is how Kara has made only sporadic appearances in animated media, usually being more of a sidekick to Supes than an independent hero in her own right, with only Superman/Batman: Apocalypse breaking the norm and giving her central focus (albeit with some Male Gaze, like the comic it was adapted from). She also wasn't featured in Young Justice until the fourth season where she's a villainous Furie, not helped by Miss Martian already having most of her personality quirks. Fortunately her CW version managed to be both successful and accurate, especially after Growing the Beard. Though like other superheroes in the Arrowverse it still struggles to portray what she can do on a TV budget. Kara also got a very good portrayal in Legion of Super-Heroes (2023), even if it isn’t technically her movie. And while she's set to play a fairly major role in the upcoming DC Universe film franchise reboot by James Gunn, only time will tell how the end result turns out.
  • Efforts to adapt New Gods have been met with great difficulty, with the one New Gods movie announced in 2018 sinking into Development Hell before eventually being cancelled altogether. The main problem, much like Marvel's Eternals below (both of which, coincidentally, were created by Jack Kirby), is that the New Gods have had a long and complicated history that isn't strongly connected to the main DCU, besides Breakout Villain Darkseid, who underwent Rogues' Gallery Transplant from serving as the Arch-Enemy of Orion and Mister Miracle to becoming the Arch-Enemy of the Justice League of America. Trying to impart decades worth of cosmic lore and characters on an audience is a tall order which is likely why Zack Snyder's Justice League just focuses on the easier to understand Galactic Conqueror Darkseid and Apokolips while ignoring the rest of the New Gods and New Genesis altogether. Keep in mind this isn’t just a problem solely regarding live action, the New Gods have made scant appearances in the animated DC works. Their biggest appearances in DC Animated Universe, still has them be Demoted to Extra and very much in service to the plotlines of Superman or other more well-known characters like Terry McGinnis.
  • Green Arrow has a very specific case with one particular recurring villain, Onomatopoeia, a masked Serial Killer whose gimmick is saying nothing except the onomatopoeia of whatever he's about to kill his victims with. This is a gimmick that works pretty much only for the medium of comic books, and attempts to work around it would probably change the fundamentals of the entire character. The series Arrow wanted to use Onomatopoeia, but this was trounced and they had to replace him with the original Mr. Blank since a man who only speaks in sound effects without speech bubbles would probably come off as unintentionally hilarious and hard to take seriously. Fittingly enough, his only appearance connecting him to the Arrowverse was in a tie-in comic. And while a character using the codename did manage to appear in Superman & Lois, the character in question is thoroughly In Name Only compared to the original character from the comics.

Marvel

  • Adapting the Fantastic Four into standalone film and television has proven difficult due to the team largely being explorers and scientists as opposed to typical crimefighters, hence why the 2005-2007 Tim Story films and especially the 2015 Josh Trank film were criticized for their relative lack of action compared to other superhero movies. Much of the Fantastic Four's appeal is meant to be driven by their character dynamics and their versatility, which makes them well-adapted to long-form storytelling since they can go anywhere and do anything—advantages that don't kick in when you're doing a standalone film. Not helping matters is their strong connections to other Marvel heroes, which took a long time to be adapted in any of the films due to the rights to various Marvel characters being spread out over several other studios, and the concept of a shared cinematic universe being scoffed at until the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
    • A particular element of the comics that has had abysmal luck in adaptation is Doctor Doom—despite Doom being one of the most popular and iconic villains in comic history and therefore almost mandatory for an adaptation, he ended up being one of the most despised elements of both the Tim Story films and the Josh Trank version (funnily, the Corman film was fairly accurate). This is because he's simply got too much going on to really fit in as a first-outing villain: he has several elements of Mad Scientist to his personality and overall skillset, but he's also a powerful mage and the ruler of a sovereign nation, and his backstory is fairly complex and only briefly involves any member of the Four (though said involvement does help form the core of his motivation). Consequently, the temptation comes to give him a stronger Adaptation Origin Connection or easier-to-handle Stock Superpowers rather than handle a character with his eclectic skillset and near-mandated extensive origin, but this almost invariably results in him becoming In Name Only and losing what makes his comics self appealing. Additionally, in the comics, he is usually depicted with some depth, while movie adaptations so far opted for a more overtly monstrous approach that is more often than not out of character and makes him lose his comic counterpart's appeal.
    • Another important element in the Fantastic lore that hasn't been properly adapted is Galactus. This is because Galactus is an important force in the Marvel cosmos and is linked to various other powerful beings of that universe, such as Beyonder and The Living Tribunal. Another reason behind his difficulty in getting adapted is that he can't be the sole villain of an individual movie because he's too powerful to work properly as a single appearance Big Bad and ultimately works better as more of a Greater-Scope Villain like Thanos.
    • It speaks volumes when The Incredibles is considered the best Fantastic Four film of all, since it features a family of superheroes facing off against an evil genius with a grudge and most of the Four's powers are replicated. In fact, the climactic fight against the final Omnidroid is better and has more action than the entire Josh Trank film.
  • The Incredible Hulk, despite being one of the most iconic comic book characters and easily as beloved as Spider-Man or the X-Men, has had poor luck getting a successful solo movie adaptation that does him justice. Similar to Superman above, it's generally hard to follow a character that is ludicrously strong to the point of feeling overpowered, which is why films tend to put more emphasis on Bruce rather than the Hulk. Moreover, the two main appeals of Hulk: him smashing stuff up and fighting other monsters like Godzilla and the other cerebral story of him being a pitiable character who's always Walking the Earth in search of a place where he can live quietly in peace, is hard to balance in a two-hour film, which heavily contributes to why the serial-based The Incredible Hulk (1977) is the most successful stand-alone adaptation of the Jolly Green Giant. 2003's Hulk by acclaimed drama film director Ang Lee focused heavily on the tragedy of the character, though at the expense of the levity and fun action that people like about the character in the first place. The Incredible Hulk (2008), the 2nd film of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, managed to strike a better balance between action and character drama, but still suffered from a Troubled Production and ironically was less successful at the Box Office than the 2003 film. The MCU finally gave audiences a definitive Hulk on film on its 2nd try in The Avengers (2012), but he's still demoted to The Big Guy among the team and treated with less importance than Iron Man, Captain America and Thor. Universal owning the film rights to Hulk was also a heavily contributing factor in him not getting another solo movie, though this was more recently resolved with the film distribution rights to Hulk going back to Marvel in 2023.
    • Another issue with Hulk is that it's especially hard bringing him in all his green glory to screen, without running into Unintentional Uncanny Valley and Special Effects Failure. Back in the 70s you could just get the biggest and most muscly guy you could find and paint him green, but as audiences are more expecting of special effects, a character like the Hulk has to evolve with the times when it comes to how he's portrayed via special effects, but it tellingly took until 2012's Avengers to finally nail the Hulk on screen and the FX artists involved reported how hard it was to accomplish. It was this same problem that affected Hulk's cousin She-Hulk when the time came to adapt her to live action. While in the comics she can effortlessly look sexy and powerful simultaneously thanks to talented artists, the balancing effect of trying to make her look believable and attractive while still a Hulk (rather than just a green woman like Gamora) that came with putting Shulkie on the screen proved be a daunting task with mixed results.
  • Once Eternals ended up getting an iffy critical response, assumptions of this were raised. Though The Eternals have never been a major focus of Marvel, with only a handful of short-lived, loosely connected series to their name, there is a lot of lore behind them dating back all the way to the Jack Kirby days. This can make it difficult for new readers (or even seasoned readers) to understand their story, and is likely why Marvel has so rarely promoted or pushed for them. As many reviews have noted, the film feels overstuffed, and a lot of that can be pointed to this issue. There's also the fact that the sheer power level of the group combined with their Remember the New Guy? treatment within the MCU leads to Superman Stays Out of Gotham issues; making them a difficult group to integrate into an already established connected universe. (Again, this is likely why, in the comics, they've often been relegated to self-contained content and rarely interact with the larger universe.)
  • The Punisher is an odd character in that he seems pretty easy to adapt: his concept isn't that much more complex than "war-vet Vigilante Man with a dead family and a skull on his chest", a fairly grounded variant on an archetype that has cropped up in countless films (most famously Death Wish). However, that also proves to be the exact problem, as a lot of what gives Frank Castle his appeal is that he's a classic vigilante-man archetype existing in a superhero universe, and how that plays off the world he inhabits, giving avenues for more over-the-top storytelling or Black Comedy. Most adaptations don't have that draw (with all three film adaptations having him be present in worlds where all the other Marvel superheroes explicitly don't exist due to legal reasons, and the live action Netflix solo series still largely downplaying the presence of the other Marvel superheroes despite being set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe), which risks making the character come across as generic if the creators don't have a lot of skill to fall back on (and most creative teams that are willing to tackle a Punisher film, to put it bluntly, don't have that). Another problem is that Frank is historically written as a Nominal Hero, if not a Villain Protagonist or an outright antagonist, with Garth Ennis in particular being very blunt about the fact that Frank can really only be considered "good" when compared to the explicitly much worse people he's fighting. A comic, as a long-form serialized story, can explore this idea pretty thoroughly and has reader investment in older material to fall back on, but in a film, this risks an accurately-written Frank just being unlikable. This means that some adaptations, particularly the 1989 film, try to soften him to varying degrees, but this takes away a lot of the moral complexity that makes his stories appealing. Out of four adaptations from 1989 onward, the closest thing to a successful live-action adaptation of the character is the 2017 Netflix series (plus his appearance as a prominent supporting character in the 2nd season of Daredevil (2015)), and even that saw a very noticeable critical slump relative to its predecessors. Ironically, the depictions of Frank in the Lighter and Softer animated Marvel shows actually nail his personality easier than the live action versions simply by contrasting his over-the-top seriousness with the more lighthearted nature of all the other heroes.
  • Spider-Man:
    • While Spider-Man has proven quite easy to adapt in various mediums, the immensely Troubled Production of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark proved an effective demonstration of how live stage theater is a form of media that the character is more or less impossible to be successfully adapted into. For while the incredibly complex acrobatic feats and death defying stunts the character is famous for performing can be easily depicted in animated cartoons and the original comic book source material (both of which are media heavily incentivized by The Law of Conservation of Detail) and live action films (which can work around the issues that come with depicting such stunts through use of CGI and carefully-edited camera shots), adapting them to live stage theater (a medium restricted entirely to use of practical effects) requires them to be visibly performed to their fullest extent with incredibly complicated and elaborate wiring mechanisms (which naturally brought various logistical and legal issues to deal with). And even with the wiring mechanisms available, there are still various other moving parts required to faithfully adapt the character and his mythos that proved incredibly difficult to portray through exclusively practical effects and prone to Special Effects Failure.
    • Venom, despite being the one of the “Big Three” Spidey villains alongside Green Goblin and Doc Ock has had spotty luck getting adapted very well to film compared to his contemporaries. One main issue is whether to portray him as a villain or anti-hero. In the comics he started off as a terrifying antagonist before becoming a Terror Hero who was also kinda goofy Deadpool-style, which is the version fans fell in love with. The cartoons also have the luxury of having his primary (non Peter Parker) host Eddie Brock be present as a more mundane antagonist first before upgrading him into a more significant threat by bonding with the symbiote and eventually having him be Bash Brothers with Spidey like the comics. The Spider-Man films however don’t tend to keep the villains alive (at least prior to the MCU Spidey films) so Venom can’t have his Character Development of villain to hero from the comics or animated works and thus was Killed Off for Real in his cinematic debut. This issue was only further exacerbated by Sam Raimi finding him a Creator's Pest * that he didn't even want in his movie and only ended up including him at all because he was forced to through Executive Meddling; and even then he made sure to depict him in a rather unflattering and not entirely comic book accurate way to express his frustrations. The subsequent Sony Venom films, to their credit, get the fun aspects and look of him right, but sadly due to being separate from the MCU, they had to have Eddie Brock without his frenemy Spidey, which takes away a lot of the drive and obsession that defined his character for decades and leaves him somewhat aimless. This lack of Peter Parker also affected Carnage in the sequel, as both Venom and Carnage are supposed to contrast against Spidey’s All-Loving Hero nature as foils; and without him as the focal point, it arguably devolves into two blob monsters having a metaphorical pissing match.
    • The Symbiote in general hasn’t been translated to live action as well as in other media. In the comics its really kind of a Yandere, being infatuated with Peter with its villainy only coming about because of Spidey’s rejection of it, leading to it joining Eddie due to mutual hate. In the films, this nuance is hard to convey since it’s still ultimately a toothy Blob Monster to general audiences, meaning it really gets dumbed down to just a drooling creature, with the Sony films making the Symbiote outlandishly goofy (in the comics Eddie was mainly the silly one as a contrast to the Symbiote's more nightmarishly serious personality). Spider-Man 3 goes for a drug addiction theme, with the Symbiote affecting Peter’s personality and exacerbating his worst qualities, which is a newer convention popularised by the 90s cartoon. There’s also difficulty depicting how scary and violent the Symbiote can be, especially when it comes to Carnage as the films PG-Rating and Lighter and Softer tone seriously detracts from the scariness the character is supposed to invoke.
    • Mary Jane Watson is synonymous with Spidey, being his most iconic and beloved love interest as well as just a great character in her own right (her popularity famously annoys the Marvel editors who want her out of Spidey’s books). However, compared to her DC counterpart Lois Lane, it’s been much harder to get a definitive live action version of her character on screen. The Kirsten Dunst and Zendaya versions of MJ have plenty of fans but still differ from the comic version for different reasons. Dunst’s MJ has the appearance and backstory but completely lacks the lively fun and Damsel out of Distress qualities of comic MJ due to being fused with Gwen Stacy (Kirsten Dunst even initially thought she was going to be Gwen before they told her she was Mary Jane). Zendaya’s MJ has the agency, background and acts as a modernised version of classic MJ’s nonconformity, but has a completely different appearance and personality from the traditional Mary Jane. A lot of this difficulty comes from Mary Jane’s characterisation: in the comics she wasn’t the first love interest, nor was she the one planned to be Peter’s One True Love (that being Gwen), but was effectively built up over the course of many issues before her now iconic “Face it, Tiger, you just hit the jackpot!” full reveal which got everyone hooked. She’s supposed to be the exciting Veronica to Gwen’s Betty, but because MJ by herself is so iconic, a lot of adaptations just decide to cut out the middleman and have MJ be the default love interest — which, while good for putting Peter in a better light as a guy who doesn’t go through multiple women, still prevents MJ having the vital Character Development she got in the comics after Gwen’s death. The Spectacular Spider-Man sought to get this right with Mary Jane but the third season got canceled before this could come into fruition.
      • Another difficulty with adapting Mary Jane is that her profession (model actress) doesn’t lend itself to a plot without MJ feeling inconsequential. In the comics and episodic animated shows, this isn’t a problem, as Mary Jane is supposed to represent the normal part of Spidey’s life with more mundane objectives like earning money, but in a film (particularly the Raimi ones), MJ can feel like she’s not really contributing to the story beyond being the woman Peter loves. This is why Spider-Man (PS4) made MJ an Intrepid Reporter so she’d be involved in the action more. Gwen got made into a Science Hero for the Amazing films for the very same reason.
    • Morbius, much like Venom, greatly struggled on celluloid, if not even more so. In the comics, Morbius works precisely because of other characters in the MU he can bounce off, as both a Freak Lab Accident foil to Spider-Man and gothic prowler antagonist to Blade. In his solo movie, however, he’s obliged to have to work without said Marvel heroes; and as a result, he becomes a more of a run-of-the-mill edgy vampire. Not to mention, in the comics Morbius has plenty of Narm Charm with his disco outfit, which is why his comic fans like him. His solo film, however, goes for the Not Wearing Tights approach in an effort to make him easier to take seriously, which only adds to his genericness.
    • One of the many reasons cited for Madame Web (2024) flopping is this (overlapping with Audience-Alienating Premise). The titular character Madame Webb herself is both very difficult to portray seriously in a thriller inspired film and moreover is frankly ill-suited for a main character role. In the comics, Madame Webb being a Blind Seer who cannot get up from her life-support chair is supposed to be a Mentor Archetype, rather than any kind of active protagonist. Not to mention, Webb’s clairvoyance can not only greatly neuter the stakes since she’s aware of what will happen well ahead of time but without the flashy powers of other Spider-Women it boils the action down to just Cassandra surprise attacking the villain and running away. In the comics this isn’t a problem since Webb pointedly doesn’t get involved in any fights and being disabled isn’t expected to. This is probably why the film gives her the additional superpower of being able to project herself into others, simply for the sake of adding more dynamics to the climax and allowing for the not-yet superpowered spider-girls to have some role in the finale.
  • M.O.D.O.K naturally proved to be this when he was adapted to live action in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, there’s simply no getting past the fact being a oversized head with tiny limbs he’s supposed to be a ridiculously freakish Gonk and while he can be written to be more menacing he’s still an exemplar of Marvel’s Camp Narm Charm. When it came to putting him in live action however the audience response (particularly those unfamiliar with his comic version) was pretty negative even though as fairly pointed out by the film’s writer he is a character who’s impossible to take seriously at face value. Unsurprisingly the tongue-in-cheek and animated M.O.D.O.K. (2021) was better received.
  • X-Men, while they were one of the first comic properties to get a high-profile adaptation (as well as an iconic animated series a decade prior) overall they’ve proven hard to do justice to on film as an ensemble team, especially compared to their Avengers counterparts. One problem is there’s simply so many of them and many have spectacular powers that would require a massive budget to be properly done well on screen, which may be partly why the films focus on more grounded mutants with less splashy powers like Wolverine and Mystique. Though this focus on certain characters over others, seriously cuts into the character dynamics, relationships, and personal arcs that people liked so much about the comics and leaves a good many fan-favourite characters by the wayside. X-Men: First Class is so beloved in particular because it’s one of the few films in the series to embrace the campy colourful energy of the comics and give everyone a chance to shine. Though the rest of the films’ more grounded approach to the property has made it troublesome when it comes to adapting the more out there storylines from the comics.
    • One such storyline is The Dark Phoenix Saga, probably one of the most iconic arcs from the comics alongside Days of Future Past and most well-known Jean Grey story, which is full of large-scale action and character drama, very appetizing for an adaptation. Unfortunately trying to adapt it to film has proven a painful struggle twice. The main issue is the comics version was truly a saga, 10 issues from January to October of 1980 with the Earth based conflict eventually transitioning to a full out cosmic battle in space with galaxies getting destroyed and full out war between the X-Men and Shi’ar alien empire to defend Jean for her crimes, before she makes a redeeming Heroic Sacrifice. Trying to go for similar story beats and themes on screen has proven tumultuous. To start, the more outlandish and larger than life elements are perceived as too out of place amidst the grounded mentality of the X-Men film universe, so Jean’s cosmic level Superpowered Evil Side troubles are instead limited to just Earth. Last Stand also bundled the Dark Phoenix story with the Mutant Cure story, the latter of which, while thematically in line with the previous films, is simply less interesting than Jean’s Fallen Hero arc and leaves her benched for a good deal of the movie. Dark Phoenix (2019) tries to rectify this somewhat with the Phoenix Force getting more focus and coming from space like the comics, but due to the insistence on being Darker and Edgier, the fantastical elements are downplayed and replaced with more angst. Jean also doesn’t really become Dark Phoenix in that movie, as the D’bari aliens are instead used as the main antagonists in her place despite most X-Men films avoiding traditional Marvel elements like aliens and overall conflicts with the downbeat realistic tone of the film. So far the most accurate adaptation of the saga occurs in X-Men: The Animated Series albeit with characters missing/replaced. Not to say the Dark Phoenix Saga is impossible to adapt into live action mind you, both The Umbrella Academy Season 1 and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness manage to be Spiritual Adaptations of it.
    • Certain X-Men characters in general (with the obvious exceptions of Wolverine, Professor X, Magneto and eventually Deadpool) have had difficulty getting portrayed very well on screen. Which is often due to budgetary reasons, the characters being too complex, or just the filmmakers not having a clue what to do with them or why people like them. Not to mention connections to the greater Marvel universe which were off-limits.
      • Cyclops has had poor luck both in films as well as cartoons to a lesser extent. He’s supposed to be The Leader and a mutant Captain America with Hidden Depths and compelling tragedy to his character underneath his serious nature in the comics. Sadly, a lot of adaptations just struggle to find anything to do with him compared to “cooler” and more charismatic X-Men like Wolverine or Gambit, so Scott becomes a Standardized Leader as a result. In the first film trilogy his position as the "obstacle” between Wolverine and Jean is flanderized to the point where it detracts from his other qualities and makes him kind of a Flat Character. The rebooted films do try and fix this starting with X-Men: Apocalypse making him rebellious but due to the push to make Mystique The Hero, he still gets demoted to being a side character. X-Men '97 got much appreciation for actually portraying Scott as a genuinely cool and compelling character for once (and even that took a dedicated storyboard artist who was a fan of Cyclops pushing for it at every turn).
      • Jean Grey, much like her primary love interest Cyclops, has also had a hard go of it when it comes to most adaptations. In the comics, while Jean gets Chickification from time to time, she’s generally as badass and powerful as Storm or Rogue even when she isn’t Phoenix (her most well known incarnation) and shockingly for more casual fans can actually have storylines that don’t involve her love interests, Cyclops or Wolverine, at all. Sadly a good deal of adaptations can’t resist putting Jean in more of a Troi-esque role of being the female psychic that has many My Skull Runneth Over moments and who’s also the main subject of romantic subplots; which seriously cuts into Jean’s competencies from the comics and often reduces her to more of a static character. Another issue that makes Jean troublesome to adapt is that it’s practically impossible to divorce her from the Superpowered Evil Side Phoenix Force, which while undeniably iconic severely limits what you can do with her in story. The X-Men Film Series twice gave Jean little room to develop as a character, before throwing her head first into the Dark Phoenix plot, making the emotional pay off to Jean’s Fallen Hero arc feel rushed and unearned. The X-Men: Evolution’s incarnation of Jean was appreciated explicitly for avoiding problems that plague her character in other adaptations, and subsequently be Truer to the Text for it. X-Men '97 despite being a continuation of the series where Jean got the most Chickification, actually manages to avoid the pitfalls of most other adaptations and makes Jean compelling and interesting, largely thanks to the Dark Phoenix storyline having already been done and delving into the Inferno plot line instead, which hadn’t been adapted before.
      • Storm has a very hard go of it when it comes to live action. Despite Blade (1998) proving two years prior black superheroes could be extremely viable and Storm being a very important character for equality in the comics and generally just being awesome, the filmmakers simply didn’t know what to do with her, leading to Ororo getting Demoted to Extra. Two issues that make Ororo difficult to adapt is that 1) she has a big backstory unrelated to the other American-based X-Men, being from Kenya where she was worshipped as a goddess and 2) her weather powers are massively varied and costly to film, which is likely why the films at most have her shoot some lightning. Her African background wasn’t touched in the original trilogy with only a Kenyan accent being a nod to her roots, but it was dropped by the second movie. X-Men Apocalypse at least features Ororo as a Street Urchin in Cairo like in the comics, but still use her mainly to shill Mystique and be a Horseman of Apocalypse before demoting her to side character again.
      • Rogue might’ve got the hardest deal when it comes to being adapted to film. One conflicting issue is the two aspects of her character that fans love from the comics: that on one hand she has a great deal of tragedy being unable to touch others (perfect for the core themes of discrimination), but on the other hand she’s also a confident Action Girl Flying Brick similar to Wonder Woman or Supergirl and those two traits don’t often overlap, and the filmmakers were more interested in the former. Another problem for the films is that her origins and powers are closely tied to Carol Danvers whom Fox wasn't allowed to use and wouldn’t appear in a Marvel film until 19 years later. This meant that while Rogue served as a good Audience Surrogate in the first film, the promise of her Taking a Level in Badass like the comics was unfulfilled since the films shifted focus away from Rogue to other characters and no real attempt was made to power her up or move past her timidity. Fair to note X-Men: Evolution goes a similarly reclusive Rogue to match her isolating mutation, though that series still highlights how powerful she is.
      • Psylocke has proven to be a considerable bother to adapt compared to other characters, in the films as well as cartoons. The main problem is that Betsy’s origins are complex even by Marvel standards, being the sister of Captain Britain and a mutant but got kidnapped by the Hand, who subsequently had her mind removed from her original body and placed inside that of a Japanese assassin, which in turn raises the debate of whether she should be played by a Caucasian or Asian actor (in her two film appearances she’s been played by both). Also, while she’s admittedly more of an Anti-Hero than the more traditionally heroic majority of the X-Men, Psylocke is still very much part of the team in the comics; and yet to seemly cut down on the number of characters, most adaptations barring videos games make her an outsider to the team, and the films and Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) make her an outright villain to them. Further not helping matters is how creators can often feel the need to engage in Cast Speciation since she can otherwise seem redundant as a result of how, despite her powers being much flashier than those of Jean Gray and Professor X, she is still explicitly a telepath in a team which already has two other telepaths in its roster. The 90s cartoon and X-Men Apocalypse at least makes some concession for her comic book look and connection to Angel, but that’s about it.
      • Jubilee has had rotten luck when it comes to be adapted to live action (the 90s cartoon at least made her iconic). The difficulty with Jubilee is that unlike other iconic teen appeal characters like Kitty Pryde she’s very much synonymous with the 90s with her garish wardrobe and punk attitude being precisely why fans love her in the first place, however the filmmakers consider her too much of a Unintentional Period Piece and her goofiness too clashing with the more serious tone of the films. This likely why she was Demoted to Extra in the original timeline and wasn’t much more than a cameo for the rebooted films. X-Men '97 managed to make Jubilee popular again by leaning right into how unapologetically 90s she is; whilst also showing her Character Development since the original series.
      • Apocalypse, despite being the most iconic X-Men villain next to Magneto, didn’t make it to screen as successfully as the Master of Magnetism. In the comics, he’s really supposed to be a hulking force of nature very similar to Thanos or Darkseid with his armoured body and self-manipulating powers being Rule of Cool 80s-90s style. Since the X-Men films generally go for a grounded approach when it comes to most characters with CG rarely used for them (barring Colossus and Juggernaut in Deadpool and Deadpool 2), movie Apocalypse was instead poor Oscar Isaac in heavy makeup and the results weren’t quite satisfactory with the lack of his Evil Is Bigger menace making him look closer to Ivan Ooze to some fans. Another issue is that a lot of Apocalypse’s origins are tied to the Celestials, which helps to justify his power. But since the Celestials were off-limits for Fox, Apocalypse’s powers were much vaguer in the film, which made it rather difficult for audiences to understand or comprehend his threat, especially compared to a villain like Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet.

Other

  • For decades, Watchmen was considered impossible to adapt. The reasons include how strongly the storytelling is driven by the comic book panels, the large amount of supplemental material that was connected to the plot, the narrative splitting its time with multiple subplots for each character (every other issue is largely dedicated to revealing backstory of individual characters) and a climax that relies on an enormous left turn. Optioned as a movie for 20 years, Zack Snyder eventually managed to create a film adaptation in 2009 where the solution was largely to embrace the main plot to the degree of replicating many comic panels exactly, while trimming down the subplots (only Dr. Manhattan's origin issue is depicted in its entirety) and modifying the climax to be more cohesive. Neither author Alan Moore nor a number of the book's most devoted fans were happy with it, although the film's appreciation has grown since. A successful miniseries came to HBO in 2019, though it's a Broad Strokes Sequel Series and not an actual adaptation of the comic book.
    • The majority of Alan Moore's works serve as meta-commentary on comic book history, whether it be the tropes contained in those stories or observations on the industry itself, meaning a lot of the commentary is rendered meaningless, or at least loses a lot of its power when removed from its original context. This matches Moore's stated intention of telling stories that can only be told in the medium of comic books.
    • It's a safe bet that we will never get an adaptation of Lost Girls of any kind because of it being literal pornography. The story features re-tellings of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz into dark tales of sexual awakenings and trauma (plus featuring sexual acts depicting teenage girls).
  • Frank Miller actually made Sin City with the intention of making it impossible to adapt to film, since he'd had bad experiences working in film previously. Robert Rodriguez eventually proved it could be done. He also brought on Miller as a co-director, which reignited a passion for films in the author.
  • The Spirit is one of the foundational titles of modern comic books, but also demonstrated to be hard to adapt to other media or new comic-book titles, with DC Comics' Darwyn Cooke run being one of the most successful attempts. Being hard to adapt, there are only 3 attempts to be adapted to other media, all with bad results: the 1987 TV Pilot Movie with Sam Jones as The Spirit, the better-known (and Box Office Bomb) Frank Miller's 2008 version, and the discovered 1980 animated project by Brad Bird that was canceled before it saw the light of day. Much of this is because, while The Spirit is a hugely important work, the Spirit himself is an archetypal urban avenger with no powers, a generic costume, and a personality that basically amounts to "good guy." What made the stories unique was Will Eisner using the initially-bland setup as a springboard for his experiments with the form and the way such stories could be told, to the point that in many stories, the Spirit doesn't even show up. Without Eisner's execution, the deliberately-generic premise is all that's left—this was likely the impetus for the Miller adaptation heavily altering the character, but it backfired due to making him In Name Only.
  • Saga was made with creators Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples having the specific intention of doing things they believed they could never do in a movie or TV show.
  • An adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan's Y: The Last Man had no luck getting off the ground. Vaughan and his co-creator, Pia Guerra, sold the film rights to New Line Cinema that year and they had hoped to start filming the next Fall. The script passed through many hands, including Vaughan’s, but no one could figure out how to compress the story to fit into a film’s runtime. They considered making a trilogy but that idea was also scrapped. It took until 2013 for them to come to a compromised script but by the time filming began, the rights had reverted to Vaughan and Guerra, who by then had decided it made more sense to turn it into a television show. They sold the rights to FX in 2015 but the original showrunner left during the writing phase due to disagreements about how to adapt it. The pilot was finally filmed in fall 2019 but ran into production issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The show finally debuted in 2021 but was canceled before the season finished airing.
  • The Incal takes Alejandro Jodorowsky's ideas for his canceled Dune adaptation and makes a wild, fast-paced sci-fi epic that influenced films like Blade Runner, yet is too broad in scope and filled with spiritual and sexual themes to be feasibly adapted into an actual film. The closest we ever got was The Fifth Element, which hired Mœbius to do concept art, to Jodorowsky's disapproval.
  • Vampirella: Never there has been a more mundane problem. Her costume is so iconic that fans never accept a change (this even holds for the comics themselves). But we're more likely to get our personal jetpacks than a Vampirella costume that stays put during a fighting scene...
  • Despites its acclaim, Achille Talon hasn't been a favoured target for adaptations as the book derives most of its flavour from dense and distinctively verbose wordplay, something that's difficult to translate outside the pages. The one adaptation it got, a 90s cartoon, which was renamed Walter Melon in English markets, made no attempt to adapt the comics, instead going for a series of TV and movie spoofs.
  • Many well-known furry comics fall on this for a myriad of reasons, starting with the very well-known fact, at least in English-speaking countries, that the Furry Fandom in such countries had a very negative stereotype of being a den of every single sexual deviancy known to man, something that many western animation studios want to avoid at any cost. It doesn't help some well-known franchises and titles are known for embracing some of those stereotypes in full force without guilt, much for the chagrin of many fans. And there's the specific cases of these following titles:
    • Albedo: Erma Felna EDF zigzags between this trope and No Adaptations Allowed in a very specific context. While the author, Steve Gallacci, has stated he wouldn't be opposed to adapt this comic to animation, he is also notorious for sticking on his guns on the way on how the comic should be adapted, including Gallacci having complete creative control on any likely adaptation, something that most American and western animation studios traditionally refuse. Furthermore, the comic itself is notorious for having a very complex and confusing story, which also deals with very controversial topics, including the fact that the main antagonist force, the Independent Lepine Republic, according with the author, is modeled after the United States, its army and many of the most negative stereotypes associated with Americans, including racism, xenophobia, extreme militarism, wanton use of weapons of mass destruction, etc., while the main protagonist forces, the Extraplanetary Defense Force and the Confederation of Planets, are mainly communists.
    • Extinctioners is a rather interesting case when this trope could be applied for reasons outside the actual content of the comic:
      • While the comic is rather tame in content and most of the Fanservice parts are nothing beyond you could see on any mainstream superhero comic, the original author, Shawntae Howard, is notorious for not having problems with drawing hardcore porn of his own characters on both his FurAffinity and Patreon pages, something that would likely put a dent in any attempt at adapting the comic to animation without Howard himself sanitizing his homepage first, something he has stated he would refuse to do if asked.
      • Howard has stated that, in the case of a possible adaptation, he wants one of the main characters, a gorilla named Warfare, to be voiced by an African American voice actor (with Keith David being one of his main choices), ignoring the fact that African American voice actors normally refuse to voice gorillas and primates for racial reasons. For the record, Howard is African American himself, so this could be justified in some way.
      • The comic itself has being accused by many fans of being too similar to X-Men and many characters being very transparent expies of many characters from both Marvel and DC, except with a furry paintjob, which likely put any lawyer on his knees to avoid a lawsuit from both companies, as well as Disney, Marvel's owner.

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