Why Seth Rogan Shouldn’t Handle Comic Book Properties

 
Polygon interviewed actor-producer Rogen, who’s got a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon in theaters, about certain positions he takes regarding mainstream and independent comic properties, but there’s reasons why his statements ring hollow.
 
First:
 
You’re quietly one of the biggest producers of indie comics adaptations in Hollywood. Preacher, The Boys, Invincible, and going back to The Green Hornet. How do you define your taste in comics? What kind of comic is the comic that grips you so hard that you go, Yeah, I think I want to make this my job for a year?
Well, first of all, it’s  everything that is not Marvel and DC . [laughs] So that eliminates a lot right away. I grew up going to comic book shops, and it’s funny, video stores are making a slight comeback in some ways. This idea of browsing and not having things fed to you — as I think people feel we are now when it comes to entertainment — but instead entering the fair market of entertainment and just wandering around and seeing what catches your eye. […]
What has  turned you off from Marvel and DC ?
Honestly, probably fear. [laughs] We really have a pretty specific way we work; me and Evan have been writers for 20 years at this point. It’s a  fear of the process , honestly. And I say that  knowing nothing about the process . There are a lot of Marvel things I love.
It’s mostly a fear of  how would we plug into the system they have in place, which seems like a very good system, and a system that serves them very well.  But is it a system that we would  ultimately get really frustrated with ? And what’s nice about [Mutant Mayhem] is that  we’re the producers of this. So we dictated the system, and we dictated the process in a lot of ways. And that’s what’s also appealing for us about The Boys and the other bigger franchise-y type things we’ve done, is that we are creating the infrastructure and process for them, not plugging into someone else’s infrastructure and process. We’re control freaks !
 
If it weren’t for the pretensions I realized Rogen’s got, his arguments – which sound like a complaint about the lack of creative freedom now problemizing the major movies – this would’ve been a lot more impressive, and more on which anon. Until then, here’s something else that comes up that merely dampens the impact even more:
 
Do you have comics on your bucket list for adaptation? Or, alternatively, what comics are you reading these days that you can’t put down?
That’s a good question. What have I been reading? I read old comics, from time to time. There’s these Green Lantern comics I’ve been reading,  I love all those Grant Morrison Superman ones, I was rereading those because I heard that that’s what the James Gunn Superman movie was gonna be inspired by.  I read them when they first came out, but I feel like I was distracted, so I went back.
Are there any that I wish we could make or adapt? Every once in a while? Yeah,  those Grant Morrison ones are really appealing . We3 is something I’m a big fan of. It seems maybe just too sad honestly; it just bummed me out.
[Ed. note: We3 is a comic series written by Grant Morrison and drawn by Frank Quitely about a trio of weaponized cyborg-animal hybrids.  It’s infamous for its extreme violence and extreme pathos .]
We’ve kind of been down that road — and we know Grant a little bit, we’ve talked to him. That’s what’s nice, is we’ve done well with things that were traditionally considered unmakeable, essentially, for a long time. But also  we don’t want to ruin things we love . So we’ll have very honest conversations with Grant and just talk about it and where his head’s at, and where our heads are at. Things like We3, we’ve talked to him about several times over the years. And we’re kind of always like, Yeah, I just don’t think this is the thing right now. There’s things like that —  we really talk to the creators to make sure that we all think it’s a good idea , at that moment, in that way.
 
Well if the overrated liberal ideologue Morrison’s take on Supes is the wellspring Gunn wants to go by, that’s all realists need to know for why any upcoming film is best avoided. And look at that, a most violent comic is what Rogen considers inspirational.
 


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