Shows adaptive from books or comics

[im bored 2]

The Teen Titans was toned down a little bit, but they did have their serious moments, the story arcs from season 1, 2, and 4 for sure, were very serious and dramatic storylines.

I liked that it was toned down, I like action shows that can also make me laugh. For those that say the characters both hero and villain were to silly, they are less silly than the Kim Possible characters.

[LYNTY]

My take:

Filmation, for all its faults, tended to stay on point with their literary adaptations, with one big exception.

The studio stupidly decided that the Hardy Boys had to be a rock band (1969). Granted, this predated the live-action series that made a teen idol out of Shaun Cassidy by 7-8 years, but by targeting the bubblegum pop audience they themselves mined a year earlier with the Archies, Filmation misfired badly with the Hardys. The work done with Superman, Tarzan, Zorro, Flash Gordon, et al, on the other hand, was largely on point.

Comics adaptations in the last four decades have suffered from creative misguidance. Consider the following:

Plastic Man (Ruby-Spears/ABC, 1979-81): Woozy Winks is replaced by a Hawaiian bumbler (Hula-Hula) AND a sexy Southern belle (Penny), who'd marry Plas off camera in between seasons, despite the fact that Plas had been chasing the female Chief.

The Thing (H-B/NBC, 1979-80): Ben Grimm suddenly becomes a teenage shapeshifter for his solo series? Someone at either the studio or the network must've been on daily cocaine highs to diss the FF for a 2nd season (we won't talk about the 1978 DFE FF series).

Most Marvel shows of the last decade plus have fallen to compressed continuity, meaning, the producers are picking certain aspects from different eras (see X-Men for an example) and trying to mush them together. It doesn't always work.

Spider-Man Unlimited & Avengers (Saban/Fox 1999) were thrown under the Pokemon Express and cancelled rather quickly before building an audience. Given how Saban screwed up the latter series, well......!:shrug:

[Juztyn]

My point is that replacing drama with comedy isn't dumbing down, but rather shifting focuses.

[flyme9sky]

The Little Lulu Show - based on the comic strip Little Lulu by Marjorie Henderson Buell.

[its meeeee!]

Charlie Brown also is cartoon but in reality is a comic.

[horse luver xo]

How about:
Arthur
Curious George
The Magic School Bus
Timothy Goes to School
Marvin the Tap Dancing Horse
George Shrinks
Rolie Polie Olie
The Puppy's New Adventures
Seven Little Monsters
Berenstain Bears
Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat
Remy
Belle and Sebastian
The World of David the Gnome

...all were based on children's books.

[wlameron_123]

Yes, Tim Curry's Hook is by far my favorite interpretation of the character.

The Adventures of Blake and Mortimer

Based on one of my favorite comics, this cartoon was a good adaption, not on par with, say, Batman:TAS but I still found it highly enjoyable. Alot of things were changed from the original stories though, such as having Blake along for the ride in the time-machine in The Diabolical Trap or replacing the asian enemy in The Secret of The Swordfish to caucasians in black uniforms (I suppose the latter change was due to political correctness).

[Nara]

Even thought this doesn't really qualify as a series, as this was just a movie, It did have a Novel/book overtone.

Rankin/Bass Came out in 1982 with an animated feature called The Flight of Dragons. This animated film was based off the Novel by Gordon R. *****on Called The Dragon and the George.

So in a way this does meet the Bood adpatation rule.. even though it is a "one shot."

:coyote:

[CRP]

I think the 90s X-Men the animated series, was probably one of the best comic to animation translations I can think of in the last 20 years. While the cast may have been different from some of the cast members in the comic the story adaptations were pretty darn close to that of the comics, in particular the Dark Phoenix Saga. Sure they changed some things for the show (Jean didn't "die", Rogue replaced Collossus), but overall, if you had read the stories you were pleased with the results.

The inital 2000 TMNT story run had stories in it that were directly from the original Mirage comics in look and feel.

The one animated translation from comic to toon I think that actually improved on the comic material were all the Batman TAS and Justice League Unlimited series. I have found the stories told in them and characterizations to be actually better than they are in the comics (John Stewart GL as a big, so much better on the show than in the comic example).

[Coffee?pie?both?]

Spider-Man Unlimited to me had a lot of promise because in my opinion, while the costume was different, the character of Spider-Man felt more and sounded more like what "Spider-Man" should have than how he was done in the Animated Series (he was way too whiney and not quippy enough for me like he was in Unlimited). PLus, with it being a different dimension they had more freedom to do different things while still having other Marvel Characters you normally wouldn't see on screen.


OH, Silver Surfer was a good adaptation from comic to toon.