So, I got round to seeing Wanted, with a writer friend who I have occasional ‘man dates’ with where we go and see films together that no self-respecting woman would be seen at. And so far we’ve picked on films that have their origins in comics, what with the pair of us being comics geeks. Only, after Wanted I’m left wondering why studios persist in going for the big whizzbang kind of comics, when the medium has so much more to offer that could bring something fresh to the screen…

I’ve not actually read the series that Wanted is based on, having very mixed feelings about its author, Mark Millar. He did a pretty fine job on The Ultimates for Marvel, reinventing some of the company’s core characters for a new cine-literate generation, but I find his grandstanding hype and mixed-up politics put me off much of his other work. Plus, there’s the feeling that he’s better at the big shocking concept than the actual delivery.

The idea behind Wanted is simple enough: what if you found out you weren’t just an average citizen, but had amazing abilities, and could use your powers to shape the destiny of the world? Classic adolescent powertrip stuff in other words, and that’s pretty much the film in a nutshell. Beyond that, it’s spectacle piled on top of spectacle, connected by some frankly ludicrous ideas. Trains crashing into canyons while people fight on board. Secret mind powers that allow you to bend bullets round corners. A lorryload of rats wired up to explode the baddy’s base. The baddy’s base itself, to all intents and purposes a castle in a previously overlooked medieval quarter of New York. Riffs from Fight Club and The Matrix recycled blandly like the soundtrack’s generic guitar attack. It’s all kind of fun at the most superficial level, but five minutes after it had finished we were discussing something else entirely, since the whole was utterly devoid of content.

All is not lost though. There are some fabulous comics out there coming to the screen sooner or later, and the one I’m particularly keen to see is Y: The Last Man. Brian K Vaughan’s series for Vertigo is now available in full as ten trade paperbacks, and there are more ideas of consequence in there than have troubled Millar for his whole life.

The core concept is that one man and his pet monkey somehow survive an apocalypse which wipes out all other males of every species. It’s a big dumb B-movie conceit, and Vaughan knows how to write action-packed stories with cracking cliffhangers. But he also knows how to populate them with characters you care about, and ideas that drive stories which zig when you think they’re going to zag, and consistently pulse with intelligence regarding issues of gender, politics, and the practicalities of living in a post-apocalyptic world.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against action blockbusters and in particular ones based on comics. I absolutely loved Iron Man, and am really looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s next Batman film. But there’s an awful lot of chaff out there that could be replaced if studios forgot about looking at the big names in comics and searched around some more for quirkier talent.

And maybe that’s starting to happen: Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s stunning animal action escapade We3 is coming to a cinema soon enough, with Morrison himself writing a script that’s received considerable acclaim from those who’ve read it. Andy Diggle and Jock’s excellent political thriller Losers is on the way too, or was when I last heard anything. Let’s hope those films do their source material justice, and maybe even send people from the cinemas to book shops or comics stores to pick up the stories that inspired the films.