While the United States is a global leader in the production of films based on comic strips and books, it is hardly
the only player on the field. In Europe, for example,
while not as widely respected as cinema, comics are more
widely celebrated than they are in America. Despite this
fact, fewer comic book series have been adapted to film.
In the 1960s, Belgium’s most celebrated comic book
hero, Tintin, became the star of two live-action films
starring Jean-Pierre Talbot (b. 1943) as the intrepid boy
reporter. Tintin was later the subject of a series of animated films. Neither series was particularly successful,
especially in relation to the overwhelming global popularity of the comic books. Perhaps the most famous comicbook-to-film transformation in Europe is Barbarella
(Roger Vadim, 1968), with Jane Fonda (b. 1937) as
Jean-Claude Forest’s queen of the galaxy, now celebrated
as a camp classic. At the turn of the century, the highly
popular Aste ´rix comic books by Rene´ Goscinny and
Albert Uderzo were made into three French blockbusters:
Aste ´rix et Obe ´lix contre Ce ´sar (Asterix and Obelix vs.
Caesar, 1999), Aste ´rix et Obe ´lix: Mission Cle ´opaˆtre
(Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, 2002, and Aste ´rix
et les Vikings (Asterix and the Vikings, 2006). Similarly,
Jean-Michel Charlier and Jean Giraud’s revisionist western comic series, Blueberry, became a big-budget international coproduction starring Vincent Cassel (b. 1966) in
2004.
Another nation whose film culture is inextricably
linked to its comics culture is Japan. The relationship
between manga (Japanese comic books) and anime
(Japanese animation) is very close, with popular comic
books regularly transformed into animated series made
for film and television, and popular films often re-created
as comic book series. Exemplary in this area is the work
of Osamu Tezuka, the most celebrated cartoonist in
Japan, whose many works to have been adapted to film
include Hi No Tori (The Phoenix, 1978), Shin Tetsuwan
Atom (Astroboy, 1980), and Kimba the White Lion (1966).
Among the most popular of Japanese transmedia hits are
Akira (1988) and the Crying Freeman, Dragon Ball Z,
Maison Ikkoku, and Silent Mo¨bius films of the 1980s and
1990s, among hundreds of other examples. Hayao
Miyazaki (b. 1941) is one of the most famous filmmakers
whose works, including Kaze no tani no Naushika
(Nausicaa¨ of the Valley of the Winds, 1984), are available
as both comics and films. Manga series are also produced
as live-action adaptations, though less often. One example is Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima’s 9,000 page
samurai epic, Kozure Oˆ kami (Lone Wolf and Cub), which
was partially adapted as a series of six films between 1972
and 1974.