As we are all aware, the current trend in Hollywood is to scoop up and option nearly every comic book property or graphic novel possible and turn it into a movie or television show. Of course, this has been met with varying amounts of success. For every The Dark Knight and American Splendor, we get five Constantine's and Fantastic Four's. This new feature has a lofty goal; we hope to educate those without previous knowledge of a comic property to become familiar with franchises that have recently been picked up for a film or television series. In doing so, hopefully we can train the untrained eyes to spot weaknesses in a film's development so that some day, Hollywood bigwigs will have no choice but to produce faithful and quality works based on our favorite sequential art.
Our usual approach to Source Material is to garner the unfamiliar prepared enough to see a film without actually ever reading the original book. While I rather inspire you to read the original material on your own, rather than taking what I say word for word, times are tough and moolah is scarce. I can personally guarantee there will be no spoilers. If you find a spoiler, I give you permission to keep my first born.
Traditionally, Source Material has taken a look at films that have yet to be theatrically released, but I thought I'd shake it up a bit and use this edition to take a look at The Surrogates, the comic series that is the basis for the Bruce Willis vehicle Surrogates, hitting DVD and Blu-ray on January 26th.
While the film deviates a bit from the original story, it's important to know where the concepts and themes originated, and that would be smack dab in the middle of Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele's The Surrogates #1-5 from Top Shelf Productions, released back in late 2005.
The Surrogates presents the situation almost without bias, showing both the benefits and the drawbacks of a society that, as Venditti puts it, has been "reduced to a data stream." Weldele's art is wonderfully abstract often only using sketchy ink lines and solid colors to tell his story, yet every panel is visceral. Venditti also throws in a wealth of supplementary material at the end of each issue, ranging from fictional essays by scholars about the adoption of surrogates by the mainstream, to transcripts of news telecasts, all of which provide the vivid depiction of the future world that The Surrogates explores.
The main narrative of The Surrogates involves old-timer cop Harvey Greer and his partner, Peter Ford, investigating an ongoing conspiracy to disable all surrogate units within their city. Believing the culprit to be connected to a figure from the past, known as The Prophet, an extremist anti-surrogate leader, Greer and Ford have to race against the clock to solve the case before all of the pieces come together and the bad guys get what they want.
It's an incredibly involving read that shows off Venditti's natural abilties not only for world building but for characterization as well. Most recently, Venditti and Weldele followed it up with a prequel mini-series, The Surrogates: Flesh & Bone.
