Hacker News Books

Allow me to add Elfquest, Cerebus the Aardvark, TMNT, Love and Rockets, and R. Crumb! Not sure if all of those are American or not, but a few of the non-superhero books I (as an American) grew up with.

Of course none of them was ever that widely known (apart from TMNT after it stopped being a comic), so the original point about the US and superheroes certainly remains.

I imagine it's partly due to the legacy of the CCA [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority].

Same question for a ton of science fiction and fantasy. Some things that could be excellent on the silver screen, or as a television series:

• Fritz Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser".

I've not seen anything indicating anyone has ever even started development on a movie for this.

• Richard and Wendy Pini's "Elfquest".

Warner Brothers announced this in 2008, but canned it because they thought it might compete with another project of theirs, "The Hobbit".

• Larry Niven's Known Space series.

One Known Space short story made it to TV: "The Soft Weapon" was adapted to the Star Trek universe and became the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "The Slaver Weapon", with Mr. Spock taking the place of Nessus the Puppeteer.

Ringworld has been in planning as a movie or miniseries at least three separate times, but never got past development.

• Anne McCaffrey's Pern series.

This actually got so far as casting and set building, and was within a few days of starting shooting for a pilot for a TV series for Warner Brothers Network, but when the showrunner presented the final pilot script to Warner Brothers for approval, they sent it back with so many changes it no longer resembled Pern (the changes have been described as turning it into something like a cross between Buffy and Xena). The showrunner, Ronald D. Moore, was a fan of the books and quit rather than accept the changes, and the project died.

There have been a couple of announcements since then, but as far as I know none ever went past announcing hiring a screenwriter and maybe an executive producer and then never being heard from again.