What I would like:

Courtney

If anything deserves to have an absolutely faithful animated version made of it, it's Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things. This comic by Ted Naifeh embodies everything I love about fairies, wizards, and witches.

By "absolutely faithful," I mean that it should be animated exactly as Ted drew it and wrote it -- nothing added (unless Mr Naifeh wants to add something he may have omitted in the comic), nothing taken away. No directorial indulgences nor toning things down to appeal to the kiddies or to placate angry religious fanatics.

News tells that Fox has picked it up for a live action movie version. I have mixed feelings about that. Personally, I would much rather see it animated. Indeed, it would be a dream project for me. I can think of nothing I'd rather animate (aside from my personal projects, naturally -- I'm talking about paying work here) other than this. Now if only The Dream by Birthday Massacre could be snuck onto the soundtrack, it would be all the better, methinks.

My fear about the Fox movie is that it will change it into something other than what it is. I have never seen a faithful comic-to-movie adaptation, and there is absolutely no reason for that. Unlike novels-to-movies, a comic is already in a visual medium, complete with timing. It is already written for the screen. Indeed, movies are shot from storyboards, which are, essentially, comics. So, while this movie will no doubt be a good thing in terms of money and exposure for Mr Naifeh, I think I'll stick with the comics.

At the time of this writing, I have read two of the completed stories in the Courtney Crumrin series (a third has recently been released). It concerns a young outcast girl brought to a new town by her vacuous socialite parents to live with the family patriarch -- a brooding, reclusive, and imposing gentleman. Courtney immediately becomes the object of torment at the local school, and soon happens upon hidden things belonging to her grandfather, providing knowledge of a sort that is very useful in her travails, both pedestrian and otherworldly.

A premise that could easily have failed at the hands of a lesser writer, this story is told masterfully and is satisfying all the way through. The art is appealing and both stylised and detailed, and the writing is rich with folkloric detail, which appears to be primarily from Celtic sources if I recognise it correctly. The only other comic that I've read that so well utilised such folklore was the original Mage: The Hero Discovered series by Matt Wagner. Both are highly recommended.