Franka was a bit hesitant to include herself as one of the ‘characters’ in Solicitations. But I knew she had to appear at some point. This cannot just be a Curt and Marv show after all. And I think her introduction to the stage is very good.
When you own a comic book store you do have a lot of debates that rage within it. Who is stronger? Weaker? Who can beat up Wolverine? That sort of thing. But I think one of the most popular debates has to be who started the comic book movie fever. Was it Blade, starring Wesley Snipes? Or was it X-Men that introduced Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to the world?
It is hard to say. But being a teenager at the time when Blade came out, and someone who actually saw it in the cinema, I might have an opinion on this.
Frankly, there were a whole lot of vampire movies during this period, both good and bad (*cough* Van Helsing *cough*; *hack* Dracula 2000 *hack*). Vampire movies were cool, and face it, comic book movies were not, thank you Batman and Robin. So if you had a vampire property on your hands you would push that production right up to the top because they were getting green lit left and right. If Blade was pitched as a comic book movie, would it have made it through that studio oversight scrutiny and be allowed to live? Probably not.
So for this, I do have to agree with Franka. And not just because she is our in-house artist and drawing this comic, which incidentally gives her a lot of power especially as it pertains to my depiction. But simply because she is right.