Hero Nation: John Carpenter, JJ Abrams Join Hollywood Push Into Comics

John Carpenter is taking his Hollywood horror sensibilities to Gotham City, with DC Comics recent announcement that the director of The Thing, Halloween, and The Fog is co-writing a special 40-page Joker comic book.

Carpenter isnt the only Hollywood notable dabbling in the comic book world — far from it, in fact, hes actually part of a crush of celebrity tourists who are putting their names on comics. The allure for some is the IP creation opportunities, while others hope to tap into the evolving mediums new indie-spirited cachet. For some its a purer pursuit, a low-cost way to produce a pet project or a nostalgic lark that reconnects them with comics traditions and characters they loved in their own youth.

With Hollywood poised to make its annual southbound pilgrimage to San Diegos Comic-Con International this week, heres a look at two dozen notable show-biz names who have turned to comic books as a career sidekick to their day jobs that made lead to heroic upsides.

John Carpenter: The horror legend made his first foray into comics with a Big Trouble in Little China sequel story for Boom! Studios that he co-wrote with Anthony Burch. Burch, whose credits include the Borderlands 2 video game, will also co-write The Joker: Year of the Villain #1, which hits stores October 2.

JJ Abrams: The filmmaker who has added new chapters to the Star Trek and Mission: Impossible legacy is taking on a third signature creation of the 1960s: Marvels Spider-Man. Abrams and his 20-year-old son, Henry Abrams, will introduce a character named Cadaverous in their five-issue monthly mini-series beginning in September.

Nicholas Cage: The Oscar-winning actor is an avid comic book fan and in 2008 he published one of his own: Voodoo Child, a limited series set in post-Katrina Louisiana and co-written by the actors son, Weston Coppola Cage. The supernatural tale sounds like a Jimi Hendrix song but tells a supernatural tale that tracks back to a plantation slaying in 1860.

Richard Donner: The director of Superman (1978) returned to Metropolis last year by co-writing the 1000th issue of Action Comics, which marked the 80th anniversary of the Man of Steels first appearance. Adding to the sentimental aura: Donners collaborator was Geoff Johns, the DC superstar and TV producer who once worked as the filmmakers assistant.

Steve Aoki: The electronic music producer and DJ is one of the celebs headed down to Comic-Con this week in San Diego to promote a comics project. For Aoki its his Neon Future, the inaugural series for new publisher Impact Theory. Instead of dystopian vision of the future, its a sci-fi tale that sees humanitys best future as the merging between humans and technology. The central character is Kita Sovee — an anagram for Aokis name.

Samuel L. Jackson: The actor who has portrayed Nick Fury in 11 feature films is a longtime fan of comic books. In 2010, Jackson and collaborator Eric Calderon were looking for a follow-up to their Emmy-nominated animated adventure Afro-Samurai and they found it with Boom! Comics and Cold Space, an sci-fi Western about an interplanetary outlaw modeled on Jackson.

Lena Dunham: The star and creator of the HBO series Girls grew up adoring Archie Comics so she was giddy in 2014 to announce on Jimmy Kimmel Live that she would be writing a four-issue “feminist update” that centered on a reality show arriving at Riverdale High. The project was nixed, however, apparently by the same editorial-strategy revamp that led to the frothy Fox hit Riverdale.

Guy Ritchie: The Sherlock Holmes director was so smitten by the film version of Frank Miller Sin City that he wanted to experiment himself in the noir epics native medium. He got his chance in 2007 when Richard Bransons Virgin Comics published the international revenge thriller Guy Ritchies Gamekeeper.

William Shatner: The Star Trek icon was putting his name on comic books long before anyone in Hollywood considered it a trendy career move. In 1992, DC Comics published William Shatners TekWar, an adaptation of the prose sci-fi novel, and three years later Marvel matched with a comics version of his Starfleet novel, Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden. Shatners name would become a persistent presence in comics over the next three decades but often primarily as a branding presence.

Wesley Snipes & Antoine Fuqua: Snipes was the star of the Blade franchise (one of the first successful Marvel adaptations) and Fuqua is best known as the director of Training Day. The pair teamed for a 2010 graphic novella called After Dark, a near-future sci-fi tale about an Earth plunged into unending darkness.

Sam Worthington: The Avatar actor and two buddies from back home launched the Full Clip imprint for Radical Comics in 2010. Their series Damaged was well-reviewed and a film adaptation was in development with Worthington set to produce and star. Radical shut down a few years later, however, reducing Full Clip to an empty-chamber status.

John Woo: The Hong Kong action-film auteur described comic books as “the ultimate storyboard” when he took on Seven Brothers, a modern-day epic rooted in Chinese folklore. But comics star Garth Ennis (Preacher) scripted the six-issue Virgin Comics series and conceded that Woos input was limited: “I got a two-paragraph outline of the original Chinese legend and the broad strokes of the characters, and after that it was up to me.”

Patton Oswalt: The actor and comedian showed serious chops when he began moonlighting in the comics world. Oswalts 2003 debut writing DC Comics Justice League: Welcome to the Working Week, in which he introduced offbeat characters like Murder Parade, Glimpse and Wishgun. Oswalts subsequent credits in comics include The Goon: Noir, Serenity: Float Out and Bart Simpsons Treehouse of Horror.

Joss Whedon: Has any Hollywood import navigated the comics world more deftly than Whedon? The lifelong comics fan came back to the medium as a writer when Dark Horse Comics (and, later, IDW Publishing) gave Whedon a publishing platform to expand and extend the mythology of his Fox shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Whedon wowed Marvel readers, too, with his Astonishing X-Men run, which spanned 24 issues over four years (2004-2008).

Michael Chiklis: The star of FXs The Shield grew up loving Marvel Comics and, after co-starring in two Fantastic Four films for Fox, was eager to get a foothold in comics (especially if it might yield a movie adaptation with him as the lead). The result: IDW Publishings Pantheon, which pits the Greek gods (including Zeus, modeled on Chiklis) against the Titans in modern day Miami as the apocalypse looms. No film materialized.

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