Crash. Bang. Wallop. Rocksteady brought to grand, videogame fruition a canon of graphic novel influences in its rendition of Arkham Asylum. It was interesting to find a developer working closer to a blueprint laid out by a grade-A writer of the comics (Paul Dini) than using the money-spinning blueprint of the film released within cash-in distance. Perhaps both an acknowledgement of the unified nature of the comics geek/videogame fanboy and the well-known staleness of the film-to-game tie-in, it encourages thoughts about what other funny-books would make a neat transition and how interchangeable the two mediums are.

The comics medium is actually a more relevant contemporary template than film for the games industry even though, due to pricing, they may seem worlds apart. Birthed a little later, hated on a little more, comics have traversed the cultural trials of acceptance and encountered the creative blockades games have only recently been faced with. Both mediums have flourished in times of crisis (the current recession is perhaps the WWII of the games industry - invigorating sales and warranting newspaper column inches). Comics, too, have had to come to terms with the holy trinity of sales challenges presented by digital distribution/out-pricing themselves in their own market/piracy. So what can be learnt? Firstly, taking the comics template, the film adaptations will get better. We're currently in the equivalent of comics' 1980s and early 90s. David Hasselhoff was playing Nick Fury, Dolph Lundgren was playing The Punisher - there was a light acknowledgement of the medium's draw and creative worth but it was being exploited by the wrong people with the wrong approach. It took a good chunk of change and a realisation that good storytellers needed to tell these good stories, and so should it be with games. The argument that games are based more on aesthetics than story should be welcomed rather than battled - perhaps we do need primarily good aesthetical engineers to do justice to our videogame worlds on the silver screen. Perhaps Zack Snyder would do better justice to a Gears of War or a Halo than a Ridley Scott. Second, the hardcore and mass markets will always co-exist and always clash heads. And, as “event” stories like House of M and Civil War will attest, when the big players try to cater to both worlds nobody wins. The most interesting analysis of comics, however, won’t be of where they’ve been, but where they’re going. Having conquered Hollywood with commercial successes now married to fuller realizations of the core material (Iron Man, The Dark Knight), all eyes should be on the comics spinners to see what effect all this profit and mass media attention has on the medium and what we can learn from its time in the spotlight. Is there a correlation – inverse or otherwise – between the commercial success and the creative risks and riches on offer?

On a lighter, less fiscal note, here are some comics series and runs that are just begging for pixel power:

DMZ – Brian Wood/Riccardo Burchielli Point and shoot. It's not a soldier but a journalist caught up in the fictional civil war on New York soil in Brian Wood's seminal series about politics, power and the human spirit. The setting makes Escape from New York look like Club Tropicana and the clannish alliances dotted around the desolated Manhattan would present a fantastic, eccentric array of NPC/user clans. Think Jet Set Radio's looks and attitude married to Freedom Fighters’ sense of progression and drama.

Queen and Country – Greg Rucka More politics, this time its politics versus the spy. A female spy. With a conscience. Forget No One Lives Forever and Joanna Dark, the protagonist of Rucka’s series – Tara Chase - is a shaken, vulnerable spec ops worker trapped in the moral and bureaucratic web of international political intervention and corruption. Set in and amongst real, contemporary conflicts, Queen and Country would make for a thrilling and challenging journey through war and its psychological trials.

Daredevil (Vol 2 – 13) – Brian Michael Bendis/Alex Maleev Clocking in at around the 60-issue mark, the length of Bendis’ run on Marvel’s under-dog belies both his success with the character and his wealth of imagination. From “Out” to “The Murdock Papers”, Bendis drags blind lawyer and night-shift tights-model Matt Murdock through the mud of New York’s criminal classes and culture clashes. From court-room to crime scene, Alex Maleev’s artwork is bleak, robust and a perfect companion to Bendis’ sparse, economic language. This is superhero noir as it should be. The idea of a blind protagonist may sound ridiculous for an interactive title, but the story here would work almost frame-for-frame as a point-and-click adventure (tweaked, of course, to provide more exploratory incentive). A wordless issue, a stunning, affecting dream sequence and the best fisticuffs in comics’ history are just the icing on Maleev’s beautifully painted canvas.

Strontium Dog – Various 2000AD’s nomadic bounty hunter Strontium Dog’s (a racial slur against the breed’s Search and Destroy forced occupation and mutant status) journey through the under-world of space’s darkest places is an ideas factory ripe for transference. The cast of characters, the locales and the good-Samaritan message would make for a space GTA with a moral heart. Rebellion has flirted with the 2000AD cast (Rogue Trooper, Dredd vs. Death) but they’ve yet to blow the bloody doors off this British comics creative stronghold.