The track record of comic book-based films is well established in Hollywood, so where better to announce the optioning of more four-color 'funny' books than at Comic-Con International in San Diego, where the studios, as Variety so archly puts it, 'Court the Nerd Herd.'  Therefore it comes as no surprise that Warner Bros., DC Comics' parent company and the studio responsible for Batman Begins and Superman Returns, would choose America's largest comic convention as the place to announce the optioning of two additional DC titles, Deadman and The Doom Patrol.

Horror maestro Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy) does appear to be the perfect choice to direct an movie adaptation of Deadman.  Created by Arnold Drake and Carmine Infantino in 1967, Deadman is the story of a trapeze artist killed during his act who was granted the power to possess any living being in order to find his killer, and who, in the course of this Fugitive-length quest for his murderer, ends up helping a lot of people he meets along the way.

The Doom Patrol, a misfit collection 'differently' empowered superheroes, also had its genesis during the 1960s, but it is to be hoped that screenwriter Adam Turner, who Warner Bros. has commissioned to pen The Doom Patrol adaptation, will pay particular attention to the bizarre and highly inventive storylines created by writer Grant Morrison during his tenure on the title during the late 1980s.