Comics pitch

Most people in Hollywood pitch movies. Barry Levine just hands out comic books.

He’s not alone, either. After the success of “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man” and more than a dozen other megahit movies based on comic books in recent years, Hollywood players are climbing over one another for comics properties like gamblers trying to pump coins into the same slot machine. Unlike most of those gamblers, though, Levine decided the easiest way to find the jackpot was to build the slot machine.

“Right now in Hollywood, the rush is on, comic books are the new sensation, and they are not going away,” said Levine, president of Radical Publishing, which began putting out comics this year with sleek production values. “What’s happened already is impossible to ignore, but what’s happening now and what’s going to happen next is even more interesting.”

Levine is hoping to be part of that next happening by treating every comic book as if it is a storyboard for a film that’s just waiting to be made. There’s “Caliber,” the tale of King Arthur reimagined as an Old West adventure, in which the magic sword is replaced with a six-shooter and Merlin is a Native American shaman; the future police-state tale “City of Dust,” a sort of tricked-out “Blade Runner” channeling of George Orwell’s thought-crime fears; and a bloody take on “Hercules,” in which the embittered man-god runs with an ancient, all-star mercenary group, a sort of “300” version of “The Magnificent Seven.”

So far, so good

Yes, at Radical it’s all high concept, all the time. And Hollywood is paying attention.

Peter Berg, director of “Hancock” and “The Kingdom,” has a deal in place to produce and direct that grim version of “Hercules,” while Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil, is on board for a “Caliber” adaptation that has John Woo (“Face/Off”) attached as director. Bryan Singer, the director of “X-Men” and “The Usual Suspects,” has signed on to produce an adaptation of “Freedom Formula,” a Radical title about racing teams in the wastelands of the far future.

For comics fans too, Radical has brought in notable creators, among them top horror writer Steve Niles (“30 Days of Night” and “Criminal Macabre”) and Jim Steranko, one of the more celebrated and influential artists during Marvel Comics’ 1960s and ‘70s glory days.

“These are very exciting times for us,” Levine said, patting a stack of the comic books Radical has produced.

Exciting, yes, but then the roulette table is always exciting while the wheel is still spinning. Will the gambles pay off? It’s too early to say. Sure, those three projects could unleash the Radical comics era in Hollywood . . . or they may never make it past a press release.

Levine, who came up in the rock world as a photographer, knows all this but feels he can see the matrix of the moment. He said he works closely with the writers to refine the characters and their story no matter how long it takes; early on, he took an intense micromanaging role over art direction and guiding the Singapore studio that gives the Radical line its signature look, with its lush, fully painted panels.

“The concept is 50%, and the art -- the look -- is the other 50%. Look, doing the kind of photography I used to do, it wasn’t just getting the band in the studio. It didn’t matter if it was Queen, KISS, Thin Lizzy, ABBA, the [Sex] Pistols, anybody, it was always about creating an environment that made them seem larger than life. All of that, every bit, helps me now.”

Levine said Radical has a discretionary fund to buy scripts and a guiding principle of putting together packages with a writer and director attached, so he can “walk into studios in an advanced stage of development, not with my hat in my hand.”

The man doesn’t lack confidence. He was a protege of Gene Simmons, the relentless business mind and stage tongue of KISS, and from that rock monster in makeup he learned how to market a visual.

“If you can’t recognize an album cover in three seconds in the store from a poster or a one-sheet, then you’ve lost the audience,” said Levine, whose striking covers include Motley Crue’s “Shout at the Devil.”

Others have tried

Still, the concept behind Radical isn’t exactly, well, radical.

Take another venture, Virgin Comics, which made a splashy arrival in 2005 but eventually sank. As the familiar name hints, it was part of British mogul Richard Branson’s empire. The two key figures were Gotham Chopra (son of author Deepak Chopra) and Sharad Devarajan, who lined up a roster of comics creators that sounded like a pop culture game of Mad Libs: Nicolas Cage, Duran Duran, Jenna Jameson and Terry Gilliam among them. The defining goal of the company was to have Hollywood names make comics and then turn those comics into movies.

There were encouraging moments, but amid the economic churn, the center didn’t hold and earlier this year Branson pulled out. Chopra and Devarajan now have moved on, albeit a bit humbled, as Liquid Comics. They have two movie projects from the days still in play, most notably the war-horror film “Virulents,” which has Irish director John Moore (“Max Payne”) on board and one of the more, um, vivid tag lines in recent memory: “What’s worse than terrorists? Vampire terrorists!”

If Virgin gave it up, can Radical endure? There are people betting against it in the comic-book industry who would like to see Radical fail in its attempt to use comics as a backdoor to the Hollywood backlot. One of them is British writer Alan Moore. His landmark 1986 graphic novel “Watchmen” will reach the screen in March in a Warner Bros. film directed by Zack Snyder (“300”), but he views movie-minded newcomers with bitter resignation.

“There are three or four companies now that exist for the sole purpose of creating not comics but storyboards for films,” Moore said a few months ago. “It may be true that the only reason the comic-book industry now exists is for this purpose, to create characters for movies, board games and other types of merchandise. Comics are just a sort of pumpkin patch growing franchises that might be profitable for the ailing movie industry.”

A role model

For the upstart companies, the template is Dark Horse Comics, the Oregon publisher that has been nimble in publishing and fortune-kissed in Hollywood with properties such as “Hellboy,” “The Mask,” “300” and “Sin City.” Before launching Radical, Levine went directly to the source; he worked with Dark Horse founder Mike Richardson, although that hasn’t made Radical any less of an outsider to many comics industry types.

“People were very dubious about us. They went, ‘Here’s another comic-book company that is really a disguised motion picture company.’ And look, I never lied to anybody. If I got into this only to make comic books, I would have to be either an ultra, uber-fan or an idiot. I got into this business to create great content that would translate itself on a multimedia platform.

“Look, it’s simple: I make comics. I want to make movies.”

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geoff.boucher@latimes.com