Soon after the acquisition of Valiant Comics by Acclaim Entertainment in 1995, CEO Greg Fischbach charged me with drafting movie treatments for the three characters that I believed would make the best comics-to-film transition. As Editor-In-Chief and co-creator of the Valiant properties, I thought long and hard about the pros and cons that each of our characters would present as a film property.

 Eventually, I narrowed the selection down to X-O Manowar, Ninjak and Shadowman.

  In my opinion, the property that would best translate into film commercially, of the three, was--Shadowman.

Why?

 Looking at it from a Hollywood Producer's point of view, the saga of Jack Boniface was the property that offered the most of what audiences go for.

 First off--the film could be shot on a fairly low budget, compared to X-O or Ninjak. The movie could be shot on location in New Orleans, utilizing lots of the existing city locales for the scenes.

 Secondly, Shadowman's powers aren't visual--no lasers, large SPX  or high-tech props to contend with while filming.

 And lastly, this property would lend itself to a fantastic, original soundtrack, since Jack Boniface was a musician by trade and his saga was set in a city renowned for it's musical diversity.

 When you read this treatment, the one element that Valiant fans will notice immediately is that I eliminated all references to the Spider Aliens and the bite that originally gave Jack his super-human abilities. (obviously, that would have complicated things to no end.)

 I also included Max St. James (the original Shadowman) in the opening sequence--something that was not in the published origin of the character.

 The story itself was based on Bob Hall's "Bloodrunner" storyline that appeared in his brilliant run of Shadowman comics--altered somewhat to fit the length of a film.

 This Shadowman film treatment was my favorite of the three that I wrote, from a writer's point of view, primarily for the love story between Sandria Darque and Jack, which I felt humanized this tale more than the other two.

 Needless to say, none of the film treatments ever saw the light of day, due to the fact that Hollywood washed their hands of Acclaim early in the process.

 The company's upper management turned out to be nearly impossible to work with-- making unreasonable demands and asking for outrageous sums of money for the film rights to their virtually-unknown characters. 

 But, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy what might have been.

Read on--