Comic Book Media

**It’s been a while since we’ve looked at a property that needs adapting here at Comic Book Media. However, with the recent release of Deadpool and the massive success it garnered, we’re guessing that Hollywood is going to be looking for another humorous and violent book to turn into an R-rated feature. So, here’s Brian Sea Baer with a look at a wildly off-kilter comic that would make for one hell of a fun movie.**

2010 saw the release of Sea Bear & Grizzly Shark, an absurd and absurdly funny one-shot from Image Comics. The double-sized issue was split in half: the first half tells a tale of revenge, cyborgs, Dr. Moreau-style animal hybrids, and a murderous aquatic bear; and in the second, a shark flies through a forest and devours the oblivious people who accidentally cut themselves, since everyone knows a shark can smell blood from a hundred miles away. It makes perfect sense.

The Sea Bear segment was written and drawn by Jason Howard of Trees and Super Dinosaur fame, and the Grizzly Shark half was made by Invincible artist Ryan Ottley. The two’s frequent collaborator, Robert “The Walking Dead” Kirkman, wrote the prose introduction to the issue. As he explains it, the parts of the Earth that were once covered in water are now dry land. The parts that were dry land are now oceans. When the “time of the great reversal” happened, all the animals had to adapt to their new conditions. But this bear and this shark…

THEY GOT MIXED UP!

And that’s all the explanation necessary. With the thinnest of plotlines and a long list of tropes to half-heartedly adopt, the two stories are nothing more than weird, violent, silly fun. Such ridiculous concepts basically scream for adaptation, but sad to say, this has not happened yet.

For all the Hollywood moguls who frequent ComicBookMedia.com, I have the perfect pitch to bring this comic to life: Sea Bear VS Grizzly Shark!

Open on a small seaside town surrounded by a forest, and introduce each monster doing their own thing, murdering visitors and townsfolk in the more ridiculous ways possible. Maybe some fancy-pants big city expert comes to town – I’m thinking a shark-scientist whose family was eaten by bears, or vice versa – and the two creatures go to war with each other with the town caught in the crossfire.

There’s only one company capable of pulling off such an over-the-top creature feature, and that’s The Asylum. The low-budget sci-fi studio that could, The Asylum is best known for “mockbusters” – cleverly packaged films that resemble big budget hit films, such as Atlantic Rim and Transmorphers: Fall of Man – but they’ve also released monster movies like Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus and Mega Python vs. Gateroid. This adaptation would fit right in their wheelhouse.

For best results, I’d hand Sea Bear vs. Grizzly Shark over to Thunder Levin, the mastermind behind the Asylum’s cult hit Sharknado film series.

Just this month it was announced that Ottley is bringing the Grizzly Shark back for a solo comic story. If anyone was on the fence about reading these stories, or turning them into a weird Syfy Original movie, there’s never been a better time.