Some of the best comic book films — Road to Perdition, A History of Violence, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World — aren’t actually about superheros. And comics are a pretty amazing medium when good authors are allowed to express their ideas with unlimited control; it’s just that the endless barage of superhero movies can make that easy to forget.

This creates something of a positive bias for me when it comes to Coward, which Variety says will be adapted for film with David Slade directing, creator Ed Brubaker writing, and Jamie Patricof of Hunting Lane Films producing. The comic is an arc in Brubaker‘s Criminal series, which is comprised of several, stand-alone volumes that all exist in the same world. Those might get the feature treatment themselves; rights to the second arc, Lawless, are owned by Hunting Lane, and the writer already has a sequel to this story planned.

Coward follows “Leo, a master heist planner who lives in a world of hustlers, crooked cops, pickpockets and lowlifes.” Brubaker considers it to be “a lot of different crime stories wrapped in one,” with a heist being the main focus. Some have already compared it to Drive, and the author is more than aware of the similarities — he even said that Ryan Gosling would have been “perfect” if it wasn’t for Nicolas Winding Refn.

Patricof feels that the the Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night director’s involvement gives them “a clear vision for what the film will be,” and Slade seems enthusiastic. For him, the arc “harkens back to an era of crime stories where there’s really a gritty reality to it, but there’s a kind of underworld haze of noir”; luckily, there’s no need to do a lot of adjusting, since Brubaker‘s story “already works.”

If something doesn’t work, at least right now, it’s Slade being onboard as a director. Candy showed a lot of promise for the young filmmaker, but this was almost entirely dispensed with Night and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. It wouldn’t be all that hard to believe that his career has been hindered by poor source material — he had to adapt Stephenie Meyer, you know — but it’s never good when your helmer is a wild card.

Nevertheless, I want to be positive here. It sounds like a pretty neat property to turn into a film; after all, crime stories have been oddly absent from cinema over the past few years, even though they’ve made for some of the best films of all time. Coward probably won’t find itself in that category when all is said and done, but what we could end up getting seems like plenty.

Here’s Amazon‘s description of the plot:

“Coward is the story of Leo, a professional pickpocket who is also a legendary heist-planner and thief. But there’s a catch with Leo, he won’t work any job that he doesn’t call all the shots on, he won’t allow guns, and the minute things turn south, he’s looking for any exit that won’t land him in prison. But when he’s lured into a risky heist, all his rules go out the window, and he ends up on the run from the cops and the bad men who double-crossed him. Now Leo must come face-to-face with the violence he’s kept bottled up inside for 20 years, and nothing will ever be the same for him again.”

Are you familiar with the Coward comic? Does a film adaptation seem like a smart idea? How do you feel about Slade directing?