7 Movies That Stole Their Plot From Comic Books

Pub quiz time: name the bespectacled English boy wizard who practices magic, has a pet owl and is destined to become the most powerful magician in the world. You’re thinking Harry Potter, right? Wrong answer!

It’s actually Tim Hunter, the protagonist from the Neil Gaiman-created series The Books of Magic first published by DC in 1990. That’s a whole seven years before J.K Rowling released her first Harry Potter book and more than a decade before the first Harry Potter film.

Gaiman himself has gone on record dismissing the idea that J.K. Rowling plagiarised The Books of Magic and it’s true to say that Potter and Hunter embark on quite different journeys in their respective quests with Harry at Hogwarts and Tim taking a tour of the DC universe’s more magical characters and realms.

That said they’ve got the same dark hair, those horn-rimmed glasses, they’re both orphans and they have the same species of feathered friend. Their paths may be different but the components – coming up against authority figures and villains, struggling with the responsibility of their fates – are essentially the same. Even Gaiman and Rowling have to admit that the similarities between The Books of Magic and the Harry Potter novels and films are kind of strange.

Interestingly, a film adaptation of Gaiman’s comic was in the works in the late 90s with Warner Bros at the helm – the very same company that would go on to make a crap-tonne of money producing the Harry Potter films just a few years later. But supposedly there’s no connection between the two works? Okay, we believe you.