HalLane wrote:
The King Features characters mentioned are all close to 80 years old -- the comic book characters are much more modern and accessible to film audiences. Plus the readership for comic books is larger; the comic strips are essentially giveaways to newspaper readers -- nobody buys the paper for the comic strips anymore (well, besides me).

The King characters do seem more suited to animated cartoon development -- all those listed have been adapted to series, some more than once. Then again, many comic book characters have done this too, including the "independents" (Turtles, Sam & Max, Spawn, etc.).

So I guess bottom line: strips are just old hat.
Ah, but in 1980, Superman and Flash Gordon stood at about the same age.

Of course, most of MVL's characters come from the Silver Age (1960's or later), so I suppose you could base your idea of that, but even Iron Man stands as close to 50 years old (1963-2008).