The characters and stories that have appeared in our comics are very different from what they are in the film. Releasing material that would be viewed as movie tie-in product would be a disservice to filmgoers. We wanted the Disney folks to be able to create their own unique style and story, unencumbered by those older stories.
Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso explains why Marvel isn’t publishing any Big Hero 6 tie-in material, even reprints.
Thor didn’t have to play a proverbial bridesmaid in other superhero films nor did Chris Hemsworth have to prove his box office might elsewhere before a Chris Hemsworth-starring Thor got the greenlight. The Guardians of the Galaxy didn’t have to pal around with Tony Stark in Iron Man 3 so that audiences could get used to them before they got their own movie, nor did Chris Pratt have to prove box office strength elsewhere before being handed a star-making role in a star-making franchise. Jason Momoa didn’t have to prove his box office pull (Conan the Barbarian from 2011) earned $48 million worldwide on a $90m budget) before getting a shot at apparently playing Aquaman in the Warner Bros. (Time Warner Inc.) DC Cinematic Universe, and Andrew Garfield did not get cast as Peter Parker in Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man because of all of those Lions for Lambs riches. Hollywood is filled with male-centric franchises based on characters both popular and niche played by little-known actors as a matter of course.
If the first major Marvel superhero movie with a female lead is Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, or if (related digression) Fox’s first female X-Men spin-off is a Jennifer Lawrence-led Mystique, then it will merely prove that female-centric superhero films have to jump through the kinds of hoops (uber-established character and super popular movie star in the lead) that male-centric ones do not.
On the very same day that this op-ed runs, this tweet appeared:
MCU update: sources tell me Marvel is getting cold feet about Captain Marvel in AGE OF ULTRON. They’re not sure they want to intro her cold.
— Devin Faraci (@devincf) August 28, 2014
Yes, apparently Marvel has cold feet about introducing the character “cold” as a cameo. You know, like they did for Hawkeye in Thor. Seriously, this sort of comedy writes itself now.
The Gentry is representative of the worst of the comics industry. Lord Broken, a demonic house loaded with eyes and composed of haphazardly stacked stories, can clearly stand for a distorted Marvel, “the House of Ideas.” Note that artist Ivan Reis has chosen for each story to be thinner and less stable than the last, perhaps a nod to Marvel’s continued mining and refining of the work of Stan and Jack, producing weaker results with each incarnation—broken visions. Intellectron, a bat-like figure with one eye, is clearly the worst of DC—a single vision dependent on references to Batman—dark and myopic.
Cheryl Lynn just destroys with this quick piece about The Multiversity #1.
The intermission was especially long, with boys hyped up on sugar with nothing to do but ask their parents to purchase one of the doodads being hawked by vendors canvassing the seats. The mother in front of me balked at the $25 price tag on a watch that would light up at a key part of the performance. When her son insisted she held up his Captain America motorcycle, “Do you know much this cost? $15.” Then she held up his popcorn in a box covered in Marvel characters. “Do you know how much this cost? $7.” Then she held up a picture her son had taken in front of a green screen so it looked like he was posing with the Avengers amid some rubble. “Do you know much this cost? $27. Do you know how much that seat you’re sitting in cost?” He shook his head. “No. Well, Citibank does.”
The intermission was especially long, with boys hyped up on sugar with nothing to do but ask their parents to purchase one of the doodads being hawked by vendors canvassing the seats. The mother in front of me balked at the $25 price tag on a watch that would light up at a key part of the performance. When her son insisted she held up his Captain America motorcycle, “Do you know much this cost? $15.” Then she held up his popcorn in a box covered in Marvel characters. “Do you know how much this cost? $7.” Then she held up a picture her son had taken in front of a green screen so it looked like he was posing with the Avengers amid some rubble. “Do you know much this cost? $27. Do you know how much that seat you’re sitting in cost?” He shook his head. “No. Well, Citibank does.”
Top 5 Marvel UK things (because I know very little about it!)
I never read much! The original stuff I mean – Deaths Head, Knights of Pendragon, etc. I had access to US imports, and I had 2000AD, and the Marvel UK stuff just seemed… obviously lame, in that instant-judgement teenage sense. They were on different paper, they LOOKED wrong, they were the Cliff to Marvel US’ Elvis. And then I was a smidgen too young for the earlier wave of Marvel UK stuff with Night Raven and Captain Britain.
So my Marvel UK was primarily a reprint house. So this top 5 is a mix of things that originated there and things that I first read through the reprints there.
1. Secret Wars: stretched out over 30 or so fortnightly issues. Introduced me to every Marvel character basically. Amazing. Terrible. Amazing.
2. “THE BLACK ZOID” early super derivative Wagnerian toy fight epic by Grant Morrison. The only original material here.
3. John Byrne FF vs Psycho Man and Hate Monger: after Secret Wars they reprinted Secret Wars II, which necessitated reprinting not only the mini but the crossovers and EVERY surrounding issue that resolved subplots raised in said crossovers. Ridiculous. But it meant we got all of John Byrne’s fevered, kinda queasy with hindsight but uh ‘resonant’ bondage epic ft dominatrix Sue Storm. (It’s the enslaved She Hulk sequences I think would read unpleasantly now tho)
4. Strikeforce: Morituri – Peter Gillis’ fantastic doomed kid super-soldiers series, no idea why they reprinted it.
5. Iceman – JM DeMatteis’ weirdo Iceman mini in which he confronts (this being JM deM) questions of death and reincarnation. Absurd but memorable clash of hero and storyline, has surely never been mentioned since.
It’s scary how much this mirrors my own Marvel UK experience.
The Iceman mini was reprinted (in a hardcover, because Marvel) a few years back, and it has to be said: half-remembered nostalgia was far kinder to that than revisiting the actual thing.
