Jeremy Renner, the guy most rumored to be playing Hawkeye in The Avengers, told Superhero Hype that the movie version of the character would be a guy in sunglasses and a vest – essentially the Ultimate version of Hawkeye. I wouldn’t be suprised to see that Thor includes the Ultimate design of the God of Thunder. Even the Spider-Man films have essentially taken the lead from the Ultimate comics, giving Spidey organic web shooters (remember how controversial that was?) (oops, I guess Spidey didn’t have organic shooters in Ultimate Spider-Man. I thought he did!).
For those unfamiliar, Ultimate Marvel was supposed to be the fresh start for Marvel comics; taking the original characters and rebooting them in a new, modern continuity, Ultimate was supposed to be the way that kids could get into Spider-Man or the X-Men without 40 years of stories bogging them down. It was a way in on the ground floor. And the Ultimate line has heavily influenced the movies that have been made of Marvel comics.
But the Ultimate line went the way of most comic books – it became continuity heavy, lost its sense of fun and then inexplicably self-destructed in a line-wide crossover that killed a ton of characters. While the line is being relaunched as Ultimate Comics, the fact that the comics occur in this weird offshoot of the Marvel Universe with its own cataclysmic history has really killed the concept of making the books accessible to new readers. And with more Marvel movies coming down the pike, it seems like new readers could be there for the picking*.
Which is why Marvel should launch a Marvel Movieverse line of comics. Comics set in the Marvel Universe as seen in the films, using the likenesses of the actors playing the characters. Working closely with the filmmakers and the folks at Marvel Studios, these comics could fill in the gaps in the lives of the characters (ie, the spaces between the movies) and offer fun, movie-ized takes on characters and villains who will likely never get the big screen treatment. Each of the Marvel movie characters has a huge stable of supporting characters and bad guys who will just never make the transition to the silver screen, but it could be a blast re-envisioning Batroc the Leaper or The Grey Gargoyle through the prism of a movie adaptation. How would you do a Grey Gargoyle in a live action film, and how would he be different from the other comic book versions?
The idea of comics filling in the gaps between films is certainly not new to Marvel. They ran a successful Star Wars comic series that produced some really cool stories, and while some of those comics may not fit well with eventually established canon, they weren’t working as closely with Lucasfilm as they would be with Marvel Studios.
A Marvel Movieverse line would also give directors, writers and actors the chance to tell stories about these characters without wading into the regular Marvel Universe. Who wouldn’t be excited to read a four part Iron Man story with a plot by Robert Downey Jr (who is already essentially co-writing the movies)?
What would be nice is that the Marvel Movieverse line could, by definition, not get too continuity heavy; if the comics are meant to be in the same world as the movies, you can’t have the characters engaging in too many cosmos-changing crossovers without leaving the movie world in disarray. These would have to be simpler, more self-contained stories – exactly what has been missing from superhero comics for the last few decades. The emphasis would be on storytelling, not huge twists and canon-altering reveals.
For the movie fans these could be exciting, because a good working relationship between the Marvel Comics folks and the Marvel Studios folks could mean that the comics released in the months before a new movie might contain hints, cameos and other surprises that would get folks salivating. I remember the olden days, when my first look at many movies and character designs didn’t come from publicity photos but from serialized comic book adaptations.
And in the end these would be great entry point books for the millions of people who know Iron Man from the movies but don’t know what the Demon in a Bottle storyline is. The original premise of the Ultimate Marvel line remains a good one – stories featuring the classic Marvel characters that aren’t bogged down in decades of continuity. With a Marvel Movieverse comic line that premise could be fulfilled and reach a wider audience.
* maybe. Lots of people will tell you that comic book movies don’t really lead to major improvements in the sales of comic books, or at least not in any long term way.
15 comments
The main problem isn't so much accessibility in the storytelling sense…it's accessibility in the physical sense. You can get a few comics at Borders or Books-a-Million or Barnes and Noble if you know where to look, but most other folks have to go to actual comic shops to find comics.
Diamond Distributors essentially killed the comic market when they decided just prior to/during the 90's speculator's boom that comics were "collectibles" and not entertainment to be placed on spinner racks at every convenience store in the land.
I'll be interested to see if, after all the contracts are signed and such, Disney chooses an alternate distribution method for Marvel comics, depriving Diamond of its' stranglehold (and about half of its' business).
Ultimate Spider-man doesn't have organic webshooters. Just FYI
Yeah. That came from the Cameron scriptment. Also, hopefully Marvel isn't planning on taking your advice. Ugh.
I think that the treatment of what is retained in movie versions of hero is dictated by project budget and style of his universe, which tends to vary between film properties. For example, most of the latest Marvel movies, try to envision a world without any magical elements or mysterious plot pieces that would require a lot of foresight beyond the grasp of an extended origin story. This might change with the inclusion of Thor, but I think it will still be muted, or shown in a very controlled and closed mined fashion. And that limits the possibility of various other character origins. Kind of like how most of the villains in Smallville are created via a loose piece of colored kryptonyte.
it's not a bad idea to have comics out that at least make sense in relation to the movies. if you picked up this week's marvel releases tony stark is in coma, hawkeye is running around as some samurai douche and the green goblin is running the planet.
BUT, i'm not completely convinced that the solution to continuity overload is to just create a new continuity. i mean, just look at how the ultimate line turned out.
also, i read a lot of the "official" comic tie ins from this summer's releases (terminator salvation, star trek, transformers, gi joe) and none of them really added anything of substantive value. star trek did add a little bit. but i think it was just a device to fix plot holes that couldnt be fixed in the movie because of the writers strike.
i think writing smart comics that are accessible (both in terms of continuity AND physically) is the solution. it's 2009: digital comics distribution should be here. but since that would implode the comic book store guys' businesses it's probably a non-starter.
The problem is not with pre-established continuity, it's that a serialized comic requires such a furious rate of new plotlines that it's incredibly difficult to write one without miring it in continuity, period. The main reason this Advocate is a terrible idea is that the screwed up continuity of the Marvel universe is currently relegated safely to the comics, whereas the need for new stories every week would quickly contrive the continuity of the Marvel movieverse, which only requires about one story per property every three years or so. Add in vanity writing gigs from actors and whatnot and you have a recipe for disaster.
There's absolutely no way this would ever work. Not only would it require rival studios to sign off on storylines that could (and probably would) impact their future projects, it would restrict creativity in both the comics and the movies by tethering two incompatible media, and their wildly different schedules and work ethics, together in unholy matrimony. This is precisely the sort of wide-eyed fanboy fantasy that Devin usually rails against. I'm surprised to see him being so naive.
Really, who buys this monthly title nonsense? This superhero shit is only surviving as a holding-pen for movie/game franchises and comfort food for social cripples. If the medium is going to be such a Hollywood Slut, then I'd rather see adaptations of all those legendary unmade scripts and projects that got dropped for being too awesome (David Cronenberg's Total Recall, for instance).
it's a decent idea, but the problem is that the very next film to come out blows the continuity out of the water. Remember the old marvel star wars comic – it serailized the film then carried on going telling new stories and bringing in characters but as soon as ESB happened it made it all irrelevent. The movies must exist outside the regular continuity.
"Who wouldn't be excited to read a four part Iron Man story with a plot by Robert Downey Jr (who is already essentially co-writing the movies)?"…Hey, I'd be excited if the Favreau mini series that started after the first movie ever sees a third issue. I think it was supposed to be a 4-parter, but only 2 issues have seen the light of day. That's pretty much the trend with ANY book by a movie or TV writer, actor, director, etc., because writing comics isn't their day job. It's hard to get excited about books that never come out because the creators have (and this is debatable) better things to do…
I commend your journalism. You are on the cutting edge. I must say I respect you guys way more now. You are on top of the Marvel phenomenon, the most important thing to me. I can't wait for your next article about Marvel's future. I enjoy coming to this site and seeing that you, Devin, know how important Marvel is to the reader's of your website. You have earned a new level of respect in my eyes. Before, I just used to visit chud for the news, but now I check this website everyday for the groundbreaking insight into Marvel fucking comics.
Tell me you're joking.
Judging by movie adaptation comics, this is by far one of the worst ideas you've ever proposed.
And the others are right, the logistics would be a nightmare.
Let comics die the death they deserve. Overpriced 32 page stories are dinosaurs in this digital age.
Good idea, but the studios wouldn't be cool with it. Go back and look at the problem between Marvel & Sony when they wanted to do DTV animated movies of Strange and Ghost Rider. You would also have to pay for an actor's likeness which makes the book unprofitable.
Creating a new line of comics using the same characters in the normal Marvel Universe will just confuse those new comic buyers because the Iron Man in the Movieverse is doing something completely independant of what the Marvel Universere is doing. I have no interest in seeing some storytelling between movies. Just concentrate on the continuity between the films themselves as they have been doing, building up to the inevitable Avengers.
Slow news day?
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