With the release of Iron Man 3 only a week away, it’s kind of crazy to see how far we’ve come since 2008’s Iron Man.
At that time in the world of Marvel, the heroes were neck deep in the alien Skrull race in the “Secret Invasion” storyline, Captain America’s resurrected sidekick James “Bucky” Barnes was filling in for the dead (at the time) Avenger, and Tony Stark’s relationship with some of his teammates was strained at best, having sided with the pro-registering superheroes government in Civil War.
In effect, those looking to get into the Marvel Iron Man series would need a lot of explanation before diving in, but they wouldn’t have to go too far back, especially since fans at the time could pick up Civil War if they wanted to find out why Tony Stark wasn’t playing ball with the other Marvel heroes.
They also had the option of picking up the Ultimate universe line of books, but they too were about to be involved in the much-maligned “Ultimatum” storyline that laid waste to a majority of their characters.
For those curious, Civil War was a massive storyline that involved the entirety of the Marvel Universe. After a young group of heroes accidentally kills innocents in battle, the US Government passes the “Superhuman Registration Act” , and demands that all super powered beings turn into the government.
Longtime friends Iron Man and Captain America come to literal blows over the act (Iron Man is for it, Cap is against), and by the end of the seven issue story, Captain America turns himself in and is gunned down on the steps of a courthouse.
While it’s doubtful that we’ll see Civil War on the big screen anytime soon, there’s still a possibility that we may see something like Secret Invasion.
In fact, if you think about it, we’ve already seen a version of that in last summer’s Avengers, although that film borrowed heavily from the original storyline from The Ultimates, the Ultimate universe depiction of the Avengers (and where the idea to cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury came from).
From the first beginnings of the Marvel cinematic universe, it made more sense to use the Ultimate line as the basis for the films. They had less continuity and were, in many respects, “cleaner” to adapt.
Sure, there were some ideas poached from the original line of comics (see the use of Thor in the Marvel movies vs. the “Ultimate” Thor), but by and large much of what we’ve seen in the Marvel studio movies has been taken from the Ultimate side of things.
But something strange started to happen.
As the Marvel films started to grow in popularity, the Ultimate line of comics that they were basing the films on began shrinking. What was once an area for new ideas free from the burden of 30 plus years of history suddenly became more convoluted than the ‘regular” books with decades of history behind them, and Marvel started to release new #1 issues of titles whenever a hero had a movie being released (see The Mighty Thor when the film Thor was released) in the hopes of attracting the mythical “new reader” coming out of the theater.
These books offered a “soft reboot” of a sort, and either started series off without referencing the past, or quickly summed up the important facts that new readers would need to know. Instead of the comics influencing the movies, in a sense it seemed that the opposite was happening: the films were now influencing the books.
Marvel even took this tactic with characters whose films were at other studios. It’s not a coincidence that Spider-Man was battling the Lizard last summer, when he had a movie that also featured Curt Connors’ scaly alter ego.
But it hasn’t stopped there. Clark Gregg’s fantastic turn as Agent Phil Coulson in the Marvel Studio films has inspired not only the creation of Coulson in the Marvel comics universe, his character appearing as the undercover school principal in the Ultimate Spider-Man animated series, but also his alleged resurrection in the Marvel Studios world with next fall’s S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series. The long held “no one stays dead” trope of comics is apparently starting to crossover into the cinematic Marvel universe as well.
The biggest example of the influences of the studio system on Marvel’s comics can be found in the aforementioned Ultimate line of books. Before The Amazing Spider-Man had cast Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, there was a pretty sizeable online campaign for Community’s Donald Glover to play the Wall-Crawler.
Started after he was pictured wearing Spider-Man pajamas in an episode of the show (and his love for the character), the outcry became so big that even the mighty Stan Lee gave his blessing for Glover to play Peter Parker.
Of course, this didn’t happen, but what fans did get from this is the introduction of Miles Morales, the young boy who replaces Peter Parker after his death in the Ultimate universe. Since his introduction, Morales has become a hit with fans, and even crossed over with Peter Parker in the Spider-Men miniseries from last summer.
This strange, almost symbiotic relationship has gone into full force now that Marvel is in “Marvel NOW” mode, it’s latest big publishing push for new readers. Iron Man has joined the Guardians Of The Galaxy, who not only have a film slated in the “Phase Two” of Marvel films, but are also heavily rumored to be in the post-credits sequence of Iron Man 3 (and there are even rumors that Iron Man will be Guardians, too) .
The Avengers roster that ended up in Jonathan Hickman’s first story arc in the new title consisted of, you guessed it, the same six heroes who battled for New York last May. While some may balk at the “mainstream” audience dictating what should go on in the comics fans have read for decades, I for one think it’s a great idea. It adds a sense of connectedness between the two mediums, although I’ll be the first to admit that introducing Nick Fury’s African American son and revealing his real name to be “Nick Fury, Jr.” was a bit much.
Hopefully this connectivity between the mainstream and Marvel universe will lead to more interest in the comics. I know it’ll be easier to sell movie fans to the source material if the same members of The Avengers movie are also in the comic.
One of the things I’ve heard time and time again from friends who want to read comics is that it’s “too confusing” to start, and for a while there, it was.
But Marvel is at least attempting to bridge that gap and trying to please new and old fans of Iron Man, Thor, and the like, and I don’t see this as a negative at all. As long as people are reading comics, then I’m all for it.
