Mike Gold: Marvel, You’re Murdering Us!
Holy crap! I can’t believe this! Marvel’s next big event series is going to be a sequel to their hit event series Civil War. It’s called … wait for it … Civil War II!
You’d think there was a big budget movie or something coming out. Well, you’d be wrong. Civil War II comes out several weeks after Captain America: Civil War. It’s just a coincidence, kids!
Even more astonishing, if that’s at all possible, is the announcement that Marvel is going to actually kill off one of their characters in this series!
I can’t believe it. Such courage! Such originality! Such redundancy! The House of Idea polished off that one idea once again, slathered on another coat of lipstick, bought it a tuxedo for the red carpet interviews and proudly informed The New York Daily News that “A mysterious new Marvel character comes to the attention of the world, one who has the power to calculate the outcome of future events with a high degree of accuracy … This predictive power divides the Marvel heroes on how best to capitalize on this aggregated information, with Captain Marvel leading the charge to profile future crimes and attacks before they occur, and Iron Man adopting the position that the punishment cannot come before the crime.”
Hey, this time Iron Man is on the side of the angels! Well, that’s different, but only when compared to the original 2007 Civil War event.
I wonder if Marvel is going to kill off a character they haven’t killed off before. I wonder if that’s even possible. Hmmm … do you think it might be a character whose movie rights are controlled by 20th Century Fox?
When it comes to marketing and public relations, often there’s a fine line between being forthcoming and being cynical. As Marvel publisher Dan Buckley informed the Daily News “The death is the marketing hook … The thing that’s really compelling is whether or not there’s a story afterwards that’s going to connect with readers and sustain it.”
This is true, but it would help if you gave us something new, Dan.
Major character deaths have become more common to comic books than staples … and a lot less permanent. Do you know what was really cool during Marvel’s first couple of decades? They shook up the moribund American comics market with tits-to-the-wind power and a long ongoing blast of creativity and originality the likes of which had never been seen in the medium previously.
Do you know what Marvel’s latest high-energy attempt at creativity and originality is?
They bought a new Xerox® machine.
“Hey, this time Iron Man is on the side of the angels!”
The first time, (2007), he was pro-registration. Wasn’t that the side of the angels? After all, super powers are analogous to weapons.
Nice one, George. Well-played. And I absolutely get your point.
The difference, of course, is that super-hero comic books are (usually) heroic fantasy. Not real, and not necessarily wish fulfillment. Take a look at the comics work of several of our columnists — Denny O’Neil, Martha Thomases, John Ostrander, to name but three. All three are known for their liberal points of view. John wrote that Batman: Seduction of the Gun bit. Martha is a card-carrying pacifist, on the board of directors of one of our leading anti-war organizations. Denny — is Denny O’Neil, damn it, and we can use a few more. All have written the adventures of gun-toting men and women. Lots of them. Some might see that as hypocrisy, but it’s just fantasy and impossible fantasy at that.
And if we had no impossible fantasy, we’d have no porn. And if we had no porn, we probably wouldn’t have the Internet. And if we had no Internet…
“The difference, of course, is that super-hero comic books are (usually) heroic fantasy. Not real, and not necessarily wish fulfillment. “
Come on Mike. It is a bit disingenuous to claim that comic stories are not intended to have real-world parallels. Writers love to make analogies and well they should.
My problem with the 2007 Civil War was Millar’s needing to ignore the obvious political alignment Cap and Iron Man would have had.
It would have been nice if the two groups had remained sympathetic characters but Iron Man and the pro-registration faction were quickly demonized. I guess that made it an easier story to write. There was a scene in which Stark held up a sheaf of papers and said something like, “I have here a list of names…” evoking the tactics of Joe McCarthy. Of course anyone who is using McCarthy’s tactics is automatically the bad guy.
The aspect of the series that soured me on the story was that the pro-registration faction was portrayed as the conservative (read “wrong”) side. The idea that people with super-powers should have to register with the government seems to be a liberal view. In the case of some characters, their powers would be akin to a person in our world having a rocket launcher or nuclear weapon. Conservatives are usually anti-registration. Liberals favor registration. Yet in Civil War the views are reversed. I think Captain America would be against registration but that is a conservative view. Captain America was the sympathetic character so obviously he could not be conservative.
“All have written the adventures of gun-toting men and women. Lots of them. Some might see that as hypocrisy,…”
Yes, that’s exactly what it is. When Hollywood, no hotbed of conservative views, makes movies that have a liberal bent, The Green Zone, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah, Stop-Loss; they lose money. The movies that make money are pro-military and patriotic, American Sniper, and I suspect 13 Hours, when it comes out this week.
Sure, comics touch on real-world parallels, and the reader is pretty much free to read into it what he or she wants. Sometimes that’s a bit extreme, sometimes it’s unwarranted and sometimes it’s not based in what some psychiatrists call “reality,” but, hell, I can’t stop the reader from fantasizing over a fantasy story. Nor would I want to. It’s far more fun to watch ’em mumble.
I can argue your point about specific movies and list dozens of very successful and enduring movies that are commonly perceived as having a liberal event, but I wouldn’t want to out such noted “Hollywood liberals” as John Wayne, John Ford, Clint Eastwood, Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall, Kelsey Grammer, James Woods, Gary Sinise, Jon Voight, Larry Miller and Sly Stallone – all of whom I respect as filmmakers and performers – and Adam Sandler.
Let us note that Tony Stark’s repulser rays are totally defensive. Unless he gets drunk and screws around. There’s a lesson in that for us all.
And that’s about as political as I get at ComicMix… usually. We can pick this topic up at our next Communist cell meeting, George.
Well, Clint Eastwood and Robert Duvall are 85, Jon Voight is 77 and John Wayne, John Ford and Dennis Hopper are dead. That’s 50% of your list. Except for Stallone, the rest are not really giant stars, like Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Sean Penn or Tim Robbins.
“We can pick this topic up at our next Communist cell meeting, George.”
See you there.
It all started with the Beatles:
Paul is dead.
Judge Crater.
That was before my time, old man.
So are most of the movies you note in your column, youngster.