It was 1978, and the electric current going through DC Comics’ offices could have lit Times Square. Vice-President and Production Director Jack Adler was strutting around like a proud papa. For the first time in what seemed like a millennium, Marie Severin was paying a visit.
If you were from outside the donut shop, you’d think the President was in the house. Work came to a complete stop. Everybody swarmed to the production department to meet, or to see once again, the famed artist and gifted humorist. That she toiled for the company’s competition and yet received this reception is an acknowledgement of her talent and abilities.
The masterful colorist of the legendary EC Comics line, Marie worked at Marvel Comics for decades as an art director, a penciler and an inker. Her credits read like a Who’s Who at the House of Ideas: Doctor Strange, the Incredible Hulk, Sub-Mariner, and Robert E. Howard’s Kull the Conqueror. That’s quite a range, but she was best known for her satirical work in Marvel’s underrated Not Brand Echh, a book worthy of Masterwork edition if there ever was one.
She was even better known within the industry for her sense of humor. I have never met a person who wasn’t a fan of her work – and a fan of hers, personally.
174 pages of analysis, history, interviews, photographs and about a zillion examples of her work, including a healthy amount of unpublished work – much of it in-house stuff reflecting her breathtaking sense of humor. Tributes abound: Marvel and EC honchos Stan Lee and Al Feldstein, Jack Davis, John Romita, Mark Evanier, Tony Isabella, Roy Thomas and maybe a dozen more folks, all fronted by a foreword from ComicMix columnist and comics luminary Denny O’Neil.
Marie has been one of the most important and most creative people in the history of this medium. Marie Severin: The Mirthful Mistress of Comics tells you why. If you’re already a fan of hers, you either have this book or it’s on your short list. If you’re not all that familiar with her legacy, you need this book.
As if Stan Lee wasn’t busy enough, he’s apparently been involved in digital content development, the full scope of which will be revealed tomorrow during a panel discussion at Comic-Con International. The breakdown of properties, though, was released in advance of the formal announcement and since one of our pals is involved, we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss this news.
Vuguru and POW! Entertainment unveil the premium YouTube channel Stan Lee’s World of Heroes at a panel in Room 6BCF at 11:45 a.m. with a panel including Mark Hamill, Adrianne Curry, Peter David, Jace Hall, Bonnie Burton and America Young. The programming schedule includes:
Stan Lee’s Super Model (scripted action comedy) – From Stan Lee, two aspiring models Bree and Sera and blogger friend Lizzie, are accidentally exposed to a mysterious serum that grants them super powers. Their newfound powers wreak havoc on their quest to become top models and pull them into a world of danger and intrigue. From Executive Producer Heath Corson (Aim High) and writer Taryn O’Neill (BlackBoxTV)
Head Cases (scripted comedy) – You know those classic superhero battles where good and evil clash in epic fashion? This isn’t one of those. Set at the local bar frequented by super powered heroes and villains, the comedy Head Cases is what happens before, after, and in between those battles. From Peter David (Babylon 5, Ben 10, The Incredible Hulk) and Producer David M. Uslan.
Bad Days (animated parody) – From Junaid Chundrigar (creator of the animated viral sensation Disassembled, Bad Days) shows us heroes and villains on their worst days. Whether Green Lantern is wasting time with an emerald Yo-Yo or Batman has locked himself out of the Batmobile, Bad Days lets viewers laugh at epic super failure.
FanWars (courtroom reality) – Who is the most intelligent Super Villain of all time? FanWars gives opinionated fans (is there another kind?) a chance to discuss the most pressing issues in the World of Heroes. Producer and host Jace Hall (The Jace Hall Show, V, The Morning After) and a panel of celebrity experts pit fan against fan as they debate topics from comic books, superheroes, and science fiction.
Stan Lee’s Academy of Heroes (makeover reality) – From producer Jon Kroll (Amazing Race, Blade), the series takes real life aspiring heroes from across the country and gives them the mentoring and training they need to take their fight for good to the next level.
Stan’s Rants (opinion) – this weekly series features the spirit of the classic Stan’s Soap Box comic column, which explores the inner workings of the unique mind of Stan Lee. From behind his desk, Stan, tongue firmly in cheek, explains his thoughts on pop culture, upcoming films, the general state of the world and more, in this weekly series.
Glenn and Mike were at the movies – separately – just so they could have a heart-to-heart conversation about The Amazing Spider-Man. This time, each has a fairly different opinion.
Of course, there are spoilers ahead.
Glenn: So, this is going to be an interesting exercise. I believe I could hear your teeth grinding from Norwalk…
Mike: You liked it?
Glenn: Most of it, yes.
Mike: Jeez. I found only the last third the least bit tolerable. What did you like about it?
Glenn: The casting, for starters.
Mike: The casting was fine. But it was in service of a director who put everything he learned in community college up on the screen.
Glenn: Andrew Garfield won me over very quickly, with a naturalness that Tobey Maguire never quite seemed to have. Emma Stone could have carried the film even if she didn’t look just like a John Romita drawing.
Mike: The direction was amateurish and the script was worse. They’re lucky this wasn’t an adaptation of an Alan Moore story.
Glenn: I’m curious – what marked this as amateurish to you? The action scenes played fine, the character scenes worked to the actor’s credits – although I think the film may have trod a bit too much to the sort of aspirational stuff out of a Aaron Sorkin script… of course, that might have been a subconscious reaction to Uncle Ben Bartlett.
Mike: Gwen is the nexus of all coincidences. Her dad just happens to be a police chief in charge of the Spider-Man beat. She just happens to have an after-school job that gives her seemingly complete access to all areas and secrets of one of America’s largest high-science development companies – at 17 years-old – where she just happens to work for the arch-villain, who just happens to be the lab partner of the hero’s dead father.
Glenn: Yes, there’s a bunch of coincidences jammed there. But she was a science geek in the comics, just at the college level, and her dad was a police captain.
And yes, Connors and Richard Parker also happen to work for the upcoming big bad villain, too.
Mike: And all that was spread out over several years’ worth of comics. Here, this was all crammed into two hours – although, to be fair, it seemed like much longer. There’s coincidence, and there’s really bad storytelling. This is really bad storytelling. I really wanted to like this movie. Unfortunately, we knew two best actors weren’t going to make it out of the movie alive. There most certainly is such a thing as a great remake. The classic versions of Maltese Falcon and Wizard of Oz were both remakes. The Amazing Spider-Man is in absolutely no danger of joining this crowd. A remake has to answer the question “Why bother?” This movie, like the Superman remake, didn’t.
Glenn: Two best actors? I mean, we knew that Uncle Ben had to die. I can see a few reasons for retelling the story. For one thing, the effects work has improved a lot in places – the web-swinging in particular. Although the Lizard… well, you don’t always get it perfect.
Mike: Yeah, and we knew the Titanic was going to sink. But the latest movie was about a lot more than the sinking of a boat; ASM wasn’t about anything we hadn’t seen before. Why didn’t they show us Spidey actually using his powers? The webbing thing was fairly cool, but outside of that we rarely saw him in action. He’d be on the ground and there’d be a quick cut to him stuck to the ceiling. Web-slinging through the Manhattan cityscape? Nope; it was mostly long-shots or Peter’s point of view. You don’t have to get the villain perfect, just menacing. Certainly the Goblin looked less-than-stellar in the original.
Glenn: Just out of curiosity, did you see it in 3-D?
Mike: No, 2-D. Which doesn’t address a single one of my storytelling and direction complaints. You rarely saw Spider-Man being Spider-Man. Not even if he pops out of the screen and eats the popcorn out of your lap, 3-D has nothing to do with storytelling. Certainly not in this movie. It doesn’t come close to the Sixth Avenue shots in the first movie. Talk about your John Romita influence…
Glenn: The action sequences, web-slinging, etc. worked for me in 3-D. The Lizard – well, it’s a giant lizard. Hoping for emotion in a lizard’s face is going to be an uphill battle, no matter what insurance company mascots teach us.
Mike: You don’t have to get the villain perfect. Certainly the Green Goblin looked less-than-stellar in the original. But the Lizard looked like the Hulk had pooped out a baddie.
Glenn: Of course, there’s a point. How many times can Spider-Man lose his mask in this film?
Mike: About as often as they want the 12 year-old girls to go all Beatles over Garfield. Who, by the way, looks about 30. Did they cast Garfield and Stone because Dwayne Hickman and Tuesday Weld looked too young?
Glenn: Yeah, college age would have been easy to believe. High school?
Mike: And Peter, Gwen, and obviously ol’ Lizzieface certainly weren’t New Yorkers in the least. Flash might have been, Ben and May and Stacy certainly were, but the three leads seem like they never even visited New York. Conners had been there longer than Peter has been alive.
Glenn: I don’t think the Lizard was a poor choice of villain. Curt Connors was played well… except for that “must turn evil” bit, and even there, it played in character more than Doctor Octopus’s character turn in Spider-Man 2.
Mike:. It was in character for the original comics version that evolved over decades. In a two-hour movie (that played like an eight-day bicycle marathon), it was almost campy. At least Alfred Molena had the chops to pull Doc Ock off. I’d seen scarier villains on Doctor Who… in the black-and-white days!
Glenn: One thing that did work for me was the more naturalistic interactions between characters. Garfield and Stone clicked here in a way that Maguire and Dunst never quite did; for that matter, Garfield seemed more natural with everyone – Sally Field’s Aunt May, Martin Sheen’s Uncle Ben, Denis Leary’s Captain George Stacy, and even the crooks.
Mike: I agree, but those moments were brief. ASM wasn’t about the one-man Greek chorus, and that’s good. It’s about a 17 year-old, but only at times did they allow themselves to go there. Tell me. Did you like this movie as much this morning as you did last night?
Glenn: No, but I’ve had a morning that would make Pollyanna grumpy.
Mike: Did anybody applaud at the end? At my screening, absolutely nobody applauded. Not a one. Virtually everybody who wasn’t in the comics business left before the end of the credits.
Glenn: A decent amount of applause, nothing like the roar at the end of Avengers.
And I have to wonder how this plays in the rest of the country, since Spider-Man is really such a New York character.
Mike: That didn’t hurt the development and the success of Marvel Comics, which was almost entirely New York based for decades, and largely remains that way today. There was nothing particularly New Yorkish about the movie. It could have happened in Cleveland or Phoenix.
Glenn: There’s that same moment in this film that came in the first Spider-Man where New Yorkers pull together to help Spidey out.
Mike: New Yorkers like to think they live in the only city that pulls together in a crisis. It’s human nature. It’s what’s kept humans alive as a species. And wolves.
Glenn: Sadly, it didn’t work nearly as well as it did in the first one, mainly due to a big logic problem. There’s a helicopter right above him. Why doesn’t he just hitch a ride on that?
Mike: By the end of the movie I think only Flash Thompson didn’t know Peter was Spider-Man – and he was the one guy who should have figured that out, given all the scenes where Peter used his powers against him.
Glenn: Flash, despite his name, has never been that quick. And Aunt May – well, I don’t know if she knows or not.
Mike: I was never certain what Aunt May understood, except getting over her husband’s death right quick. Oh, and the costume really sucked. Seriously. Cirque du Soleil should stick to cribbing Mummenschanz.
Glenn: One of the nicer bits between Peter and Aunt May is there’s a lot of unspoken subtext there, with her obviously knowing there’s something Peter’s not telling her, but not knowing quite what – maybe that Peter’s suddenly going in for rough trade or something.
Mike: Sally Field handled each scene quite well; not once did I think “Flying Nun!” But together the movie made May Parker seem schizo.
Glenn: Was there anything you liked about this movie?
Mike: Denis Leary, both his performance and the way they handled his character.
Glenn: Agreed.
Mike: This movie will do well opening weekend because opening weekend lasts six days and has a major holiday in there. But I don’t see it conquering the world. I can understand Garfield wanting to be in Avengers 2. He wants to be in a good super-hero movie.
Glenn: I’m still thinking Sally Field is too young to play Aunt May, but that’s purely a construct that carries over from the comics that has almost no logical basis. Of course she shouldn’t be old enough to be his grandmother, but still.
Mike: You’re absolutely right – if May was Ben’s husband and Ben was Richard’s brother, then Sally was the right age. In the comics Aunt May was born sometime before Barnabas Collins. I should point out I liked this movie more than most of my companions. One, who’s about 17, said it was the worst movie he ever saw. Ric Meyers (who thought less of this than I did) and I replied in unison: “You’re still young.”
Glenn: And ironically, my companion is one of the surliest bastards in comics and prose (David A. Mack, the killer of the Borg) and he enjoyed it even more than I did. This may be the rare film where I can’t easily say in advance whether or not a particular viewer will enjoy themselves.
Mike: Yeah, well I give it a thumb’s up – where the sun don’t shine.
Glenn: I give it a thumb, index finger, and pinky up. Which makes for a very tough review. But hey, kids, go and find out for yourselves.
The Marvel Movie Universe has been an amazing success story and Disney is taking things to the next level with this fall’s release of Avengers on DVD. First, you can have the film in a variety of formats.
Or, you can buy the mega box set called Phase One containing:
Marvel’s The Avengers (Blu-ray 3D and Blu-ray)
Captain America: The First Avenger (Blu-ray 3D and Blu-ray)
Thor (Blu-ray 3D and Blu-ray)
Iron Man 2 (Blu-ray)
The Incredible Hulk (Blu-ray)
Iron Man (Blu-ray)
Bonus Disc – “The Phase One Archives” (Blu-ray)
Collectible packaging with exclusive memorabilia from the Marvel Cinematic Universe
I suspect most of us own some or all of these, but the memorabilia may make us think twice. It is certainly a nice collection for late-comers or for that special someone’s holiday list.
Daaaaaamn. This is what you can do in your spare time with off the shelf technology nowadays?
Michael Habjan created this on an Intel i7-990X hex core 24 GB RAM, and and i7-920 quad core 12 GB RAM over eight months… and made me miss Christopher Reeve even more, with the disturbing realization that if technology keeps going at this rate, I won’t be missing him for long.
The subject of Creators’ Rights in Comics has been catapulted into the limelight in recent years with the sudden surge of blockbuster, comic related films taking in billions of dollars for the corporations that own the copyrights and trademarks while the creators or the estates of creators that conceived and created these gold mines, struggle to get screen credit, let alone, some type of monetary compensation.
The current success of Marvel’s characters in all popular media has made Jack Kirby the posthumous poster child for numerous creators who are now victims of the comic industry’s tradition of work-for-hire agreements.
Stan Lee, Marvel’s long-time, imperial ambassador and co-creator on many of these characters, stands accused of benefitting enormous financial gain while failing to defend the rights of his various creative partners, most notably, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko who many contend deserve more than just art credit for their contribution to the actual creation of the characters that they are associated with.
Stan has and always will be, first and foremost, a company man having been brought into the business as a gopher at the ripe old age of 17 by his cousin-in-law, Martin Goodman, the publisher and former owner of Timely Comics. Timely evolved into Marvel under the stewardship of Stan who took over as editor, replacing Joe Simon who left Timely with Jack Kirby in 1941. Nepotism goes a long way in comics and Stan Lee, since, has always been “taken care of” for his role as a stalwart, corporate soldier.
To be fair Stan Lee is much more than the average, Marvel Monkey Boy. He is, unequivocally the Voice of Marvel Comics. The head cheerleader. The band leader of the Mighty Marvel Marching Society. Stan Lee, in many ways, has made himself into a Marvel character as epochal as any Spider-man, Avenger or X-Men. He has done so with a silver tongue, a witty pen, relentless salesmanship, unbridled enthusiasm, and a revisionist memory that defies the continuity strangled editorial policy of Marvel itself.
Stan Lee and his relationship to Marvel is his own greatest creation and he gets paid handsomely for it. Stan’s net worth is reportedly $200 million! This staggering figure infuriates co-creators and their heirs as well as comic fans focused on creators’ rights who all argue the unfairness that Stan Lee continues to acquire great wealth while his former collaborators are rewarded zilch. Most of them can’t even get a free ticket to see a movie featuring the character they created.
Is there, however, any evidence that Stan Lee is gaining that wealth from any type of royalty paid to him for his act of co-creating those characters either? If Stan got even a fraction of a cut from all the Marvel films and associated merchandise featuring a character that he is credited as a co-creator of , that $200 million would be a drop in the bucket.
Stan gets paid for being Stan the Man. Stan gets paid for being Executive Producer. Stan gets paid for his gratuitous cameos. Stan Lee has made himself famous. He is the Kardashians of the comics world and he is making himself rich, still, at 89 years old with the same vigor he had in 1961 when the Fantastic Four first hit the stands.
So why does Stan Lee catch so much heat when the subject of creator’s rights comes up if he is probably a victim of the same corporate greed, himself?
Well, it’s his own damn fault.
While Stan was creating a marketing atmosphere that sold Marvel to it’s readers as one big happy, zany Bullpen, he took it upon himself to make stars out of his creators by giving them credits with merry monikers that were intended to stick in the minds of the legion of fans that was growing faster than even he could have imagined.
As Marvel Mania grew, Stan boasted and told all. He was very open about who he collaborated with and happily shared the details of the now famous Marvel Method of creating comics. Not only did he talk; he wrote it down in his own words so that even if his memory would one day be awry, there would be a very clear paper trail.
In 1974 Stan Lee authored Origins of Marvel Comics followed the next year by Son of Origins of Marvel Comics. The success of these two books led to The Superhero Women and Bring on the Bad Guys. These books all detailed his perspective of his creative relationships with the artists in the Bullpen especially his dependancy on his numero uno illustrator, “Jolly” Jack Kirby.
Stan seemed to do all this with an intention of elevating the appreciation of comic creators with both the public and the industry. He assesses that the writing in comics prior to the inception of the Marvel style “…left just a little bit to be desired.”
To make his point he writes:
“Who were these people who actually created and produced America’s comic books? To answer that burning question we must be aware that comics have always been a high-volume low-profit-per-unit business. Which is a polite way of saying that they never paid very much to the writers or artists. If memory serves me (and why shouldn’t it?), I think I received about fifty cents per page for the first script I wrote in those early days. Comics have always been primarily a piecework business. You got paid by the page for what you wrote. the more pages you could grind out, the more money you made. The comic book writer had to be a comic-book freak, he had to be dedicated to comics; he certainly couldn’t be in it for the money. And unlike most other forms of writing, there were no royalty payments at the end of the road… no residuals…no copyright ownership. You wrote your pages, got your check, and that was that.”
We all know that Stan Lee values credits highly and was sure to plaster his own name on every Marvel comic. Stan Lee Presents and Stan’s Soap Box were as much of the part of the Marvel experience as anything else. His famed sign-off,“Excelsior!”, still brings a giddy rush to a generation of comic book fans. In an effort to instill some added pride to the work of the comic creators in the Bullpen, Stan began putting credits of all the creators in the comics Marvel produced.
“…I’ve frequently mentioned Jolly Jack Kirby as our most ubiquitous artist-in-residence. He wasn’t christened Jolly Jack –– sometimes he wasn’t even that jolly –– but I got a kick out of giving alternative nicknames to our genial little galaxy of superstars, mostly for the purpose of enabling our readers to remember who they were. You see, prior to the emergence of Marvel Comics, the artist and writers who produced the strips, as well as the editors, art directors, and letterers, were mostly unknown to the reader, who rarely if ever saw their names in print. In order to change that image and attempt to give a bit more glamour to our hitherto unpublicized creative caliphs, I resorted to every deviceI could think of –– and the nutty nicknames seemed to work.”
Joe Rosen
And it did work! Joe Rosen, a letterer in those days said in COMICS INTERVIEW #7, “That’s why I admire Marvel. By instituting credits, they made you feel prouder of your work. And by being so successful they revamped the industry and launched so many titles that they made it possible to have a professional career.”
Stan knew that to be successful you have to make those around you successful. He did this by giving credit and creating work. Most of which went to Jack Kirby.
Throughout the Origins series and, actually, most of his career, Stan always spoke very highly of Jack Kirby and his creative contributions. Some of those very telling remarks have been posted on the Kirby Museum website in Robert Steibel’s Kirby Dynamics but I have to refer to a quote in Son of Origins where Stan Lee completely asserts Jack Kirby’s role:
“Jack was (and still is)* to superheroes what Kellog’s is to corn flakes. When such fabulous features as The Fantastic four, the Mighty Thor, and The Incredible Hulk were just a-borning, it was good ol’ Jackson with whom I huddled, harangued, and hassled until the characters were designed, the plots were delineated, and the layouts were delivered so that I could add the little dialogue balloons and captions with which I’ve spent a lifetime cluttering up the illustrations of countless long-suffering artists.”
(*This was written during a period when Jack Kirby had left Marvel and gone to DC, unhappy because he was not being paid for what he considered “writing” at Marvel according to Carmine Infantino in his autobiography The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino. Kirby no longer wanted to be “second fiddle” and even declined an opportunity to collaborate with Joe Simon for the same reason though the pair did do a single issue of Sandman together.)
Stan recognized that his greatest resource was his talent pool and, short of finding ways to give them ownership in their creations, he looked for other ways to keep them happy. Stan was even the first president of The Academy of Comic Book Arts that he started with Neal Adams. The ACBA was to be the start of a comic creator’s union of sorts but did not last long.
Stan Lee has been in the comic book business for seventy-three years, probably longer than anyone else alive. He has done more for crediting comic creators than any editor who had gone before him, revealing his greatest sin. With his eye focused on glamour and recognition he failed to affect righteous residual compensation for the efforts of Marvel’s comic creators. His compliance with the business tradition that he himself recognized as insufficient destined generations of creators to teeter on poverty while their creations reaped gold for Marvel.
The victims of this industry-wide practice blanket the entire comics landscape, some tragically. Most recently Robert L. Washington III co-author of Static which is currently owned by DC Comics died of a heart attack in abject poverty at the age of 47. His contribution to the Heroes Initiative is a heart wrenching window into the reality of too many comic creators.
Stan, we love you man, but we need you now, more than ever, to stand up for comic creators or you will be always be cursed with the blame for Marvel cheating the same creators that you personally paraded as stars. You can still make a difference. It’s time to put an end to an archaic, unjust work-for-hire practice that keeps talented people impoverished while a soulless corporation bloats over the spoils of their creative efforts.
You have stood at the helm of a company that has created heroes your entire life. Be a hero to those that depended on you the most, the ones that helped you build that fabled “House of Ideas.”
Celebrating Thirty Years of Comics History!
Gerry Giovinco
As an added Bonus here’s a link to Neal Kirby’s FATHER’S DAY tribute to his dad that ran on this site last year.
Marvel Studios sent out a formal press release today announcing the commencement of production on Iron Man 3, despite filming actually beginning May 23, 2012 at EUE/Screen Gems Studios in North Carolina. The film, written by Shane Black and Drew Pearce appears to have been heavily influenced by Warren Ellis Extremis storyline which ran in the Iron Man comic beginning in 2005. Elements of the story were also used in the Iron Man: Armored Adventures episode “Extremis”.
The release did say, “The production schedule will also include locations in Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina, Miami, Florida and China.
“Based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series, first published in 1963, Iron Man 3 returns Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man, Marvel’s The Avengers) as the iconic Super Hero character Tony Stark/Iron Man along with Gwyneth Paltrow (Iron Man, Iron Man 2) as Pepper Potts, Don Cheadle (Iron Man 2) as James “Rhodey” Rhodes and Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Iron Man 2) as Happy Hogan. Set for release in the U.S. on May 3, 2013, Marvel’s Iron Man 3 marks the second feature to be fully owned, marketed and distributed by Disney, which acquired Marvel in 2009.”
The press release did not mention the following cast members although they had been previously confirmed in other reports: Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin, Guy Pearce as Aldrich Killian, creator of The Extremis Virus, Andy Lau as “an old friend of Tony’s from China, Rebecca Hall as Dr. Maya Hansen, Ashley Hamilton as Jack Taggert, and James Badge Dale as Eric Savin /Iron Patriot. The latter, an armored figure worn by Norman Osborn in the Civil War comics saga, was a surprise addition.
At present neither Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) or Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) have been confirmed for the film, although one or both are expected considering SHIELD has been the glue to hold the Marvel Movie Universe together.
“Iron Man 3 continues the epic, big-screen adventures of the world’s favorite billionaire inventor/Super Hero, Tony Stark aka Iron Man. Marvel Studios’ President Kevin Feige is producing the film. Executive producers on the project include Jon Favreau, Louis D’Esposito, Alan Fine, Stan Lee, Charles Newirth, Victoria Alonso, Stephen Broussard and Dan Mintz.
“The creative production team on the film includes two-time Oscar®-winning director of photography John Toll, ASC (Braveheart, Legends of the Fall), production designer Bill Brzeski (The Hangover, DueDate), editors Jeffrey Ford, A.C.E. (Marvel’s The Avengers, Captain America: The First Avenger) and Peter S. Elliot (Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer), and costume designer Louise Frogley (Quantum of Solace, Contagion).
“Marvel Studios most recently produced the critically acclaimed Marvel’s The Avengers, which set the all-time, domestic 3-day weekend box office record at $207.4 million. The film, which is currently in release, continues to shatter box office records and is The Walt Disney Studios’ highest-grossing global and domestic release of all time and marks the studios’ fifth film to gross more than $1 billion worldwide.
“In the summer of 2011, Marvel successfully launched two new franchises with Thor, starring Chris Hemsworth, and Captain America: The First Avenger, starring Chris Evans. Both films opened #1 at the box office and have grossed over $800 million worldwide combined. In 2010 Iron Man 2, starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke, took the #1 spot in its first weekend with a domestic box office gross of $128.1 million.
“In the summer of 2008, Marvel produced the summer blockbuster movies Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. Iron Man, in which Robert Downey Jr. originally dons the Super Hero’s powerful armor and stars alongside co-stars Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow, was released May 2, 2008, and was an immediate box office success. Garnering the number one position for two weeks in a row, the film brought in over $100 million in its opening weekend. On June 13, 2008, Marvel released The Incredible Hulk, marking its second number one opener of that summer.”
This past weekend I decided to place my vote (that’s “Dollar Bills” to DC’s Bob Wayne) for The Avengers for a second time. I did it first and foremost to teach Liam Neeson a lesson: If you don’t know the movie adaptation of a board game is a bad idea, maybe you need a new agent. Second to that, I personally wanted to see the film again to revel in Mark Ruffalo’s performance as the Hulk. If there were to be a single break-out star (pun intended) of the film, Bruce Banner certainly was it. For many who saw The Avengers, this is a shared sentiment. So, this begs us to ask the dudes at the House of Mouse… What’s next for the spinach-hued smasher?
If we are to believe the internet (and when has that ever led us down the wrong path?), The Hulk will next appear on the small screen via ABC. The network is pursuing a reboot of the once powerful series starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferigno. If this is to be true… I throw myself on the mercy of Mickey. Don’t do it.
Simply put? The Hulk begs for bigger and better treatment. The old series did last five seasons, and featured a few TV movies (co-starring Daredevil and Thor no less!), but this was long before the days of CGI. Long before the Hulk decimated Harlem. Or flew into the upper atmosphere on the nose of a fighter jet. Not that the recent movie Hulks have been perfect mind you, but they put poor old Lou out to pasture pretty quickly when it comes to conveying the size and power of the Incredible Hulk.
If Marvel/ABC ponies up enough dough to downsize the Hulk to the boob tube, it would certainly provide the interest of advertisers and the public at large to watch. But even with an HBO budget for a series, could today’s special effect houses handle the behemoth? In a word… no.
The fluidity of the Hulk within the Avengers was, as many fans agree, the first time the character didn’t feel entirely too fake to enjoy. Ang Lee’s monstrosity lumbered around the fabricated sets like a big baby throwing a tantrum. Louis Leterrier’s Hulk (who obviously did way more cardio than Ruffalo’s) fared better, but was more Max Headroom than Golum by comparison to the most recent iteration. While CGI and effect houses have certainly improved their efforts on TV, do yourself a favor: Watch the best episode of Heroes, Smallville, or Sharktopus Vs. Crocasaurus. Then go back and watch the Avengers. I’ll wait for you. Go on. Done? Now tell me that the scene-eating Hulk would be done any justice on a fraction of the budget that went into creating him on the big screen.
Don’t get me wrong, kiddos. For the chance to see Mark Ruffalo take the character on in a weekly serial, I’d be DVR’ing that series faster than Jeph Loeb could crap out a comic book. And while a TV show would obviously focus on Banner more than the titular titan, when it would come time to Hulk out, we’d get only a poor representation of what we know the character could be. And if they were to regress back to hiring a bodybuilder to smash cardboard walls? Well, who amongst us would not scoff as we wrote anonymous hatespew across the message boards?
If we can agree that Ruffalo’s Banner is following the Incredible Hulk movie of 2008, then we must know that there was an amazing set-up left for the sequel. Samuel Sterns was shown at the end of the film getting dosed by Banner’s blood/chemical sludge. His head began to throb and pulsate, and a creepy smile crawls across his face. Obviously meant as a wink and a nudge to the Leader, one of the Hulk’s better villains. With Ruffalo’s Banner perfectly balancing the line of intelligence and pent-up rage, only the movie screen can truly do the character justice in a battle with another gamma irradiated foe. Relegated to a lesser medium (in terms of only the effect work mind you), the Incredible Hulk might only come across the Credible Hulk.
I say make S.H.I.E.L.D. the TV show, and let Hulk continue to smash the box office.
Summer’s here and the time is right for geeking in the street. In a triumph of nerd culture, The Avengers may be the most successful movie of all time. Certainly, with the second week box office results breaking all kinds of records, there is more going on here than people who read comic books going opening day. There aren’t enough people who read superhero comics to make a movie that successful.
There are, however, enough shared values among comic book creators and movie creators to make a hit. In the case of The Avengers, a lot of the credit must go to Joss Whedon. Whedon earned his cred not only by writing awesome comics, but by producing Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Dollhouse.
Those shows had loyal fan bases (which didn’t overlap enough, or we’d still have the latter two on the air). They also shared a marvelous, matter-of-fact feminist sensibility.
The critical response? Not so much.
Most of the critical reviews single out Scarlett Johansson, saying she can’t act, or she’s only there to look pretty. One comment called her a female Keanu Reeves, which irked me for multiple reasons. I enjoy Keanu Reeves. I thought he was brilliant in My Own Private Idaho. And I really like Johansson in The Avengers. I believe she, like her character, has a brain in her head.
What I mostly enjoy about her character is the fact that her motivations are similar to those of her teammates. She wants to rescue her colleague, Hawkeye. Being on the team is part of her job, which she takes seriously.
The Black Widow is not on the team because she’s somebody’s girlfriend or sister. She’s not there to provide a love interest for a more important male character. She’s not there to be taken hostage by the bad guy (a role played, too some extent, by Hawkeye). She is not murdered and stuffed in a refrigerator. She doesn’t wear a costume that is more revealing than anyone else’s, or that defies the laws of physics to keep the film’s PG-13 rating. That’s reserved for the Hulk’s pants, which seem to grow when he does during the New York City battle.
In our popular culture, we’re very threatened by women who consider themselves to be just as able and just as interesting and just as important as men consider themselves to be. If women find meaning in their own lives, a huge market in cosmetics, plastic surgery, fashion and hair color dries up. If women think they can find meaning and value within themselves, they might only wear stiletto heels as a lark, and not proof of their femininity. They might have relationships with men they like, and not for status or validation.
The powers-that-be don’t enjoy that possibility. They’ve kept it out of almost all the other super-hero stories.
As fans and as feminists, we have an obligation to hold their feet to the fire when the inevitable sequels arrive. Joss can’t – and shouldn’t – have to do it alone.
I’ve seen a few Internet commenters wondering why anyone would want to smell like a “sweaty robotic suit” or whatever, but really, it’s refreshing to see a comics-related tie-in that’s not a t-shirt or knick-knack made of plastic. I’m an adult, and sometimes it’s fun to buy adult things that are also totally geeky. And I like that this particular product line has at least one female-specific product. So I say hooray to Marvel for partnering up with JADS International, purveyors of geeky scents, to bring us some fun comics-themed colognes and one (and maybe someday more?) perfume based on The Avengers. Also, let’s be honest, I just really, really like things that smell nice. And these scents really do.
Colognes and perfumes are super subjective, of course, and it can be hard to know what something is going to smell like when worn, because it reacts with body chemistry and the scent varies from person to person (like that one time when my best friend had the most amazing perfume and I loved it and she got me a bottle and… it smelled terrible on me. I was so sad). But it does help to know what something smells like in the bottle and on at least one person; and to that end, I am here to help! By not only telling you what each cologne smells like in the bottle, but also what it smells like on my extremely patient friend and fellow Avengers fan, the very talented comic book artist Kevin Stokes. (Round of applause for good sport Kevin, folks. Also check out his fantastic work on things like Stan Lee’s The Guardian Project. Just for fun, before I read the descriptions of the fragrances, I also wrote up what I thought the characters would actually smell like. Let’s see how close JADS International got to my ideas of what superheroes (and one heroine, and one villain) smell like. (more…)