Author: Dante Maddox

Check out Part I right here!

Spider-Man, the Ant-Man and the rest of the kitchen sink 

Welcome back! Sorry about last night and I promise to wear a shirt this time… wait, this isn’t a Facebook private message…

At any rate thanks for stopping by again! We’re going to wrap up talking about Marvel’s latest cinematic triumph while exploring all the cool stuff Marvel created that folks like Kevin Fiege and Joss Whedon get to play with. Last time we looked at the major themes that were possibly used to craft the Civil War story for film, but the movie did more than discuss the fight between Iron Man and Captain America, let’s have a look at that.

Ant-Man, how the MCU addressed Marvel’s chronic douche problem.

If you think you love Stan Lee more than I do, I will fight you. If you’re are one of Mr. Lee’s children, I apologize but I will fight you too. I say that because I’m about to commit a bit of sacrilege. After reading a great deal of Stan Lee’s books, I’ve come to the conclusion that Stan Lee think’s people from New York are essentially d-bags. Ok, let’s get a new heading then since people are starting to light torches…

Marvel’s Douche Nozzles and the importance of Catharsis.

Better? Dude you really need to read Avengers #4, the one where they find Cap in the ice? The first thing Captain America says has nothing to do with Peggy Carter (seriously, who wouldn’t think of Peggy Carter for all eternity?) and is more akin to, ‘Come at me bro!’ Why? Because the Avengers had the audacity to be in disbelief that a man could be frozen for almost 30 years (It’s the 60’s remember) and still just get up and keep it pushing without so much as a cup of coffee. It wasn’t just Cap, the pages of the Avengers portray the team and the other heroes as a bunch of overly aggressive muscle heads. The first year of Marvel Comics was more Jersey Shore than any of us care to admit. However, Stan Lee is a god like being above reproach for good reason. He knew then what we’re still learning now, you can’t have a good catharsis without legitimate douchebaggery.

So yes, in the early days of Marvel, most of the male characters especially were insufferable a-holes. They weren’t heroes yet, but they were going to learn and grow. They were going to become the heroes we love so much, which was what Stan Lee wanted and how he saw the difference between his creations and the ones made by the Distinguished Competition. The earlier heroes were good right out of the box, almost cookie cutter like. But when I say I grew up with Spider-Man, other Spider-Man fans know that I mean it literally. I met an angry 15 year old who was mad at the world and on his way to being a huge jerk. I saw tragedy and catharsis, and then I saw a hero emerge. I watched him graduate high school, get his first job, apartment. I met his friends, and I even got to go to his wedding. I laughed and cried with this fictional character that has roughly been my age since the moment I met him. I honestly believe I’m so endeared to him because the first time I met him, he was a little prick. Excuse me, I need a second.

While many of our Marvel characters grew up before our eyes in many ways, some of them were just bad apples. That brings us to our topic of the MCU, and Civil War in particular. There was one character that never really grew up so to speak. If Ike Turner and that harpy from Mommy Dearest had a son, that kid would be Hank Pym. He sucks, to put it mildly, and for really good reasons the writers left him that way. The Ultimates storyline that the MCU films take a lot of their cosmetic queues from, also dealt with Henry’s issues because as a character study, he’s incredible. But it seems like the MCU avoided Pym’s issues in the same way they avoided Tony Stark’s alcoholism. There just isn’t enough time to deal with these concepts and then do anything else. Hank Pym has hit his wife, that’s a hard pill to monolog your way past. The comics do it, because they literally have forever to deal with it. What would any of the MCU films be like if Tony has to make it to a meeting before he punches Cap, or Natasha has to gut punch Hank every time she sees him (because she would, and I would pay to see it like a snuff film)? The issue was enough that they literally brought Scott Lang back to life because they needed a likable guy to be Ant-Man. Oh, apparently Scott Lang is alive again in the 616, but that’s new, Lang was killed years ago and his daughter Cassie has been a hero in his stead. We’ll look more closely at Scott and Hank in part 3 when we deal exclusively with Ant-Man. Scott created another issue however, which bearss mentioning here.

Paul Rudd could be why we got a teenaged Spider-Man.

I really liked Tom Holland as Peter Parker. The second I saw him it was clear to me why he was cast in the role, in a lot of ways he’s perfect. But he’s a teenager and part of me wants to hate that. In the first section I made the claim that Civil War is really just a title like Age of Ultron and Dark World were. Spider-Man and his appearance is another example that the film doesn’t take all that much from the comic of the same name. One of the major moments in the books is Peter Parker telling the world he’s been Spider-Man since he was 15 years old. In the Amazing Spider-Man comics, a lot of work had been done to position Peter for Civil War. They built his relationship with Tony up, he moved his family (wife and aunt, I think you know em’) into Avengers Tower, heck there was even a romantic connection between Jarvis and Aunt May! The film had to get rid of all that because as we know, he’s (Peter) only been at it for six months. There are a lot of good reasons to do it that way, and I think Paul Rudd could have played a part in that.

In the big airport fight scene, two people are sharing the best lines. The bug guys. Ant-Man is a bit more established coming out of his own film, and Paul Rudd is a comedic acting heavyweight in his own right (shut up, watch Anchorman and shut up). We don’t know exactly when Spider-Man was green lit for the MCU, so doesn’t Rudd sort of provide the everyman in an amazing world commentary we might expect from another bug themed guy? If we bring actual 30 something Spider-Man into the fold, doesn’t he become redundant? In the comics, I didn’t love the way the New Avengers writers handled Spider-Man. Looking back, it’s because he was written in those books like he’s handled in the film, which works there because he’s actually an annoying teenager in the film. The New Avengers ignored 20 years of character development in order to get the dynamic they wanted.  Rudd helps you avoid the Pym problem, and fills the void of a mature veteran Peter Parker who should technically be present. None of the source material stories are from an era where Peter is a kid, unless they are going the Ultimate route, which so far seems unlikely as they have really borrowed very little aside from the cosmetic.

Let’s close with a bit more explanation about the Ultimate line of comics. The reason I don’t think the MCU will use much from the Ultimate stories is because they haven’t to this point. Hawkeye and Nick Fury are more or less the only characters to be deeply based on their Ultimate counterparts. After that, all of the events and stories are from the 616, yes including Ant-Man. In The Ultimate Universe the Wasp lost her life to a nasty bit of Mutant cannibalism, not a rocket falling from the sky. Natasha Romanov is a villain in every sense of the term along with the Hulk (hey, aren’t they romantically linked in the MCU?) and we didn’t see that in the films. Somehow I doubt we’re going to see Spider-Man die from a bad case of abdominal bullet sickness. But I digress, how I think they’ll pull off two Spider-Men (and I think they will) in the MCU is best reserved for another post.

Come back next time though, I’m going to explain how the ‘winning’ formula Marvel has been using first bore fruit in Ant-Man and not Civil War. Fear not, it’s why you should be very excited about all the movies coming out with that opening logo that should eventually hospitalize thousands with seizures.

Warning: Mild Spoilers

If you’re a comic book fan like myself then I’m sorry and we’ll hug as soon as we meet. Luckily, we have these really cool movies to give us something to look forward to. Over the years the blogosphere has had a reaction to comic book movies that can best be described as fickle. And then Marvel put their actual hat in the ring and the rest seems to be history. Every new film seems to be bigger and better than the last, with the prevailing question being, when will they plateau? The good news is likely never! Because the difference between Marvel and the rest of the field isn’t money, actors or even directors but instead its editorial brilliance that makes the difference.

Marvel Comics has been pretty transparent for decades in terms of how some of their biggest events and stories came to be. Knowing how much effort goes into what sometimes appear to be minor story changes is what gives me confidence in the company going forward. Watching how Disney and company have weaved all of the MCU together is an example of that very same editorial brilliance. We’re going to take a trip down MCU lane by looking at the films and the stories these creators have used, and for fun we’re going to do it in reverse!

The Sokovia Accord isn’t necessarily a reference to the Civil War comic

That observation might not sit well with certain MCU fans, but it’s still true at the end of the day. The Civil War comic does have a political document that is similar, however the differences do matter. The Superhuman Registration Act wasn’t even new to the Civil War comics. Captain America had resisted both attempts to pass the act which was how they explained his stance in the Civil War event. The Sokovia Accord has a minor stipulation that completely changes what it is in reference to the comics. The Accord stipulates that the Avengers would answer to the United Nations and that bugs Cap in the film. However that’s pretty much the status quo in the comics, the Avengers have answered to the UN for years. It’s how the comic book creators explained the team’s ability to operate all over the globe.

That doesn’t mean that Steve Rogers’ reaction to the Accord doesn’t make sense, it’s just that it’s housekeeping for a different purpose entirely. Martin Freeman plays Everett K. Ross, his announcement as a member of the cast was the original indicator that Black Panther would be in the film. He was literally created in those pages and hasn’t been seen really elsewhere. Ross isn’t so much a SHIELD Agent, but an attaché provided to T’Challa by the American government. So, how’d he end up in this role in Civil War? Mostly because someone had to represent Henry Peter Gyrich. Ross and The Accord fill that role.

There is a conversation in the film where the main characters mull over signing the Accord. The points they bring up basically cover 10 years’ worth of Avengers stories where they had to answer to Gyrich on those basic issues. It didn’t cause the same type of team dynamic but it did provide its fair share of drama. If you’re wondering why Martin Freeman was tapped, or why he didn’t play Gyrich outright, it could be because Mystique killed the guy in the first X-men movie when he was played by Matthew Sharp. You know the movie where Magneto turned a Senator into Hydro-Man? There is a scene where James Rhodes points out the Accord isn’t the various groups they had issues with in the past. In the comics, that’s exactly the problem the Avengers face. Gyrich is a member of The National Security Council and was appointed by the President to oversee the Avengers. Transitioning to UN oversite was how they eliminated Gyrich as an obstacle in the story.

There is also the matter of the heavy mutant influence in the pages of The Avengers. Did you that it was Spider-Man that initially vouched for the Maximoff twins? Quicksilver wanted to prove that he was a hero by bringing in the dangerous criminal Spider-Man. It didn’t go his way because it’s Spider-Man but, luckily for he and his sister, ol’ Spidey literally dropped them off at Avengers Mansion and told Cap that he should help them. But the twins were just the beginning, a longtime Avenger is The Beast of X-Men fame and there have been many back and forths between creators over who gets to play with everyone’s favorite blue team player. Even more recently Wolverine inexplicably became an Avenger, and after that the stories have almost become truly one. Henry Peter Gyrich was one of the attempts by Marvel to capitalize on the immense popularity of The X-Men, Gyrich was in the X-Men film in 2000 because he was also linked to the Sentinel project in the X-Books. That’s a lot of info to sort through, using events Marvel might want to shy away from. Martin Freeman as Ross gives you Gyrich’s presence and maybe a few lines to represent a major aspect of the original story.

It’s likely not as simple as all that, something else very important happened during that conversation. If you listen carefully several cast members give the viewers some seriously specific numbers. The amount years that Iron Man has been such, how long the Avengers have been Avenging and even how long it’s been since Tony Stark strolled up to Thunderbolt Ross in that bar. This is comic book universe building 101, creating a timeline that allows blanks to be filled in from start to finish. In the scene that begins with Thunderbolt Ross and ends with Cap getting the text message the rough timeline for events going forward is laid out. Thor wasn’t MIA at the end of Age of Ultron, and he told Steve he was just going to do some investigating. That combined with Tony’s vaguely explained injuries in the beginning of the film would suggest that future stories could be told out of chronological order.

When you consider the stakes at the end of the film, United Nations oversite could be something easily explained away as existing in the background and Cap just came around.

Aside from the official MCU films, the best Marvel movies have in my opinion been Sam Raimi’s first two Spider-Man films. What I liked most was how much of the history he managed to squeeze into the two stories. Civil War does that but with far more story to encapsulate.

I’ll close part one with this:

The Iron Man franchise is the Extremis Story, The Captain America franchise covers The Winter Soldier, Secret War, Agents of SHIELD and by extension Secret Warriors/Inhumans. The Thor films help bridge the gap between GotG and everyone else, and in turn the Guardians are bridging the gap between Space past and present. Ant-Man and all the other stories will also be examined as we explore how it all came to this.

That’s my time folks, until next time of course.