EDITORIAL: Will Marvel's Cinematic Universe Be The Downfall To Marvel Comics?

EDITORIAL: Will Marvel's Cinematic Universe Be The Downfall To Marvel Comics?

LEVITIKUZ has a hunch that Marvel’s Cinematic Universe will be the downfall to Marvel Comics. Characters Marvel doesn’t own film rights to will take a backseat to those they do own. Click to check it out.

Editorial Opinion
By LEVITIKUZ - Dec 28, 2012 01:12 PM EST
Filed Under: Marvel Comics

Let me start off by saying, I haven't brought a Marvel comic all year. I could give you multiple reasons as to why. First off I have no job and barely have any money so I only buy Scott Synder's Batman. Another reason why is that since Marvel is doing a their relaunch with Marvel NOW, I rather wait to buy something from the new number #1 series then buy a series that is ending. Now lets get back on topic. What characters made Marvel who they are? Those characters are Spider-Man, X-Men, and the Hulk. Those were the ones who put Marvel in a mainstream way. Now when it comes to movies, Marvel owns the film rights to the Hulk so take him out and we got Spider-Man and the X-Men. This year Marvel successful pulled off their gamble and not only made The Avengers work but a Cinematic Universe work. They did this without the help from their big named heroes like Spider-Man and the X-Men. Now I've noticed a different Marvel Comic this year. There are reasons to believe that because of the success of The Avengers & Marvel's Cinematic Universe that Marvel Comics main focusing on characters with film rights they own and jeopardizing characters they don't own. Let me explain.



First off thanks to the success of The Avengers, Hawkeye has his own series. Let’s take a look at Hawkeye's solo comic’s series history. The first Hawkeye series was Hawkeye Volume 1 and that started September 1983 and it ended on December 1983. Volume 2 started on January 1994 and ended on April 1994. Volume 3 started on December 2003 and that ended August 2004. Volume 4 is the most recent series and that started August 2012 and is still going on. Even the look of Hawkeye in his series is the very similar to the Hawkeye in The Avengers movie. Hell if you go on Marvel's website and look at Hawkeye #1 you will see a description that says the following:

The breakout star of this summer’s blockbuster AVENGERS film and self-made hero Hawkeye fights for justice!

Marvel is basically telling us that there making changes with comics when something big happens in movies. Let’s move on to a different topic.



Recently Marvel introduced 2 new characters in their 616 Universe: Marcus Johnson and Phil Coulson. Marcus Johnson is the son of Nick Fury. While Nick Fury in the 616 is as white as cocaine, his son Marcus is as black as night. I'm not being racist at all but when a white man and a black woman have a child, the child is mixed. The child doesn't look all black or all white but mixed. Marcus Johnson doesn't look like mixed. Another thing is that he looks like SAMUEL L JACKSON. Marvel is trying to connect comics and film so they created a bullshit character so could there be a black Nick Fury in the 616 Universe. The other character that Marvel is introducing in comics is Phil Coulson. Phil Couslon was primarily responsible for putting The Avengers together in the film. Now he is in the comics. He is also a friend to Marcus Johnson. While it’s cool to see Phil Coulson in the comics, it feels forced thanks to the success and fan base the character received.



My third reason has to do with Guardians of the Galaxy. Now I'm going to be honest, I know nothing about them. That's why you do research, to know what you’re talking about so you don't look like an idiot. Now let’s look at their publication history. The first Guardians of the Galaxy started in 1969. None of them are the Guardians of the Galaxy that will be in the future 2014 film. The ones that will be, their first appearance was May 2008 and their series was canceled on April 2010 but they also had 2 one-shot series which came out May 2010 and January 2011. Marvel announced that the Guardians of the Galaxy will have a new series that will be a part of Marvel NOW. Marvel announced July 2012 that they will be making a film. It seems a little too obvious that the reason they will be in Marvel NOW will be to create public awareness for the Guardians of the Galaxy so when the movie comes up, people have an idea of who they are.



Marvel made the Avengers vs. X-Men event which pins both superpower teams together. Now in this event there are a couple of things that happen that would make people not want to read X-Men in the future. First off, they killed off Professor Xavier. This isn't like killing a second rate character, this is big. There really isn't a more important character in X-Men then Professor X and he's dead. Another thing that happened as a result of the Avengers vs X-Men crossover was that Cyclops is now viewed as a bad guy. Even though Cyclops was consumed by the Phoenix force, Cyclops still went to prison and killed Professor X. Cyclops is suppose to be the good boy scout leader like Superman with the Justice League and Captain America with the Avengers. Cyclops has been mistreated. Now Fox has said that they are developing an adaption of Days of Future Past and next we will see an adaption of the Wolverine Japan Saga in The Wolverine. Now I understand Cyclops isn't in Days of Future Past but still marketing wise, he could be beneficial.



My last piece of evidence is the Amazing Spider-Man; I mean I mean the Superior Spider-Man. First off, that is an incredibly bullshit reason why Doc Ock is now Spider-Man. Dan Slott is a talentless hack and this reason why Ock wanted to be Spidey sounds like something a six year old who write. Now I'm going to get off my rant. People know I don't like Slott and Slott doesn't like me. My point is this year we saw Sony release their Spider-Man reboot in The Amazing Spider-Man. Now recently the The Amazing Spider-Man was released on Blu-Ray and DVD. Now I don't care if you loved it or hated it, with Christmas coming soon, many children may want that movie and get it under their tree. The day after Christmas, the Amazing Spider-Man comic series will release their #700 and last issue and will reveal that Peter Parker will die in Doc Ock's body and Doc Ock will be the Superior Spider-Man. Now as I said before, this is comics. There is a good chance Peter Parker will come back as Spider-Man one day but for now we have Doc Ock. There is no comic’s series in Marvel that we see Peter Parker has Spider-Man. I'm alright and never had a problem with Miles Morales as the Ultimate Spider-Man. At least Peter Parker died honorably in that series. With no Peter Parker as Spider-Man, how are kids suppose to get into Spider-Man after getting The Amazing Spider-Man? Let’s say that they don't bring back Peter Parker by the time for a sequel, how can people get into the comics and read about Peter Parker if he's not there? Marvel ruined Spider-Man.

The whole point I'm making is it seems that Marvel is focusing on characters they own film rights to rather than those they don't in comics. There will be a Spider-Man, X-Men, and Guardians of the Galaxy film in 2014 and it seems Marvel is trying to hype up Guardians of the Galaxy more than the others. Marvel could be trying to sabotage characters they don't own film rights to through comics. I grew up with DC and the good news is WB's owns the film rights with all the DC characters so we don't have these problems in comics. What are your thoughts and feelings? Do you think I make a good point or I'm just talking nonsense? Comment below. Peace.

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aresww3
aresww3 - 12/28/2012, 2:10 PM
Interesting. watch out for the typos though. I´m not convinced though, I think marvel have a much better strtegy than DC at the moment and xmen movies have been far from perfect so they´re probably focusing on the right characters.
kenjim152
kenjim152 - 12/28/2012, 2:14 PM
I couldn't agree more, and it has been happening for some time already, after the xmen movies all xmen's suits were changued so they looked like the ones in the movies, then the ultimate universe was created so new readers (coming thanx to the success of the MCU) could start reasumí without getting all lost with years of stories. Now it is really obvious how marvel has been mistreating x men and spidey and i am glad i not the only 1 who sees it, I just Wonder how there are still people who claim that marvel movies are heavily based on source material. I just hope all these changues are for Good storytelling, i Mean this is not the first time Spiderman is not peter parker right? :s
Spideyguy94
Spideyguy94 - 12/28/2012, 2:46 PM
I agree. Although spider-man has been ruined for the last 5 years, he's literally had about 2 or 3 decent stories in the last 5 years. That is not good especially considering there's been 154 single issues of the amazing spider-man that have come out since then.

Cyclops hasn't been the Boy Scout since new x-men and astonishing x-men. His personality and views are now an amalgamation of both xavier and magneto's views. Also when you think about it the x-men won in AVX because at the beginning of it cyclops' goal was to stop mutants from becoming extinct through hope, and that happens in the end mutants start turning up in big numbers. and cap admits he was in the wrong as much as cyclops.
Parker2017
Parker2017 - 12/28/2012, 2:59 PM
@SpideyGuy94 Agreed, it's sad but the only last spider-man issue i hoenstly read other then 700 was spider-island and it was okay, read a little bit of end of th e earth.


as itnertesting iy is, and thsi si an itnerestign view i tihnk Marvel can come up with soemthing also i tihnk otto si still goignt o be called "Peter"
kenjim152
kenjim152 - 12/28/2012, 3:01 PM
@spideyguy94 I partially agree with u, i Dont think anyone won in AVX the crossover was more like an excuse so they could mix the avengers with more popular mutants, though that had already happened before :s
Spideyguy94
Spideyguy94 - 12/28/2012, 3:10 PM
@Parker2017 yeah I thought spider-island was ok at best. Ultimate spider-man has been the best spider-man book and one of best marvel books over the last 12 years, amazing was great under JMS with the exception of OMD and sins past. But since that ultimate has been leaps and bounds above it. It says a lot when the 3 best spider-man family books don't even have Peter Parker in there at all (Venom, Scarlet Spider and Ultimate).
kenjim152
kenjim152 - 12/28/2012, 3:53 PM
@Sotojuiceman I have not thought if that, but getting to close the MCU at a point would be epic, you are right about that, then from there their franchises could be managed the way James Bond's movies are, meaning anybody could be the new Iron man or the new captain america.
bazinga85
bazinga85 - 12/28/2012, 4:42 PM
Great write-up LEVI. You''re right about everything you said. I know marvel mistreated Cyclops during AvsX, but in my opinion, he's cooler now than before AvsX.
Spideyguy94
Spideyguy94 - 12/28/2012, 4:57 PM
@Battlin The thing with the whole marvel making the comics like movies is that they are pandering to an audience who Arn't there. Movie success does not equal to boost in comic book sales. You might get a few who decide to jump into comics but not enough to show a significant boost on sales. While some things that have been taken from the movies are good (Jarvis being an AI), it really messes up the stuff creators are doing on books, for example when Captain America was being released in July last year, marvel relaunched Captain America with a new number 1 and put Steve Rogers back in the costume. And it really screwed up the stuff ed brubaker was doing with bucky and cap sales did not go up at all.
Albie
Albie - 12/28/2012, 5:14 PM
@Levitikuz

If I kept as up to date with the actual comics as I probably should, I'd have more to say. My early prediction is Guardians of the Galaxy - The Movie will flop, though.

(And the secret to editing is simply reading and re-reading what you've written at least 5 times slowly, out loud can be even more helpful, and just make changes as you go.)
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 12/28/2012, 5:16 PM
Honestly man, this is nothing new and should not surprise anyone. There is not a single instance where a CBM was made and the comics, no matter how far from its normal status quo, didnt return to business as usual in time for the movie. There is also not a single instance where the comics didnt try to emulate the films if the film itself deviated from the source material.

In Daredevil, Bullseye didnt wear his costume. Instead, he wore street clothes and a scarred bullseye symbol on his forehead. Then in the comics, they had DD lost his temper and carve a bullseye into Bullseye's head with a rock. Bullseye also stopped wearing his costume for a time. All so they could match up with the movie.

Spider-Man 3 featured the black suit. During that time in the comics, Peter started wearing the black costume again and started acting mire brutal so he could match peter in the movie.

When the first X-Men movie came out, the X-Men all started wearing matching black leather costumes to match their movie counterparts.

Need I go on?

Point is, from a business standpoint, its probably a good thing because they know longtime readers will stick around. But while the movie is out, they might as well make the comics resemble the movies so they can draw in the more than likely bandwagon fans that will probably ne temporary. Thats why these changers are always temporary as well. They get a big sales spike, but then the bandwagoners start falling off, and then the company goes back to status quo.

As a lifetime reader of comics, i hate it. It feels almost diarespectful to us longtime fans. Like they are willing to make unnecessary changes that irritate longtime fans just to please a bunch of temps.

But lets be honest. Peter Parker will be back behind the mask in time for ASM2. They brought Cap back from the grave just in time for the Cap movie, and they always make the comics resemble the movies. So no worries, bud, Pete will be back soon. No question.

Great article man!
Spideyguy94
Spideyguy94 - 12/28/2012, 5:20 PM
@battlin I'm fine with them doing a guardians of the galaxy book because comic book fans will see the movie will be coming out so they'll check it out before they go see the movie. Or them doing a hawkeye or black widow book because they've just been in one of the biggest movies of all time, and one thing CBMs do is get comic book geeks interested in characters they previously didn't bother to check out. I've previously had this happen to me with Thor I never really bothered to read Thor but after the movie I checked out some the comic and now I'm a big fan of the character. It's just when marvel do unnecessary things like relaunch books with new number 1s when the movie comes out or change the costume to the movie costume (bendis' bullseye anyone?).
AC1
AC1 - 12/28/2012, 5:30 PM
While I don't agree with every point, I agree with the overall article. It's clear Marvel are giving the properties they own the film rights to preferential treatment in the comics department, while they're sort of screwing over certain other characters. They're ruining Spider-Man, and while some of the X-Men changes are interesting (I actually like the idea of the time travelling original 5, Present Cyke being more of a villain, and I'm even getting used to Prof X's death) the way they've implemented those changes is very biased, in that they wrote the Avengers better than the X-Men, and from the sounds of it made the X-Men lose the AvX event with no real reason.

I'm actually pretty worried about Guardians of the Galaxy though. Either it'll be different and interesting enough to be a moderate success, or it'll be a massive failure. They'll have to market the hell out of the connection to The Avengers if they want it to work, but it's both risky and kind of unnecessary considering the other properties they could've adapted first, such as Black Panther or Doctor Strange, hell even Heroes for Hire.
pesmerga44
pesmerga44 - 12/28/2012, 11:42 PM
The one big flaw with this whole article is that the Marvel movies saved Marvel comics. Does no one remember back in the 90's when Marvel went bankrupt and that the only thing that saved them was selling the movie rights of Spider-man, the X-men, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, etc... Even to this day the comic book industry even with the movies is still teetering just above profit. This isn't the golden age of comics where individual comics sold millions they are lucky if a single series hits a million in 6 months while most won't hit that in a year some not even two. So ya I don't like all the things that change because of the movies but hell with out the movies we probably wouldn't even be here bitching about Marvel making changes according to the movies.
bgharcourt
bgharcourt - 12/29/2012, 12:01 AM
I never thought Hawkeye needed his own title. He is a b list hero at best(So is green arrow). But I get that Marvel needs to push the Avengers books to get even more of a buzz going for Phase II of the MCU. I just want to know who will be cast as Rocket Racoon!!!
xcrementus
xcrementus - 12/29/2012, 3:47 AM
few things:

-Cyclops has been a renegade since after House of M. If by being mistreated you mean he's stopped being a brown-nose and started wearing big boy pants, then i guess that's mistreated. I think it was important to show that he had convictions parallel to Xavier's, but more pragmatic.
He hates that he killed Xavier. But at the time, he did what he thought he had to do. And i respect him more for it.

-If Xavier is so important, he would have shown up more than a couple of times in the last 8 years. XMen have gotten along fine without him and will continue to. I respect that their origins are tied to his vision, but maybe him being a martyr for the cause of mutant rights solidifies him in their minds and will keep them on the right path?

-Hawkeye has been around since the 60's, a regular Avenger, and every time they try a solo title it fails. With the movie push, this time FINALLY it stuck. Can't blame a company for trying to get one of their most resilient characters a spotlight of their own.

-Superior Spiderman will play itself out, and Peter will be back. I know so many of you hate Slott for some reason, but i love his run, i love the drama he brings out, and i love that there is a strong seeded narrative throughout his run which adds layers to the readers. the new Hobgoblin has great personality, Jameson and Aunt May have had some real growth, Peter's grown up a little too which is nice to see. I'm gonna keep reading, cus to get Marvel to sign off on this story, there MUST be a great payoff down the road.
Onslaught
Onslaught - 12/31/2012, 9:03 AM
I understand where you are coming from but (once you fix your cash flow situation) you gotta check out Hawkeye - it is a surprisingly good book.
Macksimus
Macksimus - 12/31/2012, 8:50 PM
I don't quite understand the point you are trying to make. How are the movies hurting comics, again? ...because they are focusing only on movie characters??? How is that hurting comics? Their most popular characters get books/series made about them; their most popular characters also get movies made about them. As far as movies influencing comics?...that's nothing new. Movies (CBMs and non-CBMs) have been influencing the comics for years. Whenever a new movie comes out, you see likeness to that movie in the comics. When Burton's Batman came out, you could see its influence on the comics. You can't tell me Cable's character wasn't influenced by the Terminator LOL. Cable's grown-up self debuted in the New Mutants back in 1990, just one year before T2. He was always depicted with a glowing left eye just like Arnold's terminator LOL.
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