The Marvel Cinematic Universe: The Avengers, etc.

[Fukui San]

The talk of lists and ranks made me want to go back and look at sales figures from before the successful blockbuster superhero movie era. The original Raimi Spider Man came out in 2002. X-Men 1 came out in June 2000.  So I went back and looked the sales figures at a random month in 2000, March 2000. The Ultimate line would come out later that year, so this is a good point to look at Marvel before movies and the Ultimate treatment would change everything.

The two X-Men books were #1 & 2 with Wolverine solo at #3.  Clearly if there's an A+ list it would be the X-books.

Avengers is the next Marvel book at #6 overall. Daredevil #8, Punisher #9, Fantastic Four #10. Every ranking number I cite is overall comics sales, not just Marvel.

Cable and X-Force #12 & 13. Remember those days? Holy Rob Liebfeld!

I'm actually pretty shocked a Spider-Man title doesn't appear until #14. The circulation numbers of two Spider-Man titles together barely beat Wolverine.

The pillars of the MCU, Thor, Iron Man, and Cap are at #15, #20, and #23. I kind of think "B list" is a fair assessment of them at this point.

Other movie relevant numbers: Punisher #9. Deadpool at #75.  There's a Captain Marvel at #50, but it's not Carol Danvers but a male character I'm not even familiar with, Genis. I think Carol Danvers at this point was a background character named Binary traveling with the Starjammers. Black Panther #92. Hulk #46. 

[Kel Varnsen]

I was big into comics back then and I am not sure you can really use comic book sales as a guide for who was popular with the general public. If I recall a top selling comic like Uncanny X-Men maybe sold 100,000 copies. It outsold Batman, and yet Batman was way more a household name at the time then any X-man. Even Spiderman was probably more popular from his various cartoons than he was from people actually liking comics. 

Also that Genis-vell Captain Marvel, from what I remember was pretty good. I think Carol was in the Avengers for awhile during that point though. 

And to this day I still find it hilarious how low selling Black Panther was back then considering how much stuff from that run was used for MCU BP and how big of a hit the movie was. I think I was the only person in my comic store who bought that title. And my lame claim to fame is that they used my suggestion for the title of the letters page. Although shortly after that Marvel stopped doing letters pages.

[Tenshinhan]

No way were Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Fantastic Four ever B listers.  You can't lead the original Avengers team and be a B-lister.  And I think that FF and Cap's legacy speaks for themselves.

Household names and mainstream consciousness is largely irrelevant.  It's about their significance within the Marvel Universe and comic book history in my view.

Edited June 28, 2022 by Tenshinhan

[Kel Varnsen]

I don't know, I think being a household name is important. It's why Marvel was able to sell the movie rights for Spiderman to Sony for actual money. And looking at those sales figures from 2000, even though X-Men was the number one (and 2) selling comic I am sure there were a lot of people at Marvel who would give anything at the time for any Marvel character to be as popular as Batman (even though Batman wasn't as big a seller).

[Raja]

13 minutes ago, Tenshinhan said:

No way were Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Fantastic Four ever B listers.  You can't lead the original Avengers team and be a B-lister.  And I think that FF and Cap's legacy speaks for themselves.

Household names and mainstream consciousness is largely irrelevant.  It's about their significance within the Marvel Universe and comic book history in my view.

You can if you conclude that the only reason Marvel Studios went with the Avengers is because the A list was unavailable to them. As for the team members they were in place in the comics just weeks after Spiderman was created 

[starri]

Hulk was a known commodity because of Lou Ferrigno.  

Spider-Man had a string of cartoons going back to the late 60s.

X-Men broke through into the popular consciousness because of the animated series.

[Kel Varnsen]

2 hours ago, starri said:

Hulk was a known commodity because of Lou Ferrigno.  

Spider-Man had a string of cartoons going back to the late 60s.

X-Men broke through into the popular consciousness because of the animated series.

Oh yeah I am sure it wasn't just a random thing that Hulk was the second MCU movie they put out.  I am sure it has a lot to do with how well known the character is.

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Tenshinhan said:

No way were Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Fantastic Four ever B listers.  You can't lead the original Avengers team and be a B-lister.  And I think that FF and Cap's legacy speaks for themselves.

Household names and mainstream consciousness is largely irrelevant.  It's about their significance within the Marvel Universe and comic book history in my view.

It seems like you are classifying the B list in a completely different manner than most. 

Every time I have heard them referred to as B-list it is in regards to mainstream consciousness. They may not have been B-list within the comics but the absolutely were with regards to every measure necessary for making a movie. I would say Iron Man, Captain America and Thor were B-list as an IP. 

[SeanC]

2 hours ago, Dani said:

It seems like you are classifying the B list in a completely different manner than most. 

Every time I have heard them referred to as B-list it is in regards to mainstream consciousness. They may not have been B-list within the comics but the absolutely were with regards to every measure necessary for making a movie. I would say Iron Man, Captain America and Thor were B-list as an IP. 

B-list within the comics was a fair assessment around the the 2000s, also. They were getting by on historical importance while being fairly minor commercial properties.

[Danny Franks]

11 hours ago, Fukui San said:

The two X-Men books were #1 & 2 with Wolverine solo at #3.  Clearly if there's an A+ list it would be the X-books.

This isn't surprising. Generally speaking, Marvel have had more success with team books than DC, and DC more success with single hero books.

The X-Men have been Marvel's standard bearers since the 1980s, and recognisable even by people who don't read comics. Wolverine is the one, truly breakout character of that group, but the group itself was the selling point for a long time.

Spider-Man is the only single character I'd put on a par with Batman and Superman, as being recognised across the world by anyone. The Hulk is close behind, because of the TV series and his very distinct look.

The thing is, Marvel have been around for seventy years and originally popular characters, like Iron Man, Cap, Thor and the Fantastic Four, fell off in popularity at times, while Spider-Man and the X-Men have been consistently popular for most of their history (the X-Men really only took off when Chris Claremont starting writing the book in 1975).

Characters rise and fall in popularity as they're passed from writer to writer, as they join teams or leave them. It's one of the fun things about comic books, that a writer can completely revitalise a character, like Ed Brubaker did with Captain America or JMS did with Thor, and push them up to the top of the pile. Suddenly you have Luke Cage, the blaxploitation character from the 70s, leading the Avengers, because Brian Bendis has quietly built him up over successive books, and people buy in to it.

[Tenshinhan]

5 hours ago, SeanC said:

B-list within the comics was a fair assessment around the the 2000s, also. They were getting by on historical importance while being fairly minor commercial properties.

You have to look at the comic book history as a whole, not just one particular era.  By the time the 2000s rolled around, who was A-list or B-list had already been established.  You can go from B-lister to A-lister, but you typically can't go from A-lister to B-lister.

[tv echo]

When asked about a possible solo Scarlet Witch movie and/or possibly appearing in Agatha: House of Harkness, EO: "I would love to be a part of both of those. No one tells me anything, and I'm not even hiding a secret because I'm bad at that. I know nothing about my future."

Elizabeth Olsen and Robbie Arnett talk new book, 'Hattie Harmony: Worry Detective' l GMA
Good Morning America   Jun 28, 2022

[SeanC]

11 hours ago, Tenshinhan said:

You have to look at the comic book history as a whole, not just one particular era.  By the time the 2000s rolled around, who was A-list or B-list had already been established.  You can go from B-lister to A-lister, but you typically can't go from A-lister to B-lister.

I don't think so. If you dwindle in commercial importance, your status inevitably dwindles with it. That's why the Avengers franchise got that big reboot to try to amp up its importance by adding more popular characters in the mid-2000s, for instance.

[Dandesun]

The 2000s really isn't the issue, though. Marvel's bankruptcy and the selling off of it's more lucrative properties happened in the 90s. And in the 90's you had to look at the previous decades' trends, too. X-Men #1, that biggest selling issue with the various covers that was the pinnacle of the 'collectables' market, hit the shelves in 1991. X-Men 1-3 was the last Chris Claremont story (well, at the time.) Claremont kicked off the 80s with the Dark Phoenix story which was HUGE. It was the story that put the X-men on the map and that was the culmination of over two years of storytelling in monthly comics. After that, you had Days of Future Past, the Brood Saga, Mutant Massacre, Fall of the Mutants, Inferno... and you had one guy that held the reins of the storytelling so you had long plot seeds that took their tiiiiiime. The 2nd go round with the Brood is fucking nuts. There's this one page in an issue where Havok and Polaris get run off the road in the desert... FOURTEEN ISSUES LATER they go back to that and explain what's been going on with that little plothole since and it's GNARLY.

Cap, Iron Man, FF... look, I'm not saying there weren't good storylines. Armor Wars was in the 80s. Cap turned into a werewolf!! (Granted, not a great story, it's one you look back on and simultaneously go 'whaaat?' and 'that was weirdly awesome.') Actually, Were!Cap was in the 90s. He fought Cable and X-Force that was a thing. I started reading Cap in the 90s actually when Mark Waid took over (post Were!Cap) and I loved it but that was also specifically focusing on the things that made Cap who he was and very much NOT going for what comics were obsessed with in the 90s (all the Image! stuff from the creative exodus... yikes.) When I say that Iron Man, Cap, Thor and the rest of the Avengers were B-list I'm not being mean. They were not valuable property despite the ideas of 'well Cap's recognizable and these guys are on the Avengers' -- the AVENGERS weren't A-list! That's just the way it was!

Thor and Cap didn't get revitalized by Straczynski and Brubaker until THIS century. You also had the Ultimates which, though not to my taste, did make people sit up and take notice. I mean, the Ultimates really felt like being edgy for edgy's sake... let's make Hulk a cannibal! Let's make Wanda and Pietro actual incestuous lovers! Let's make Cap a right wing icon with his jingoism! And don't even get me started on Civil War.

The point I'm making is that from the 80s well into when Marvel had to licensed off it's assets to other studios there was a REASON that Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, etc weren't bought up. They weren't valuable. Even Hulk was bought by Universal for the rights to a stand alone. Remember the 2003 Hulk movie? Ang Lee directed it? Eric Bana starred... that was a Universal picture.

What Marvel and Feige did with what they were left with is what's incredible. They still had awesome characters and, what's more, they had more storylines to pull from, like Brubaker's Cap which heavily HEAVILY influenced Winter Soldier. (Sidenote: y'all, when I heard that they had resurrected Bucky in the comics I asked out loud 'who's next, Uncle Ben?' Death is rarely permanent for comic characters -- and hey the current X-Men have a whole major point about resurrection -- but Uncle Ben and Bucky seemed to be the ones that it was understood would never come back.)

Anyway, the value of the properties really isn't hyperbole. What was valuable was snapped up and Marvel/Disney made an empire with what was left. So much so, that they were able to get X-Men and Fantastic Four back under their control. So, yes, I remain very interested and excited for what they might do with those properties.

[Kel Varnsen]

17 minutes ago, Dandesun said:

Cap, Iron Man, FF... look, I'm not saying there weren't good storylines. Armor Wars was in the 80s. Cap turned into a werewolf!! (Granted, not a great story, it's one you look back on and simultaneously go 'whaaat?' and 'that was weirdly awesome.') Actually, Were!Cap was in the 90s. He fought Cable and X-Force that was a thing. I started reading Cap in the 90s actually when Mark Waid took over (post Were!Cap) and I loved it but that was also specifically focusing on the things that made Cap who he was and very much NOT going for what comics were obsessed with in the 90s (all the Image! stuff from the creative exodus... yikes.) When I say that Iron Man, Cap, Thor and the rest of the Avengers were B-list I'm not being mean. They were not valuable property despite the ideas of 'well Cap's recognizable and these guys are on the Avengers' -- the AVENGERS weren't A-list! That's just the way it was!

I was reading comics in the late 90s/early 2000's and I can't remember how it happened but at some point I learned about Operation Galactic Storm which was a huge Avengers crossover from 1992. I was living in Vancouver at the time and went to every damn comic store in the city and managed to find back issues for all 19 parts. It's a great story and a Kree vs Shi'ar war would make a great storyline for a movie (or a phase). But even though it was a big deal with huge repercussions you can kind of tell that how the story is full of b and c listers and other jobber avengers. Like it included several issues of Quasar and Wonder Man. I actually really think a space war could make a great Avengers movie. Then the bomb that goes off at the end could create a bunch of mutants.

Even when I was reading current Avengers issues at the time where the creative team was Busiek and George freaking Perez and had heavy hitters on the team it (and had great stories like Ultron Unlimited) was definitely not promoted nearly as much as X-Men (or Spiderman which I think had a title coming out every week) and that was before the X-Men movie came out. 

[Tenshinhan]

3 hours ago, Dandesun said:

The point I'm making is that from the 80s well into when Marvel had to licensed off it's assets to other studios there was a REASON that Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, etc weren't bought up. They weren't valuable

Not being valuable to the studios doesn't take away their A-list status in my view.  They don't have to be in demand to be A-list.

Just because they may suffer from weak storylines from time to time or be less popular than other properties also doesn't take them off the A-list.  A-listers can have bad runs or low popularity.  

[swanpride]

...Spiderman is literally the symbol for Marvel. Not to mention that he sells more comics than Batman, Superman and Wonder Women together. He is the A-lister of Marvel, period. Everyone else used to be only B-listers in the Marvel verse compared to him. But we have now reached the C-listers anyway.....

[Raja]

8 hours ago, swanpride said:

...Spiderman is literally the symbol for Marvel. Not to mention that he sells more comics than Batman, Superman and Wonder Women together. He is the A-lister of Marvel, period. Everyone else used to be only B-listers in the Marvel verse compared to him. But we have now reached the C-listers anyway.....

It is like watching a champion sports franchise try to hold the line when the veteran stars retire while waiting for a Magic Johnson or Lebron James (X-Men) to come into the game 

[swanpride]

I wouldn't overstate the value of the x-men. The problem with them is still the same: They don't really fit into the MCU. And frankly, I don't think that Marvel will go to them just yet, not if there is a whole cosmos they can explore first with the GotG, Silver Surfer and the Fantastic Four. At most, they might introduce characters which belong to the X-men Franchise, but just happens to be mutants as something else, you know, characters like Dazzler who are interesting enough without the X-men baggage attached to them. 

[SeanC]

1 hour ago, swanpride said:

I wouldn't overstate the value of the x-men.

The X-Men are the single-biggest IP goldmine amongst Marvel's various properties.

[Chyromaniac]

When we’re talking about Marvel selling movie rights in the late 90’s, I think it’s important to remember that the superhero genre was more or less dead in the water at the time.  In particular, anything involving masked or costumed heroes were viewed as childish and silly - thanks in large part to the Schumacher Batman films, as well as failed movie attempts at F4, Captain America, and a few others.  Listening to Kevin Smith’s infamous stories about writing his “Superman Lives” script, it feels like even there the emphasis was on toning down the comic book elements and making Clark a standard 90’s sci-fi action guy.

When you look at what rights Marvel was able to sell, I think that bears out.  The first thing they sold was Blade, which barely felt like a comic franchise at all- it was basically just an R-rated vampire action movie.  Then you have X-Men, which famously ditched the spandex suits for a more “serious, realistic” portrayal.  Yes, Sony bought Spider-Man and kept the costume- but that’s basically the exception that proves the rule at this point.  And still, they messed with the Goblin suit and mask to make it less comic-like.  However, Spider-Man helped bring things back a little, to the point where we got the early 2000’s Daredevil and F4- but even those had mixed reactions, and were essentially the only “costumed” Marvel heroes we got until the MCU.

So yes- undoubtedly the studios bought the rights to Spider-Man and X-Men because they were well known properties (and Blade because you can always do vampires).  However, I don’t think The Avengers not getting sold says much about their popularity at the time - either in the comics world, or in popular culture at large.  It just means that those weren’t  movies that Hollywood wanted to make - or even knew how to make - at least not back then.

[Raja]

4 hours ago, Chyromaniac said:

When we’re talking about Marvel selling movie rights in the late 90’s, I think it’s important to remember that the superhero genre was more or less dead in the water at the time.  In particular, anything involving masked or costumed heroes were viewed as childish and silly - thanks in large part to the Schumacher Batman films, as well as failed movie attempts at F4, Captain America, and a few others.  Listening to Kevin Smith’s infamous stories about writing his “Superman Lives” script, it feels like even there the emphasis was on toning down the comic book elements and making Clark a standard 90’s sci-fi action guy.

When you look at what rights Marvel was able to sell, I think that bears out.  The first thing they sold was Blade, which barely felt like a comic franchise at all- it was basically just an R-rated vampire action movie.  Then you have X-Men, which famously ditched the spandex suits for a more “serious, realistic” portrayal.  Yes, Sony bought Spider-Man and kept the costume- but that’s basically the exception that proves the rule at this point.  And still, they messed with the Goblin suit and mask to make it less comic-like.  However, Spider-Man helped bring things back a little, to the point where we got the early 2000’s Daredevil and F4- but even those had mixed reactions, and were essentially the only “costumed” Marvel heroes we got until the MCU.

So yes- undoubtedly the studios bought the rights to Spider-Man and X-Men because they were well known properties (and Blade because you can always do vampires).  However, I don’t think The Avengers not getting sold says much about their popularity at the time - either in the comics world, or in popular culture at large.  It just means that those weren’t  movies that Hollywood wanted to make - or even knew how to make - at least not back then.

However the problem with selling "The Avengers" is that to paraphrase Clint Barton from the Age of Ultron if a character stepped into a story he was an Avenger. As the Tom Holland Spider-Man was so proud of. In effect The Avengers became synonymous with Marvel hero. And thus was born the MCU with the unsold Marvel heroes chosen to fit in.

I would bet if Edgar Wright would have worked faster Ant-Man and The Wasp would have been in The Avengers from the beginning giving us the source books original Avengers. And the mutant characters Wolverine and Storm in particular might sit out a movie to give us the "original" X-Men

[tv echo]

Disney+ Reveals New MCU Timeline Order With Spider-Man: Far From Home
By Jennifer McDonough   July 4, 2022
https://thedirect.com/article/spider-man-far-from-home-mcu-timeline-disney 

Quote

Disney+ Japan published a new update that adds 2019's Spider-Man: Far From Home to the "Marvel Cinematic Universe in Timeline Order" list. Now, the US version of Disney+ does not reflect this change, as none of the MCU Spider-Man movies are available in the country just yet.

Nevertheless, the official chronological order can be found below, excluding Universal's The Incredible Hulk and Sony's Spider-Man: No Way Home:
*  *  *
According to Disney+, Spider-Man: Far From Home is now the twenty-seventh project in the chronological MCU timeline:

Edited July 4, 2022 by tv echo

[tv echo]

Marvel Producer Confirms Who Will Replace Nick Fury as MCU Leader
By Russ Milheim   July 3, 2022
https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-nick-fury-mcu-leader-replace 

Quote

The new book, Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Art of the Series, was recently released, and in it, executive producer Nate Moore commented on Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Val and her place in the MCU.
*   *   *
"The Countess Valentina Allegra de Fontaine is a character that has a rich publication history… and to some degree, figuring out who can fill those shoes, which in our mind is in a way taking the reins from Nick Fury, was tough. But when we thought of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, there was a fun energy to her that immediately you realize this person has a weight and a gravity, but they're not the same as Nick Fury. It's a completely different energy.”
*  *  *
“There's a snark to the character that I think sets her apart from what's come before. And yet you still feel like she commands the room. So if you're talking about a new leader, to some degree, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we were very lucky to find Julia Louis-Dreyfus."

Julia Louis-Dreyfus Teases Future Plans of Her Marvel Villain
By Russ Milheim   July 3, 2022
https://thedirect.com/article/marvel-julia-louis-dreyfus-future-villain-plans 

Quote

The new book, Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Art of the Series, was just recently released, and in it, Julia Louis-Dreyfus herself commented on her new MCU character Val and what her future might hold.
*  *  *
"There's a lot of mystery in terms of her background, and whether she's a good guy or a bad guy remains to be seen… she's sort of living in a gray zone. And I like the idea of a female mastermind. I think it's about time, by the way, not to get too political on anybody. But I'm all in favor of it. And I'm delighted to be able to do it myself. And the other thing that's really fun is sometimes you think maybe she said too much, and then maybe it seems as if what she said was intentional, and she wanted you to think she said too much, but she didn't. It's all a plan. She's about three steps ahead of everyone, and that's gobs of fun to play."

When it came to her look, costume designer Michael Crow noted how the “original character… was supposed to be quirky and weird looking, and her clothes were supposed to be almost funny:”

"The original character in the script was supposed to be quirky and weird looking, and her clothes were supposed to be almost funny… and then talking to Julia, that didn't really make sense. I mean, she sort of brings all of that character with her, so she didn't need the wardrobe's help to get there. So it was our job to make her look kind of intimidating and classic and let her bring all of that character to the screen. Yeah, it was tricky, but we got there."

Edited July 4, 2022 by tv echo

[SeanC]

10 hours ago, Raja said:

And the mutant characters Wolverine and Storm in particular might sit out a movie to give us the "original" X-Men

I don't think that will ever happen. The original X-Men lineup isn't anywhere close to the most popular iteration of the team (it literally got cancelled), it's devoid of diversity (granted, you could cast your way around that), and has only one woman on the team.

The X-Men have had numerous media adaptations at this point, and none of them have ever used the original lineup as the basis.

Edited July 4, 2022 by SeanC

[Spartan Girl]

So….the MCU is picking the character who was Madame Hydra in the comics take Fury’s place.

*rage screams into pillow*

I did see other artwork that showed that they were originally going to let Sharon have her white catsuit, but instead stuck her in the hoodie because being the bad guy was the only thing they could come up with her character. Instead of, I don’t know, letting her be the new Nick Fury/head of SHIELD.

*more rage screaming into pillow*

Do they even READ the comics?!

[Raja]

20 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

So….the MCU is picking the character who was Madame Hydra in the comics take Fury’s place.

*rage screams into pillow*

I did see other artwork that showed that they were originally going to let Sharon have her white catsuit, but instead stuck her in the hoodie because being the bad guy was the only thing they could come up with her character. Instead of, I don’t know, letting her be the new Nick Fury/head of SHIELD.

*more rage screaming into pillow*

Do they even READ the comics?!

I don't think they mean head of S.H.I.E.L.D. but rather the character pulling together the team of Thunderbolts from various movies and Disney+ shows instead of Avengers from three origin story movies. The character I most associate with as a new head of S.H.I.E.L.D.  being from Spider-Man, thus Sony can snatch him away if Disney doesn't want to pay, is probably out. And if he was in as Director then it will look like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in bringing back the agency only to get rid of it again in a relatively short period.

Edited July 4, 2022 by Raja

[Cobalt Stargazer]

4 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

So….the MCU is picking the character who was Madame Hydra in the comics take Fury’s place.

*rage screams into pillow*

4 hours ago, Raja said:

I don't think they mean head of S.H.I.E.L.D. but rather the character pulling together the team of Thunderbolts from various movies and Disney+ shows instead of Avengers from three origin story movies.

The second thing is what I thought as well, as Val has already recruited John Walker/US Agent and Yelena Belova, and as far as I know Yelena is freelance rather than officially part of any organization. The Contessa at least withheld the real reason she sent Yelena after Clint, depending on if the Black Widow end credit scene still stands, so she might be on the outs with Val at this point. Rage screaming seems a bit premature at this juncture, even if there's fodder to work with at this point.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Raja said:

I don't think they mean head of S.H.I.E.L.D. but rather the character pulling together the team of Thunderbolts from various movies and Disney+ shows instead of Avengers from three origin story movies. The character I most associate with as a new head of S.H.I.E.L.D.  being from Spider-Man, thus Sony can snatch him away if Disney doesn't want to pay, is probably out. And if he was in as Director then it will look like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in bringing back the agency only to get rid of it again in a relatively short period.

Same. I read that to be taking the role Fury had as being the thread that pulled multiple characters and projects together not that she is the literal head of the MCU. Fury and, to a lesser extent, Ross were the characters that bridged projects and now Val is in a similar role. 

[Spartan Girl]

Very well, I misunderstood.

But I still am rage screaming over the loss of Sharon’s white catsuit (and whole canon character arc that the MCU ruined).

[swanpride]

For a franchise which wants to promote women, it has done a terrible job with them in the current phase...I am not sure what angers me the most, but Sharon is pretty much on the top, side by side with "love interest or female Steve Peggy Carter" and don't get me started on what I think about the way Wanda was handled in Multiverse of Madness....

[Cobalt Stargazer]

7 hours ago, swanpride said:

 what I think about the way Wanda was handled in Multiverse of Madness....

Well, gosh, isn't that what we wanted? Consequences? Okay, a mountain falling on her might be a little extreme, but what Wanda did was so much worse than anything that had ever happened before. Won't someone think of poor Agatha? *all the sarcasm in every universe*

[Guest]

14 hours ago, swanpride said:

For a franchise which wants to promote women, it has done a terrible job with them in the current phase...I am not sure what angers me the most, but Sharon is pretty much on the top, side by side with "love interest or female Steve Peggy Carter" and don't get me started on what I think about the way Wanda was handled in Multiverse of Madness....

I think it is really mixed. Several have been awful but WandaVision, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, Shang-Chi and Hawkeye have all done a great job. The early reviews for Love and Thunder say that Valkyrie and Jane are one of the best things about the movie. Black Widow, Eternals and No Way Home are a little more of a mixed bag but were still pretty good. 

Falcon and the Winter Soldier, What If…? and Multiverse of Madness were all big disappointments in the area but the best parts of this phase has also been the women. Yelena, Kate, America, Monica, Layla and Kamala all have very excited to see where they are going next.

Mainly it highlights for me how important it is to have diversity behind the camera. Raimi has had an impressive career but I can’t say I’m surprised that the man who was responsible for Kristen Dunst’s Mary Jane spectacularly botched Wanda. 

[Spartan Girl]

20 minutes ago, Dani said:

Mainly it highlights for me how important it is to have diversity behind the camera. Raimi has had an impressive career but I can’t say I’m surprised that the man who was responsible for Kristen Dunst’s Mary Jane spectacularly botched Wanda. 

If I could like this a million times, I would.

[Cobalt Stargazer]

4 hours ago, Dani said:

I think it is really mixed. Several have been awful but WandaVision, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, Shang-Chi and Hawkeye have all done a great job. The early reviews for Love and Thunder say that Valkyrie and Jane are one of the best things about the movie. Black Widow, Eternals and No Way Home are a little more of a mixed back but were still pretty good. 

Falcon and the Winter Soldier, What If…? and Multiverse of Madness were all big disappoints in the area but the best parts of this phase has also been the women. Yelena, Kate, America, Monica, Layla and Kamala all have very excited to see where they are going next.

Mainly it highlights for me how important it is to have diversity behind the camera. Raimi has had an impressive career but I can’t say I’m surprised that the man who was responsible for Kristen Dunst’s Mary Jane spectacularly botched Wanda. 

I agree, and yet I am compelled to point out how much the reaction of the viewership plays into things. Even acknowledging that half of the entertainment value is in Fandom moving the goalposts back and forth while blaring about one thing or another, the shift is not usually quite so abrupt or so overt. We went from people being annoyed because Wanda flew away from Westview without trying to make amends with the citizens there to people being mad because Bucky did face some consequences over Zemo's prison escape, even if it was only with Ayo. Because God forbid the one-armed man should make a frowny face. When we consider how well-defined as a character Wanda was in comparison to Barnes mostly being just there for a long time, it comes back to our collective inconsistency, since there wasn't even enough of Bucky to like or not like except possibly because of what he meant to Steve.

I would add that Dunst's Mary Jane suffered from being paired with an inferior Spiderman. Tobey Maguire was in his mid-twenties when he was cast, too old to play a high school kid outside of a CW show, and while he was still a couple of years younger than Andrew Garfield when AG was first chosen for the role, the age difference between Maguire then and present day Tom Holland is startling. Similarly the difference between Dunst and Zendaya is more than the obvious, since Zendaya mostly comes off as likable, at least outside of Euphoria.

[Fukui San]

Wanda’s treatment in the MCU is consistent with the comics, which is not to say it was good in the comics. “Wanda goes crazy due to grief and blows up the Marvel Universe” seemed like a stretch to begin with and the degradation of a well liked character but they went and did it more than once, which, sheesh. Damn you Brian Bendis!

Avengers Disassembled and House of M. Am I forgetting any other psychoWanda comics events? It feels like I might be. 

[Guest]

58 minutes ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

I agree, and yet I am compelled to point out how much the reaction of the viewership plays into things.

How so? I’m sure that it does I’m just not sure what you mean. 

1 hour ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

We went from people being annoyed because Wanda flew away from Westview without trying to make amends with the citizens there to people being mad because Bucky did face some consequences over Zemo's prison escape, even if it was only with Ayo. Because God forbid the one-armed man should make a frowny face. When we consider how well-defined as a character Wanda was in comparison to Barnes mostly being just there for a long time, it comes back to our collective inconsistency, since there wasn't even enough of Bucky to like or not like except possibly because of what he meant to Steve.

I really try to keep that segment of the fandom in perspective. They exist and they are loud but they tend to be a relatively small portion. Which is probably why the are always so pissed. So certain they are right but audiences prove time and time again they are wrong.

Overall WandaVision ended with her extremely popular. This is one time where to projects being developed at the same time and filmed back to back ended up being a really bad thing. Elizabeth Olsen even commented that she wished WandaVision was completed before Multiverse of Madness was written so that her tv show arc could have been taken into consideration. If Marvel execs could have seen the reaction to WandaVision, MoM may have played out differently. I really think they underestimated how much people would love Wanda and still treated her as a side characters when she had become one of the leads. 

[Danny Franks]

1 hour ago, Dani said:

Overall WandaVision ended with her extremely popular. This is one time where to projects being developed at the same time and filmed back to back ended up being a really bad thing. Elizabeth Olsen even commented that she wished WandaVision was completed before Multiverse of Madness was written so that her tv show arc could have been taken into consideration. If Marvel execs could have seen the reaction to WandaVision, MoM may have played out differently. I really think they underestimated how much people would love Wanda and still treated her as a side characters when she had become one of the leads. 

It's the same problem Marvel (and DC) comics have - individual character books clashing with team and crossover Big Event! books that are written by different writers who have different plans and different ideas of who the characters are.

I never considered that Wanda was going to be a big villain, after watching WandaVision, because it seemed like she was regretful of what she'd done and mired in grief that was robbed of anger. Then, in the Doctor Strange movie, she's killing people all across the multiverse. It just... it's not very well done.

It's the job of the editor to iron out character inconsistencies in the comics (something few editors seem capable of doing, sadly) and pulling rank on writers who want to go off in their own direction. That seems like it should be Feige's job with the MCU, and he's been pretty good at it most of the time, but he dropped the ball here.

1 hour ago, Fukui San said:

Wanda’s treatment in the MCU is consistent with the comics, which is not to say it was good in the comics. “Wanda goes crazy due to grief and blows up the Marvel Universe” seemed like a stretch to begin with and the degradation of a well liked character but they went and did it more than once, which, sheesh. Damn you Brian Bendis!

Avengers Disassembled and House of M. Am I forgetting any other psychoWanda comics events? It feels like I might be. 

Just those story arcs, as far as I recall. There was some really lame stuff when she came back and she either had amnesia or was a Doom Bot or both. I can't remember, but it was pretty bad.

House of M always felt like the whole story was written with that last line in mind - "No more mutants" - setting up the mutant decimation, with Wanda as the deus ex machina rather than the outright villain (or even as a character in her own right). The story arc quickly pivoted to humanity being the arseholes again, as they always are when it comes to the X-Men.

Even the set up to the House of M wasn't about Wanda as much as it was about Xavier and Magneto having noble manpain about whether they should just kill Wanda to stop her Disassembling more heroes.

[swanpride]

To clarify something: Wanda in Multiverse of Madness mostly bothers me because she basically went through the SAME character arc which was done so beautifully in WandaVision again, but it was done so much worse. What was done in WandaVision with a lot of understanding, was done in Multiverse of Madness in flat. (Starting with the unrealistic portrayal of her kids which came off as more real before they actually were "real").  I know that a lot of so called fans wanted Wanda as a villain, but that is why you should never listen to the fans. Wanda in WandaVision was something precious, and going the "villain" route just diminished her needlessly. It would have been way more interesting to see her attempts to do better, but falling in the same "I have all the power so I know the best" trap Dr. Strange tends to fall victim too? 

[Kel Varnsen]

But Wanda at the end of Wandavision seemed to be in a worse place than she was at the start with respect to her trauma/grief/PTSD. Because on top of the stuff she was already dealing with she also had to deal with the loss of her fake husband/kids, the loss of her safety/security in fake Westview and the fact that she tortured a bunch of innocent people. I am not sure that just going off in the woods to be by yourself and alone with your thoughts would actually make someone better after all of that. She needed therapy. And all of that is even before you take into account the influence of the evil book she was reading. So her becoming more evil in Doctor Strange makes sense to me.

[Raja]

1 hour ago, Kel Varnsen said:

But Wanda at the end of Wandavision seemed to be in a worse place than she was at the start with respect to her trauma/grief/PTSD. Because on top of the stuff she was already dealing with she also had to deal with the loss of her fake husband/kids, the loss of her safety/security in fake Westview and the fact that she tortured a bunch of innocent people. I am not sure that just going off in the woods to be by yourself and alone with your thoughts would actually make someone better after all of that. She needed therapy. And all of that is even before you take into account the influence of the evil book she was reading. So her becoming more evil in Doctor Strange makes sense to me.

I think that neither WandaVision or Multiverse of Madness did as good of a job as the comics or Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. of describing just how bad an outcome was to be expected from anyone reading from the Darkhold.  And because they didn't do that job many expected a hero character to shake off its effects when villains were unable to. Where as I watched the post credit sequence of WandaVision plugged in an "oh no the Darkhold got her" and saw the heel turn before the movie.

[Bruinsfan]

10 hours ago, Fukui San said:

Wanda’s treatment in the MCU is consistent with the comics, which is not to say it was good in the comics. “Wanda goes crazy due to grief and blows up the Marvel Universe” seemed like a stretch to begin with and the degradation of a well liked character but they went and did it more than once, which, sheesh. Damn you Brian Bendis!

Avengers Disassembled and House of M. Am I forgetting any other psychoWanda comics events? It feels like I might be. 

Her FIRST go-crazy-over-her-kids-and-become-a-villain storyline was in West Coast Avengers in the immediate wake of Agatha Harkness erasing her memory of Tommy and Billy (which made them, and Mephisto, go kablooey). The cruelty she displayed in MoM was more in line with that storyline than her anguished lashing out in the events you listed, actually. Though as Raja says, also very much in line with being corrupted by the Darkhold. In the comics I believe Dr. Strange is the only person who's ever used that thing without losing his soul to it, and he was very much aware of the danger and spent a whole issue fighting the book and bringing it to heel before doing so.

[Guest]

18 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

It's the same problem Marvel (and DC) comics have - individual character books clashing with team and crossover Big Event! books that are written by different writers who have different plans and different ideas of who the characters are.

I never considered that Wanda was going to be a big villain, after watching WandaVision, because it seemed like she was regretful of what she'd done and mired in grief that was robbed of anger. Then, in the Doctor Strange movie, she's killing people all across the multiverse. It just... it's not very well done.

It's the job of the editor to iron out character inconsistencies in the comics (something few editors seem capable of doing, sadly) and pulling rank on writers who want to go off in their own direction. That seems like it should be Feige's job with the MCU, and he's been pretty good at it most of the time, but he dropped the ball here.

I agree. Based on interviews with directors and show runners it seems like Marvel Studios doesn’t micromanage the projects all that much. They have a basic arc and tone but give a large degree of creative control to the project head. I think the problem is that they are putting a lot of care and thought into their projects with a woman in the lead role but not when they are secondary characters. It is particularly glaring with Wanda because she was treated as the lead and a secondary character at basically the same time. One projected was written with Wanda as the sole focus and the other used her solely as a vehicle to advance the plot. 

It occurs to me that the female heroes have not had a “creator” in the movies to oversee them the way the male ones have. For example it is well known that James Gunn consults on films that the Guardians appear in even if they aren’t his projects. The same is true for most of the male characters. Wanda, Nat and even Carol don’t have that so they get treated widely different from project to project. If Marvel had given the WandaVision showrunner (or Elizabeth Olsen) some “ownership” of Wanda’s characterization in MoM I think we would have had a much better movie. 

[Raja]

44 minutes ago, Bruinsfan said:

Her FIRST go-crazy-over-her-kids-and-become-a-villain storyline was in West Coast Avengers in the immediate wake of Agatha Harkness erasing her memory of Tommy and Billy (which made them, and Mephisto, go kablooey). The cruelty she displayed in MoM was more in line with that storyline than her anguished lashing out in the events you listed, actually. Though as Raja says, also very much in line with being corrupted by the Darkhold. In the comics I believe Dr. Strange is the only person who's ever used that thing without losing his soul to it, and he was very much aware of the danger and spent a whole issue fighting the book and bringing it to heel before doing so.

And Raimi, or perhaps Kevin Feigi to take the opportunity off the books, gave us a story where our Strange only got a taste of the Darkhold when one before in another  universe was evil and yet another universe had executed their Dr. Strange.  By destroying every universe's Darkhold the 616 Dr. Strange unable to go back and feed his addiction by any means

Edited July 6, 2022 by Raja

[Spartan Girl]

13 hours ago, Cobalt Stargazer said:

I would add that Dunst's Mary Jane suffered from being paired with an inferior Spiderman. Tobey Maguire was in his mid-twenties when he was cast, too old to play a high school kid outside of a CW show, and while he was still a couple of years younger than Andrew Garfield when AG was first chosen for the role, the age difference between Maguire then and present day Tom Holland is startling. Similarly the difference between Dunst and Zendaya is more than the obvious, since Zendaya mostly comes off as likable, at least outside of Euphoria.

That might have been part of it, but the bigger part was that Mary Jane was rewritten as a useless whiny little bitch that didn't resemble her superior comic book counterpart in the slightest. 

[kiddo82]

10 hours ago, Raja said:

I think that neither WandaVision or Multiverse of Madness did as good of a job as the comics or Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. of describing just how bad an outcome was to be expected from anyone reading from the Darkhold.  And because they didn't do that job many expected a hero character to shake off its effects when villains were unable to. Where as I watched the post credit sequence of WandaVision plugged in an "oh no the Darkhold got her" and saw the heel turn before the movie.

I'm not a comics person and I didn't get that far into Agents of Shield so I'd definitely agree that I just wasn't prepared for how bad of an influence the Darkhold could have on the character.  It might be my bad but I thought of WandaVision of having an ending of optimism.  In a vacuum I thought it was a really interesting take on grief and ultimately acceptance.  She'll probably never be completely whole again but she's working on finding peace, or so I interpreted it.  I think what I expected out of Multiverse of Madness was for her to initially be an antagonist, still working through her process as these things are seldom linear, but ultimately teaming up with Strange over an even bigger baddie.   Implications of the Darkhold aside, which again was just not foreshadowed well enough, I was disappointed that MoM went for this really trite and cliched take ("Women.  AmIRite?") when a series like WandaVision showed that they were capable of so much more.    

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, kiddo82 said:

I'm not a comics person and I didn't get that far into Agents of Shield so I'd definitely agree that I just wasn't prepared for how bad of an influence the Darkhold could have on the character.  It might be my bad but I thought of WandaVision of having an ending of optimism.  In a vacuum I thought it was a really interesting take on grief and ultimately acceptance.  She'll probably never be completely whole again but she's working on finding peace, or so I interpreted it.  I think what I expected out of Multiverse of Madness was for her to initially be an antagonist, still working through her process as these things are seldom linear, but ultimately teaming up with Strange over an even bigger baddie.   Implications of the Darkhold aside, which again was just not foreshadowed well enough, I was disappointed that MoM went for this really trite and cliched take ("Women.  AmIRite?") when a series like WandaVision showed that they were capable of so much more.    

I completely agree. Since they were going this route I really wish they would have introduced the Darkhold earlier in WandaVision to establish how bad an influence it has. Plus to have it be an actual choice for Wanda to use it. When you compare it to Strange’s relationship with the Darkhold it really shows how Wanda was screwed over. Strange had an entire movie of people telling him and seeing firsthand what the effects were so when he made the choice it was a deliberate one. Wanda got the book only knowing that she was in it. She had no clue the road she was going down. 

[Bruinsfan]

I mean, when Wanda first saw the Darkhold it was prominently displayed in the creepy dungeon lair of a witch with mystical flames licking around its edges, and Agatha flat out told her it was the Book of the Damned. I don't think she was stupid enough to believe everything would be rainbows and stuffed animal tea parties if she read it.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Bruinsfan said:

I mean, when Wanda first saw the Darkhold it was prominently displayed in the creepy dungeon lair of a witch with mystical flames licking around its edges, and Agatha flat out told her it was the Book of the Damned. I don't think she was stupid enough to believe everything would be rainbows and stuffed animal tea parties if she read it.

No but not expecting rainbows and stuffed animal tea parties doesn’t mean you know that it will seduce and corrupt you just by reading it.  Everything in the comics, AoS and MoM is clear that once you read it there is no going back. Not seeing that coming isn’t stupid. 

Here’s Marvel.com description of the book:

Quote

The Darkhold is ancient and evil, containing powerful spells that rob its readers of their hearts...and souls. 

There’s no way Wanda walked into that aware of the consequences. She just wanted to understand her powers. 

[swanpride]

I didn't consider this but yes, if you have actually seen Agent of Shield, you have a way better understanding what the Darkhold is and how it actually works. If you take that knowledge away, Multiverse of Madness comes off even WORSE.