Comic Book Resources Articles

Catching up on some of the things I've written for CBR lately.

I think I have to start writing more critical analyses for my personal site, as I'm not really afforded the opportunity by these news articles.

Check these interesting things out, and not just because I'm paid by the hit on the site ;)

Crisis on Infinite Earths Fan-Edit Brings In Even More Classic DC Universes

 

The Avengers Meets Blue Monday in Marvelous MCU Mashup

 

Eternals Star Gemma Chan Shares Photo to Commemorate Filming Wrap

 

Cats, Rambo and Hellboy Lead 2020 Razzies Nominations

 

Record-Setting World's Largest Firework Video Is Absolutely Terrifying - this video is really freaking cool.

 

I Am Not Okay With This Mixes Teen Angst & Super Powers in First Trailer

 

Star Wars Fans Launch Petition for JJ Abrams' 3-Hour Rise of Skywalker Cut

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comic Book Resources Articles

Finally getting back to writing for CBR, now that I have a computer that was actually made this decade.

Why Oliver Queen Isn't on the New Crisis on Infinite Earths Logo

Chadwick Boseman Wants Nothing To Do with a Marvel/Disney+ Series

Justice League: Warner Bros. Had Whedon Shoot Nearly 80 New Script Pages

Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County Christmas Epic Will Bring You to Tears

Crisis on Infinite Earths Rap Recap is the Supercut You've Been Waiting For

Who Cares What Scorcese Thinks of the MCU?

Recent comics-related headlines have been overwhelmed by Martin Scorcese’s pronouncement in October that the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe are “not cinema.” He went on to equate the films with theme parks, and then dropped a critique that has raised many an ire: “It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.”

There have been a plethora of responses from supporters of the MCU, but also shows of support from fellow auteur directors. Francis Ford Coppola waded into the battle with this lovely bit of vitriol: “When Martin Scorsese says that the Marvel pictures are not cinema, he’s right because we expect to learn something from cinema, we expect to gain something, some enlightenment, some knowledge, some inspiration. I don’t know that anyone gets anything out of seeing the same movie over and over again.”

Both directors have produced remarkable works in their time, and on the topic of cinema there are few whose opinions we might give greater weight. But their critiques of the MCU are not really critiques of cinema. Or rather, they’re critiques of cinema that are missing the point of superhero stories in much the same way that critiques of the comics themselves as “not real books” (something I actually heard a parent say to a child while they were in my comic book store) misses the point. Nor are these criticisms even remotely new, or really that scathing. Coppola calls the films “despicable,” a harsh term to be sure, but it pales in comparison to other ways that comics have been critiqued in the past. Frederic Wertham (who, hopefully, is in a very uncomfortable afterlife somewhere) once said that “Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry.” Yep, he compared the superhero, crime, and horror comics of the day to the architect of the Third Reich.

Superhero comics, and comics in general, have always been maligned by the mainstream. My own experience in academia, within the last 5 years, proved this to me implacably. With the exception of a few scholars in the department, most of the professors I dealt with had little good to say about comics, even though they themselves had virtually no experience with them. One of the (many) reasons I left my PhD program is that there was a palpable antagonism toward what I studied, that comics were not worthy of academic interrogation.

Regardless of all of this, the criticisms miss the whole point of the superhero genre. When Coppola calls watching the films “seeing the same movie over and over,” perhaps he is forgetting that old saw in literature that there are really only a few plots – we just have so many different ways of telling them. I’ve always been of the opinion that superhero narratives, the best of them, are slowly replacing our older spiritual texts, telling stories of redemption, heroics, sacrifice, and humanity in ways that we can take from the screen, or page, and apply to our own lives. Superhero stories are cathartic in the same way that the dramas of the ancient Greeks were. Think about how often superheroes wear masks, after all. Indeed, I have to wonder if Coppola would question Scorcese’s decision to make The Last Temptation of Christ when that’s a story that has, literally, been retold over and over again for two millennia. And, of course, it’s a story that has been offering the same lessons and ideas that something like All-Star Superman does (how many Superman origins have we had? The story remains relevant), or that even Avengers: Endgame does. What about Tony Stark’s sacrifice to save everyone is that different from Jesus’ sacrifice to save everyone? They’re the same tale, just dressed up a bit differently for a contemporary audience. It’s simple, really.

I think that critiques like these ones come from a place of fear, and that fear comes from a place of misunderstanding. Cinema is not just one thing. Nor is literature. Nor is art. They are multiplicities. That’s the whole point of art, to stretch our imaginations and ideas into places they’ve never been. And to take us to places we’ve been before, but in different and varying ways. To just dismiss a whole artistic genre (the comic, the superhero film) is to cripple art, to force it only to tell some stories, but not all of them.

That’s really all I want to say about this. I get why so many people are so annoyed by these comments, but the comic book fans have heard it all before. We don’t care. We know what we know, and if the critics aren’t willing to come and perhaps learn from us, and vice versa, then there’s really no point in trying to have a discussion.

Road to Infinity War - Re-Watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe part 2: The Incredible Hulk

I'm not sure why, but The Incredible Hulk is that part of the MCU that too-often gets overlooked. It wasn't, I don't think, as successful in theatres as Iron Man, but it does a whole lot to set up the wider universe within which the characters exist. It does this by having a very cool opening sequence. Rather than us getting yet another origin story, TIH opens by showing us the Hulk's origin as the credits are rolling. It's somewhat similar to the origin story in Ang Lee's disappointing Hulk, but with a much more believable Edward Norton as Banner. There are also, near the beginning of the film, counts as to how many days it has been between "incidents." What these two devices do is place the origin of the Hulk somewhere in the recent past of the film's universe, and by extension Iron Man's universe. Thus we aren't saddled with the weird inception point of Stark becoming Iron Man. The film as filmic artefact is the inception point of the series, but narratively it is only one story of many that are ostensibly happening at the same time. Of course, once we get around to Captain America, we come to realize that there is a much longer history of powered individuals in the MCU, a phenomenon that is only compounded by the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series.

It was a very wise move to do things this way. One of the things that makes comic book superhero universes successful is the history they carry with them. This can be both literal (i.e., the length of time a particular universe has been in publication existence) and narrative (i.e., the stories that weave backward in fiction time). In giving us a possibly concurrent origin for the Hulk as we have for Iron Man, the series moves from the premise that Iron Man's advent inspires other heroes to the premise that this is simply the latest age of heroes to dawn. DC's "Arrowverse" has had a lot of success with much the same process.

So while it may not have been the smash success that Iron Man was, which is definitely not to say that it's not a good movie, The Incredible Hulk is instrumental in establishing the MCU, and along with the first two Iron Man films provides a solid, and still relatively "realistic" setting upon which the subsequent films start to build a ridiculous and fantastic superhero universe. After TIH, things only get stranger in the MCU.

Well, there's a bit more groundedness in Iron Man II, which we'll talk about next.

Road to Infinity War - Re-Watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe part 1: Iron Man

In anticipation of the coming Avengers: Infinity War, I thought I'd refresh my memory and re-watch the films leading up to what is looking to be an amazing superhero movie. I've also recently got back into Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., one of the more under-rated superhero shows, I think. I am loving this season's arc thus far. Classic, full-on, superhero time-travel shenanigans. What more could we want? Sadly, though I'd love to do it some day, I won't be watching the television shows that intersect with the movies. One day I will, but probably only after I retire. Who has time for that otherwise?

And, of course, Iron Man is where it all starts. It had even slipped my mind that this film is the first time we meet Phil Coulson.

While watching it last night, I was struck by what a great movie it really is. It might be traditional to leave such a summation until the end of my assessment/review/blog post (whatever we want to call this), but I think it's an important thing to put out there up front: this is a really good movie. Even if it hadn't spawned what is ostensibly the first shared universe in film, it would still have stood on its own merits as an entertaining and pleasing piece of cinema. A good story arc, likeable characters, bad-ass special effects. It does everything an action movie needs to do. But it's more than an action movie, isn't it?

I should interject here and say that that's not a derogatory statement about action movies. Please don't misunderstand. I like a good action movie as much as the next person.

But a superhero movie is slightly different. It's getting, or has long been, cliche to talk about superheroes and myth. Any reader of my blog knows that, for me, it's a foregone conclusion that these stories are attempting to serve the same purpose in our culture as the major religious texts did, and do, in their own cultures. Isn't it the perfect embodiment of the post-modern deity that we're all completely aware of its artificial nature? And what better embodiment of that artificiality than Tony Stark and Iron Man? The classic reversal of Iron Man is the man of flesh with the iron heart becomes the man of iron with the living heart. He takes the grossest of our contemporary material productions, weapons, and, as the second film (which I'll get to in a couple of weeks) says, turns them into a shield. This is the lesson that Tony Stark's story tries to teach us, the kerygmatic aspect of this particular myth.

All that aside, though, it's also the film that kicks off the MCU, and it's blatantly designed to do so. The tiny stroke of genius that is the final scene of this film, combined with the final scene in The Incredible Hulk (next week's feature) did the one thing that superhero fans have been waiting for for so, so long. They told us that these two movies existed in the same place. That while Iron Man was having his scuffle with the Iron Monger, Bruce Banner was on the run from the U.S. government, sometimes as himself, and sometimes as "the other guy." And off on a different plane we'd come to realize that Thor was getting himself in trouble. Or that somewhere in the Arctic there was a plane buried in the ice containing a hero who would rise again in the hour of our greatest need (you never thought about Captain America as North American-ized Arthurian myth? Me neither til just now!). Finally, we had the Marvel Universe we knew and loved, and it seemed that movies had figured out what kind of a vehicle they needed to be for the tenor of the genre.

Well, at least until DC came along and managed to bungle it supremely. But perhaps that's fodder for another post.

Iron Man is a great place to start because it's a great movie. The MCU hits the ground running and never stops, really. Though the next film, The Incredible Hulk, is perhaps the slowest spot. We'll talk about why that might be next week.