We’re In the End Game Now

At some point, there was an idea. An idea to take those comic book characters who only lived in a 2D world and bring them to life on the Big Screen. Marvel Comics licenced out a handful of their characters and we got our first taste of what comic books in a live action format was going to look like.

It was clearly a hit or miss situation.

At the same time, there were cartoons to be watched where your favourite characters could actually swing through the air on a spider’s web or fly around completely on fire. It was bringing the characters to life in a way that was both faithful to the comics and… well… wasn’t cheesy looking.

Nothing wrong with this!

I remember thinking that Marvel wasn’t ever going to get it right on the movie front, maybe they should just concentrate on making good cartoons. Heck, there had been a couple of cartoon movies here or there that did alright (I was thinking Transformers and later on the Batman: Mask of the Phantasm movies that both were released to the theaters). Maybe that was the way to go for them?

But you’d hear rumors of them working behind the scenes to get this movie made or that character a try-out. And we still got this:

Although, in light of the movies we ended up getting, maybe this wasn’t soooo bad.

As I continued to read the funny books into my college years, I’d given up much hope for anything great to show up. For whatever reason, the Marvel characters just didn’t seem like they were ever going to work. Even if DC had managed to somewhat crack the code with Superman and Batman, Marvel always seemed to just lag behind.

And then it happened…

Ok, maybe not that one…

This guy. Here was where they got it right.

And you know how sometimes all you need is a little bit of success and that will generate more successes for you. Like a snowball rolling down the hill, you pick up speed and suddenly you’ve got it going in the right direction. Suddenly we get an X-Men movie. And a Daredevil movie. And a Spiderman movie.

Even if you didn’t think they hit every beat or story or special effect just right, the fact that those movies existed at all was mind-blowing.

When the first Spiderman came out after the credits rolled it was like you could have had to use a jackhammer to get the smile off my face. This character I’d read for so many years looked like I wanted him to look, he sounded right… he could swing through the air!

A few years later, Marvel decided that since all their big name properties were with other studios, due to those 90s deals, they needed to reach out and get another one of those characters from the toy box. Being a big Avengers guy, I knew who Iron Man was, but most people would have had no clue. In fact, the Avengers weren’t the A-Listers at Marvel at the time. They might have had one comic series for the Avengers and then one for Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor… and that was it.

Yet, the Iron Man movie worked.

And now, here we are after 21 some-odd movies the culmination of 10+ years for the studios will be on the Big Screen. But more than that, those characters who I thought only would ever work in a 2D environment are living, breathing people. Everyone in the world seems to know who they are. It’s crazy that these movies not only exist but are actually pretty good.

I always wonder if I could talk to my younger self and let him know these things were coming, what he’d think. All those days spent with my nose in the colorful pages, watching the Avengers defeat Doctor Doom or Baron Zemo or even Thanos… those toys are out of the sandbox for everyone to get a chance at.

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John McGuire is the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. The Trade paperback collecting the first 4 issues is finally back from the printers! If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

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His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow EmpireBeyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com