Marvel Cinematic Universe, Phase Three and BEYOOOOONND

[Starlord]

'Deadpool 3' has hired writers and is likely to be rated R, marking an MCU First

[Spence]

15 hours ago, Scott Ruggels said:

It was all comic books to him anyway. 

 

Correct.

 

But that one of the reasons they are circling the bowl.

 

A movie comes out that actually has superHEROES in it and makes a butt load of cash.

 

Comic dude thinks Superheroes are popular writes a blood platter vigilante slaughtering supervillains and can't understand why the sales are in the toilet. 

 

 

[Old Man]

So my feeling is this: there are comics, and then there is supers.  One is a medium, and the other is a genre.  Not only has the latter outgrown the former, it's outgrown itself to the point of supporting different types of stories and tones.  Now there is a baseline tone for the genre, idealistic and heroic, in much the same way that the baseline tone for a Western is independence and frontier justice.  The genres have matured to the point where they can deviate from that occasionally, up to a point.

 

Where comic/movie writers have really tripped up is by keeping baseline characters and taking them out of the baseline supers tone.  Creating new characters for an adult-targeted deconstructionist supers run, like Watchmen, is not a problem.  Having Joker intentionally cripple Barbara Gordon, or having Superman snap a neck, is a problem.  It's the difference between having an animated cartoon about a serial killer, and having Dora the Explorer be a serial killer.  Now you are taking a well defined character and shoehorning it into a story for which it is not appropriate.  To put it another way, this violates Brandon Sanderson's "Promise" rule of fiction writing.  In this case, the Promise of a code vs. killing and the triumph of good over evil is built into the well-established superhero character, and when Miller or Snyder break that promise they piss off their reader/audience. 

 

To skip back to the medium, I don't see a way for actual paper comic books to survive.  They cost too much to draw, too much to print, and too much to buy.  And that last point makes them inaccessible to their original audience of kids, so the target reader for paper comics is a twentysomething single guy with too much money and free time.  Therein lies the rub--how do you take a character originally intended for twelve year olds, and write a story that will get that guy to drive himself over to the FLCS and add his title to the take list?  I'm sure it's not impossible, but it's not easy either.  Meanwhile the twelve year olds are glued to TikTok, Minecraft, and Among Us.  I know because I have one.  His exposure to supers is hardcover illustrated storybooks, Flash on the CW, and the MCU.  He outgrew the first two at least two years ago.  He has never shown any inclination to reading an actual comic book.

 

Fortunately, the genre and the characters are not dependent on that medium for success.  They are dependent on good writing though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bazza]

To add to Old Man’s point: the medium of comics has proven adaptive of multiple genres. In between the Golden Age & Silver Age, superheroes had dwindling popularity, with DC’s Trio being a notable exception. So comic companies started publishing comics in different genres: sci-fi, western, monsters, fantasy, etc. 

[zslane]

It  must be a cultural thing because as far as I can tell, manga is still going strong as a medium in Japan.

[Old Man]

Graphic novel and (especially) manga sales are up sharply in the U.S. during the pandemic. 

[Grailknight]

The manga industry is far more honest with itself. 

 

It has an advantage in that the works are more creator controlled. Unless the mangaka was on a bender, you won't get major characters totally changing personality or the whole story switching philosophy because the writers don't change. You might get your start in the industry with fan-fic but aside from short side stories or anime to manga adaptations you'd better come up original characters and stories if you want to make it into the major monthly publications.

 

And the competition for those weekly spots is fierce. Groups of aspiring writers and artists band together and self publish small print runs and move them from Con to Con in the hopes of building a clientele large enough to get noticed by a large magazine.

 

Also the industry is really good about keeping it's genres distinct. Books written mostly for kids are kept separate from the YA audience which is distinct from the mature readers material  and the hentai stuff is in its own corner. You'll see some crossover but usually only from one boundary to the neighboring one not across two.

 

Plus you have the purest difference. American comics are serials, manga are finite stories. Naruto ended. MHA will end. One Piece supposedly will end(I won't believe till I see it though.) Their creators had finished the stories they wanted to tell and given the characters the ends they envisioned. Sometimes the creator comes up with a new story years later and sometimes a publisher throws enough money at one to make them come back(see Dragon Ball and all its sequels) but just as often books don't get finished because of death or illness or a bender( Shiro Masmune of Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell just suddenly became a hentai creator out of the blue.)

 

Superman, Spiderman and Batman won't end. The corporations that own the characters will just keep throwing new writers and artists at them when their current arcs end. Because corporations have control of the characters not their creators. Sometimes the new guys are good, sometimes they really suck. But they feel no responsibility to the history because their only stake is their story. I doubt we'd see  the equivalent of Captain America's "Hail Hydra" from someone who'd written the original stories and grew the character through their own works.

 

 

[zslane]

Quite different philosophies towards monetizing the form.

 

Even though I don't read manga, I nevertheless prefer its publishing model. I'd rather see success come as the result of creative ingenuity and fresh ideas, rather than endless rehashing--or worse, misguided re-imaginings--of iconic characters who go on forever.

[Grailknight]

2 hours ago, zslane said:

Quite different philosophies towards monetizing the form.

 

Even though I don't read manga, I nevertheless prefer its publishing model. I'd rather see success come as the result of creative ingenuity and fresh ideas, rather than endless rehashing--or worse, misguided re-imaginings--of iconic characters who go on forever.

 

Don't give manga too much credit. It's filled with copies and re-imaginings. I'd say that only 1 out of 50 or so stories see regular print. But the stuff you see in the US is the probably the top 10-15% of what the Japanese audience sees. We only get the popular good stuff.

[Lord Liaden]

Personally speaking, I was quite over the interminable recycling of the Dragonball characters over a decade ago.

[zslane]

17 hours ago, Grailknight said:

Don't give manga too much credit.

 

I don't think I really need to. Your previous post did that for me. And I don't think it is "too much credit" to recognize, as you did, all the ways that manga yields a much more fertile field of material. Manga may have its share of rehashing, but it also has a publishing model that allows for a far greater range of creative expression to find and connect with an audience.

[Christopher R Taylor]

I think the Superhero bubble has already burst.

 

But maybe its just me, I don't have the excitement or interest in seeing another MCU movie.  I'll catch it on streaming, maybe.

 

Incidentally, production costs are about half actual costs for a studio.  The rule of thumb is around the same cost as production for advertising, promotion, and delivery, etc. So if a film costs $x to make, it costs $2x total.  Compare the earnings to that.  They still made a ton of money on the first batch of MCU films but its been tapering off as the characters are more obscure, less iconic, and less interesting to film goers.  You can only pull off Iron Man if you have an extraordinary cast and director, most of the time its going to be Ant Man (roughly $260,000,000 to make,$519,000,000 world wide box office), or worse.

[Grailknight]

You say that now, when the next things in the pipeline are C-list characters like Eternals and Shang-Chi and Covid has the world shut down. 

 

You may rethink it when FF and X-Men launch in the MCU. Feige made the MCU a juggernaut without it's three biggest properties. Getting Spiderman back in the fold kinda went well. I want to see what he can do with the other two.

[zslane]

I also think that the MCU has reached such a broad audience that casual fans far outnumber the hardcore fans. For casual fans, properties like the Eternals and Shang Chi are no more obscure than Iron Man or Doctor Strange was. They will flock to theaters for these so-called C-list characters just like they did for Iron Man and Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy because it's all just awesome MCU stuff to them. I think that as long as Marvel makes it, the throngs will (still) come, regardless of what the title card says.

[Matt the Bruins]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

They still made a ton of money on the first batch of MCU films but its been tapering off as the characters are more obscure, less iconic, and less interesting to film goers.

Did I somehow hallucinate five of the last six MCU movies grossing over a billion dollars apiece, over TWO billion dollars in two cases?

[Christopher R Taylor]

Quote

You may rethink it when FF and X-Men launch in the MCU

 

I won't hold my breath.  There's good reason to believe that the old system of theaters is dead, or nearly so.  They can't stay closed and paying taxes forever, and studios are starting to direct release to streaming rather than theatric release.  Disney just fired 100 execs with more to come because they're basically bleeding cash by the millions.

[archer]

I think Ant-Man showed us a good model for the future of the movie industry:

 

Shrink the cars down and show movies on your laptop as a drive-in theater.

[Starlord]

Weren't the GotG C-List characters before their movie?

[Old Man]

Prior to the first movie I had literally never heard of GotG, after following comics for decades. There was always this zany scifi corner of the Marvel universe that was just too weird to interest me. 

[Greywind]

1 hour ago, Starlord said:

Weren't the GotG C-List characters before their movie?

 

Aren't they still?

[archer]

Iron Man was thought to be very obscure when it was first announced that Marvel was doing a movie about him.

 

He was A-list for Marvel but less than an unknown outside of established comic fans.

 

I read a lot of articles about how Marvel was taking a huge risk by making a big money picture with such an unknown character.

 

Face it, outside of comic fans, all of Marvel's characters outside of Spider-Man, Hulk and Captain America were unknown. Thor was known through mythology but not as a comic book character. Hulk and Captain America were known from cheesy TV shows and bad movies. Spider-Man was known from Electric Company, Hostess commercials, cheesy cartoons, and bad movies.

 

Iron Man, Stilt Man, Brother Voodoo, and Dr. Druid were all on the same level of lack of notoriety.

[Christopher R Taylor]

Yeah it took an incredible actor and a director who knew, understood, and most importantly loves comics to make Iron Man work.  But Iron Man had B-List awareness because of stuff like the song from Black Sabbath.  The general public had heard of him even if they hadn't read any comics or didn't know much about him.  Other characters like Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Ant Man, Black Widow, etc... not so much.  Basically every member of the Avengers now is a b- or c- list nobody but big time comic fans had heard of before the movies came out.

 

Nobody had a War Machine or Falcon tee shirt, even comic geeks barely knew them.

 

I mean, MCU has made it work with teams like the Guardians of the Galaxy, but only by putting a talented pervert in charge of making them funny.

[Lord Liaden]

4 hours ago, Greywind said:

 

Aren't they still?

 

Billion-dollar box office says not.

[Scott Ruggels]

I think it’s a bit more complicated, but that’s how it is in general. It doesn’t help that the writers of the print comics are embarrassed by their jobs. Dan Slott refers to it as “Cape & Tights”, jobs, and that embarrassment fuels his contempt for his customers. Sweet cast on YouTube has a good analysis of why Superhero Films don’t translate to comic book sales. 

 

[archer]

1 hour ago, Scott Ruggels said:

I think it’s a bit more complicated, but that’s how it is in general. It doesn’t help that the writers of the print comics are embarrassed by their jobs. Dan Slott refers to it as “Cape & Tights”, jobs, and that embarrassment fuels his contempt for his customers. Sweet cast on YouTube has a good analysis of why Superhero Films don’t translate to comic book sales. 

 

 

How many people who are 10-16 years old have ever seen a comic book in person?

 

How many of them could tell you where to go and buy one?

 

If you don't build good habits in people who are young, they won't have those habits when they're older.

 

How many DC or Marvel comic book character movies have you seen which told their audience where to go to purchase a comic book?