Originally published November 30, 2001, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1463
Remember when the Hulk was inarticulate, and his alter ego had the first name of David, and a fall from a helicopter could kill him instead of simply resulting in a Hulk-shaped dent on whatever piece of ground he landed upon?
Remember when Doctor Strange’s mentor, instead of a venerable Asian named the Ancient One, was an affable British guy named John Lindmer?
Remember when Captain America had a clear plastic shield that doubled as a windshield for his motorcycle? Or that other time when he fought the Red Skull, who was Italian instead of a Nazi?
Remember that glorious period when Don Blake was able to summon the spirit of Thor, who was not a god, but instead a Viking warrior with attitude who bore a resemblance to nothing so much as a biker? And Blake would stand there and argue with Thor about how obnoxious he was being and how little he understood the Twentieth Century?
Remember when the Kingpin had a full head of hair, and Daredevil wore a black costume with a blindfold and no horns? Remember when the Punisher had no costume?
Weren’t those fun times?
It was all during the Hollywoodization of Marvel Comics, and it was a time that drove true believers absolutely stark-staring nuts.
The pattern was consistent: Producers would option Marvel characters and then make whatever changes they felt were necessary, or nifty, or perhaps the passing thought of someone’s five year old kid. Thor, for instance, well… he couldn’t be a pagan god. The reasoning was that it would offend the heck out of Middle America, seeing any god presented as a viable entity outside of a Biblical epic. So instead Thor lost his godhood and was reduced to the equivalent of a large bully who was being “channeled” through Blake. This was, by them, an improvement. Curiously, Middle America didn’t break out in riots years later when Kevin Sorbo strode the airwaves as Hercules, bringing the entire Greek (and later Norse) pantheon with him. This would seem to indicate that Thor would have done just fine the way we knew him, but hey, we’re not wise and all-knowing Hollywood producers, so what do our opinions matter?
And then there was Daredevil. No horns, because again, Middle America would become offended, this time by a hero who had an appearance evocative of Satan. This was the exact same argument that prompted NBC to try and bludgeon Gene Roddenberry into changing the make-up for Mister Spock (and indeed even resulted in early publicity photos being airbrushed to remove his pointed ears and slanted eyebrows.) Naturally Spock went on to become a breakout character and American icon, but apparently network execs didn’t remember that, so poor old Hornhead lost his horns and became just, uh… head. And the blindfold was someone’s inspiration because, hey, he’s blind, so he doesn’t need eyeholes in his mask. Get it? Not that Daredevil would want to perhaps, maybe, y’know, hush up that piece of information.
And every time another one of these ghastly abominations would hit the airwaves, fans would be driven nuts by the fact that their heroes were being transformed by network whim. Why, we all wondered, didn’t Marvel do more to protect our champions of justice? Didn’t Marvel care that idiots were turning them into parodies, shades of themselves that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the heroes whose adventures we’d been following for years? I mean, yeah, the Bixby/Ferrigno Hulk was eminently watchable, even inspired at times. But if it had been called “The Big Green Guy,” you could’ve done much the same show. As for the rest… oy.
Even the well-received, well-done X-Men movie couldn’t resist getting off its shots at the traditional view of super-doers. One of the biggest laughs in the film is when Wolverine is looking rather uncomfortable in the black leather ensemble he has (inexplicably) agreed to wear. “You actually go outside in these things?” he grunts. To which Cyclops replies derisively, “What would you prefer? Yellow spandex?” Yes, that’s right, standard comic book hero tights are becoming so passe (with the notable exception of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man film) that even the mere mention of them prompts guffaws.
But at least we always had Marvel Comics to go back to. At least we always knew that Marvel was there to keep the characters exactly as we remembered them. There, Daredevil was recognizably Daredevil, Thor was Thor, Hulk was Hulk, and so on.
Except that’s slowly not becoming the case anymore.
With the advent of the Ultimate line, we are seeing Hollywood thinking creeping more and more into Marvel Comics itself. (I still love the name “Ultimate,” by the way. Makes it sound like everything up until now is merely Penultimate. That we’ve been just working our way up to these books for forty years.) Comics are no longer the safe haven for our heroes. Instead there are now two entirely different lines of titles. The traditional one… and the Hollywood-friendly one. Changes are being made in the Ultimate line that were once the province of the producer who would look at a property and say, “Does Thor really have to be a God?” The upcoming Ultimate Avengers gives us incarnations of the characters that—if they were being conceived by producers for movie versions—would be causing fan riots. Captain America, bereft of wings on his mask, will now share the same nickname as the TV Daredevil: Head. The buccaneer boots are gone because, we’re told they “don’t make sense”… as if everything else about Cap did. Indeed, he looks more like the old movie serial version than the one we’ve known all this time. The Ultimate Hulk sports a tattoo, and Bruce Banner just loves when his alter ego cuts loose, so a conflict good enough for forty years of stories is gone. Thor, a new age guru, is closer to Joan of Arc than he is even to the deplored TV version. Iron Man… well, okay, he’s had a dozen different looks anyway, but geez, Giant-Man looks like an accordion.
Writer Mike Millar told Wizard, “We’re trying to completely reimagine the concept of the superhero team book here.” All right, fair enough. But when Alan Moore did the same thing, he called it The Watchmen and it didn’t pretend to be the same characters who served as the root inspiration for that series. My understanding of the Ultimate line was that it was a point for Marvel fans to jump on to new versions of the classic characters, streamlined for their convenience. Instead it now seems as if it’s serving as a point for Marvel creators to jump off the old versions while having it both ways: Have it be the old characters in name to attract the old readership, but going off in wildly different directions as if to say that, hey, we can do better than what’s gone before.
And who knows, perhaps they can. But considering that we’re already seeing editorial decisions being made with an eye toward Hollywood (the repeatedly stated reason for Wolverine’s Origin is that Hollywood will likely do it, so Marvel wants to do it first), I can’t help but wonder how much the Ultimate line is serving as a fan attraction point, as opposed to a movie producer attraction point. Hey, look, Hollywood producers, these guys don’t have to be standard superheroes in funky tights! You can make movies about them because we’re not married to anything that’s gone before!
But of course, we’ve got the “old” line of Marvel titles still in place for the traditionalists, right? The old union suit heroes are safe. Well… maybe not. According to Comics Newsarama, Britain’s Sunday Times reported that writer Grant Morrison “will be getting Spider-Man, the X-Men and Fantastic Four out of costume, and that he expects to do the same for DC Comics next.” Editor in Chief Joe Quesada was quoted as “The de-costuming of heroes is a trend we’ve been heading towards at Marvel this year and that you may see more of in 2002. Not every hero will reveal their identity, but some will,” Quesada is quoted as saying. “Marvel’s heroes have always been much more powered down than our competitors’, so they deal with threats and life on a much more human level.”
Putting aside that one could debate that latter sentiment (* cough * Galactus * cough * Shi’ar * cough * Operation Galactic Storm * ) it now seems that the fall of the Twin Towers is precipitating the fall of the costumes. Granted, granted, the Fantastic Four started out bereft of super suits, and even their first costumes were kind of baggy and loose-fitting. Still, the colorful ensembles always made the heroes stand out. For that matter, on the printed page, they worked. But history seems to indicate that some people feel they don’t work on the screen, and now they don’t seem to work even on the comics page because with the real world becoming a combination of Die Hard and Outbreak, it seems that even superheroes have to serious up.
Is that what the American reading public wants? I dunno. Something tells me no. Something tells me that comics readers are perfectly happy to accept the normal abnormality of their superheroes, and rather than thinking costumes ridiculous, they wouldn’t mind seeing a familiar flash of blue and red hurtling through the sky, making the world a safer place.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to man the front door for trick-or-treaters. Once a year, at least, traditions are maintained and costumes are acceptable.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. )
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Ironically, I think it could now be argued that the Marvel Studios movies are much truer to the original spirit of Marvel than the comics currently are.
Except for a black Nick Fury.
I actually liked the way they introduced the new black Nick Fury into the Marvel Universe, though.
They didn’t make old white Nick Fury have a pigment transplant, brain-swap or “he was black all along” bit. A biracial son is a good move and knocks down racial boundaries.
Indeed. My first thought was “what a difference thirteen years makes.” The Ultimate line is moribund, Marvel Studios takes the comics seriously (even if it streamlines storylines and costumes to some extent), and the unmasking trend died with Spider-Man’s marriage. Now, maybe there are some genuine complaints about heroes acting like villains, but we’re nowhere near the nadir of the late-80s/90s in that regard.
Ithat said, the constant events (a new “this changes everything in the status quo” event launching each week!) tells me Marvel learned the wrong message from the new golden age of television.
Kinda hard for readers complaints about “continuity” to be taken seriously when the writers and the comic company change continuity every 25 seconds….
I think the most recent and (to me) painful example of this happened to the Guardians of the Galaxy. The team got popular because of DnA’s work telling incredible stories with a group of, let’s face it, C-list or worse cosmic heroes. (Not to slight Keith Giffen, who got the ball rolling with Drax and Annihilation.)
Under Bendis the team has taken all its cues from the movies and is almost unrecognizable. Half the old guard have been jettisoned in favor of the movie cast. Peter Quill’s gone from snarky veteran to snarky man-child. And the team’s gone from a group of long-time losers willing to call cosmic empires and eldritch abominations on the carpet AND GET AWAY WITH IT, to a gang of long-time losers who… mostly amble around the galaxy when they’re not guarding Earth. Just Earth. The epic scope is gone. And I’m back to only reading Starlin’s cosmic stuff.
I am of two minds in this topic. In comics there are so many reboots (Brand new day, new 52)and alternate reality story lines (House of M, Age of Apokalips, Flashpoint, Elseworlds, Ultimate line, Earth 1, All-Star, etc…) that I don’t get why people get mad when the TV/movie adaptation is not the same as the ever-changing “prime” version on the comics. Specially when some of those alternate comic versions are considered favorites by many. Sometimes I think comic readers get mad that non-comic readers will consider the movie version more “real” that the versions they are used to.
On the other hand I can see the argument that if you change it too much you may as well do completely different characters. You always hear people saying: “Keep the core of the character the same but in a contemporary setting” but then, do people agree what the core of the character is?
I wish DC would split their line of comics after next year’s event. 52 comics in a shared universe is just too much (cost and time). Do four 13 comic lines: Pre-crisis, post crisis, new 52 and maybe a new one. You can have Batman and Superman have a title in each line and then the other character like flash, green arrow and wonder woman can have solo titles in one of the lines but only be in team books in other lines. That way they can have their cake an eat it too. You keep new fans and old fan happy and people can afford to just buy one whole line and enjoy the shared universe without spending a fortune.
The best defense for reboots I’ve ever heard comes from Greg Hyland, who does the comic book/pop culture parody Lethargic Lad http://www.lethargiclad.com He recently opted to reboot his strip because, as he said, if new readers wondered why one character had a bucket on his head, Greg would have to explain it’s part of a joke he did back in 1994. A reboot may not be necessary for the iconic parts of characters (Uncle Ben dying, Krypton blowing up), but it might be needed if you want fans to know the minutia from decades of storylines that pops up in the current stories.
Of course, time has shown Morrison’s “new look” X men to be one of the most celebrated and innovative runs on those characters.
It’s hard to condemn filmmakers for not taking comics at face value, especially when so many of the revamps are successful. Christopher Nolan brought us a Joker who wore makeup instead of being disfigured by chemicals, a Bane who did not use Venom, and a Ra’s al Ghul who didn’t have access to Lazarus pools and was immortal in reputation only. Somehow it all worked! On the other hand, you have films which attempted to capture the comic book feel of the source material and were either deliberately campy or accidentally awful- see Batman ’66 or Ang Lee’s Hulk. Those have contributed to the idea that in order to be taken seriously, a comic book movie needs to distance itself from the source material.
Pardon the off-topic question, but what happened to Peter’s column on the 9/11 attacks? It was one of the most memorable columns of his ever, but I notice that it wasn’t posted here, even though we’re now up to his November 2001 columns.
I missed moving them up a little earlier out-of-sequence to run around Sept. 11 this year, and it felt weird to me to run them in late October. So I’m holding them for next Sept.
????????????
So they’re not being reprinted in chronological order????
Sorry, but that doesn’t seem like a good setup, Corey. No offense intended, but I think they should just be published in order, regardless of what time of year it is.
Well, except for ones like the 9/11 column, that are tied to specific dates or anniversaries, which should appear at the appropriate date, i’d say.
Like Mike said. The only other ones I’ve moved out of order are the holiday-themed ones.
{Amazing how the situation has improved in thirteen or so years, right? Nothing like that happens any more.}
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Apparently the worst of the firestorm over a black Human Torch has settled down. So:
Ii>Doctor Doom is an ‘antisocial programmer’ and blogger in the Fantastic Four reboot
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
Oops.
Here’s the link for that “Related” line i didn’t link to above.
Maybe this FF reboot will turn out alright (breath not held), but right now it just feels like they’re throwing everything at the wall with both FF and X-Men and hoping something sticks.
This is also my opinion of the WB/DC efforts, seeing as they’re handing out characters to whomever wants to do whatever with them.
There is a video on YouTube with Kevin Smith talking about his experience with writing a movie script for a proposed Superman movie and the Hollywood producer he was talking to wanted to make all these ridiculous changes to Superman that just made no sense. Personally, I hate changes just for the sake of change. I think Peter is great at integrating a characters previous history and taking it a direction that seems organic and does not betray that character’s previous motives or experiences. For example, I loved that time in “Hulk” when the Skrulls were trying to Brainwash Rick Jones and it didn’t work, and Rick makes a comment about “Try counting to a billion in the negative zone. That’s a challenge in keeping your head screwed on.”. Peter is always great at using a character’s previous history and spring boarding from that, instead of just ignoring what has gone before. Anyways, that’s opinion.