Got to see Iron Man 3 the other night and as any as any true comic book fan, I fall into the common trap of trying to compare the movie version of the characters to the comic book version. It’s often very easy to tear down what Hollywood does to these characters while attempting to make them more appealing to the general movie-going public. It’s also very easy to compare everything back to best moments of the character’s history that we often forget how ludicrous some of the stories can be. Such as:
A scientist who tried to beat the Russians to the moon by hijacking a spaceship with his best friend, his girlfriend and her kid brother — which resulted in them becoming monsters, albeit popular and famous monsters — faced his greatest challenge when a spaceman made of metal came to Earth on his flying surfboard to see if it was a good enough planet for his boss, a giant spaceman in a purple mini-skirt who survived the Big Bang, to eat.
The flagship character’s girlfriend was tragically killed when she was thrown off a bridge by an industrialist on a flying piece of sheet metal who later died, but came back and killed an alien queen by shooting her in the head on television. This man, became the defacto head of Homeland Security.
Thor — the literal Norse god of Thunder — was turned into a frog for three issues, including one where his magic hammer turned him into a 6’6″ frog-man (er, frog-god), which had the side effect of chipping his hammer so that another frog (who had once been a man before he was cursed by a fortune-teller) could turn into a normal-sized frog-god, which came in handy when he had to team up with a teleporting dog and a sabretooth tiger to get magic gems back from an alien from Jupiter’s moon who was in love with the living embodiment of Death.
Worldwide espionage is handled by a World War II veteran who is immortal thanks to a serum, and who spends a good deal of his time thwarting either his evil brother, who leads a cartel of horoscope-themed villains, or HYDRA, which is not an acronym but is always capitalized anyway, an organization whose plans have included blowing up Washington DC.
A man who shoots lasers out of his eyes cheats on his space-god wife by shacking up with a lady made of diamond who can also read minds.
The Punisher fought a giant bulletproof transvestite who survived being smothered by the fat of a morbidly obese man, decapitated, and thrown off the Empire State Building, in that order, before he was finally done in by a nuclear bomb.
A “gritty crime story” is one where a blind lawyer ninja dressed as the Devil fights a massive Sumo wrestler with a cane that shoots lasers, who employs both a Major League Baseball pitcher who killed a batter with a fastball and the blind lawyer ninja’s girlfriend, the daughter of a diplomat who herself became a ninja, died and came back to life, and was once replaced by an alien shape-shifter.
A man who got his powers from the wizard Merlin and fought vampires that were shot out of a cannon on the moon by Dracula (who came to earth in a magic pirate ship), has a twin sister who was kidnapped by an interdimensional television executive and later had her mind transferred to the body of a Japanese assassin who could make a knife out of psychic powers.
A grown man in a cat suit runs an African country that has better technology than the rest of the world.
.
The most popular person is a 120 year-old Canadian berserker samurai who has who has been to the moon and was in love with a psychic who destroyed an alien planet and came back from the dead, married to both Japanese royalty and a green-haired terrorist, and had a child with a woman from a hidden region of Antarctica where dinosaurs and cavemen live. When he is not fighting his enemies — most of whom are versions of himself, some of whom have claws made of lasers — he reaffirms his status as a tough-as-nails loner as a member of at least three superhero teams.
Observations Of The Marvel Universe.
Got to see Iron Man 3 the other night and as any as any true comic book fan, I fall into the common trap of trying to compare the movie version of the characters to the comic book version. It’s often very easy to tear down what Hollywood does to these characters while attempting to make them more appealing to the general movie-going public. It’s also very easy to compare everything back to best moments of the character’s history that we often forget how ludicrous some of the stories can be. Such as:
A scientist who tried to beat the Russians to the moon by hijacking a spaceship with his best friend, his girlfriend and her kid brother — which resulted in them becoming monsters, albeit popular and famous monsters — faced his greatest challenge when a spaceman made of metal came to Earth on his flying surfboard to see if it was a good enough planet for his boss, a giant spaceman in a purple mini-skirt who survived the Big Bang, to eat.
The flagship character’s girlfriend was tragically killed when she was thrown off a bridge by an industrialist on a flying piece of sheet metal who later died, but came back and killed an alien queen by shooting her in the head on television. This man, became the defacto head of Homeland Security.
Thor — the literal Norse god of Thunder — was turned into a frog for three issues, including one where his magic hammer turned him into a 6’6″ frog-man (er, frog-god), which had the side effect of chipping his hammer so that another frog (who had once been a man before he was cursed by a fortune-teller) could turn into a normal-sized frog-god, which came in handy when he had to team up with a teleporting dog and a sabretooth tiger to get magic gems back from an alien from Jupiter’s moon who was in love with the living embodiment of Death.
Worldwide espionage is handled by a World War II veteran who is immortal thanks to a serum, and who spends a good deal of his time thwarting either his evil brother, who leads a cartel of horoscope-themed villains, or HYDRA, which is not an acronym but is always capitalized anyway, an organization whose plans have included blowing up Washington DC.
A man who shoots lasers out of his eyes cheats on his space-god wife by shacking up with a lady made of diamond who can also read minds.
The Punisher fought a giant bulletproof transvestite who survived being smothered by the fat of a morbidly obese man, decapitated, and thrown off the Empire State Building, in that order, before he was finally done in by a nuclear bomb.
A “gritty crime story” is one where a blind lawyer ninja dressed as the Devil fights a massive Sumo wrestler with a cane that shoots lasers, who employs both a Major League Baseball pitcher who killed a batter with a fastball and the blind lawyer ninja’s girlfriend, the daughter of a diplomat who herself became a ninja, died and came back to life, and was once replaced by an alien shape-shifter.
A man who got his powers from the wizard Merlin and fought vampires that were shot out of a cannon on the moon by Dracula (who came to earth in a magic pirate ship), has a twin sister who was kidnapped by an interdimensional television executive and later had her mind transferred to the body of a Japanese assassin who could make a knife out of psychic powers.
A grown man in a cat suit runs an African country that has better technology than the rest of the world.
.
The most popular person is a 120 year-old Canadian berserker samurai who has who has been to the moon and was in love with a psychic who destroyed an alien planet and came back from the dead, married to both Japanese royalty and a green-haired terrorist, and had a child with a woman from a hidden region of Antarctica where dinosaurs and cavemen live. When he is not fighting his enemies — most of whom are versions of himself, some of whom have claws made of lasers — he reaffirms his status as a tough-as-nails loner as a member of at least three superhero teams.