Sunday, May 4, 2014

2012 Super-Team Family: The Lost Issues: Wonder Woman and Captain America #219

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Captain America had a movie serial is 1944 and thirteen installments of his own animation segment on The Marvel Super Heroes in 1966. Wonder Woman had a failed pilot in 1967, a TV movie in 1974, and three seasons of her own series in 1975-79. Cap scored a couple of TV movies in 1979, and had a box office bomb that was never even shown on U.S. screens in 1990. The Amazing Amazon got another failed pilot in 2011, while attempts at more TV and a feature film bid haven't panned out. The First Avenger reaped $370M worldwide, while Cap's current blockbuster, The Winter Soldier, is poised to match the total box office of Man of Steel while having cost significantly less to make/market. Wonder Woman will finally hit the screen in Steel's sequel and the Justice League film to follow, but it's still sad to see how Diana Prince owned the airwaves of the '70s, but has been left in the dust by the Star-Spangled Sentinel of Liberty since. That can be hard on a relationship, plus the United Nations Headquarters in the background kind of reminds me of the Triskelion, so it seemed a natural cover to showcase. Great work, Ross!

...More Lost Team-Up Issues...

3 comments:

LissBirds said...

Two star-spangled heroes, it's perfect...

Ugh, I think DC is making a terrible mistake by not making a Wonder Woman origin film before a team-up movie. But, oh well.

Diabolu Frank said...

There was a recent article in a business magazine crediting Marvel Studios' extraordinary consistency and growth to president Kevin Feige. After the acquisition by Disney, execs tried to talk Feige into doing Avengers, and then spinning Cap and Thor out of it. It makes sense from a business standpoint, since these are less popular and risky characters who could benefit from mutual association and Iron Man. Also, an Avengers movie was a safe bet to at least break even, especially if it was a quasi-Iron Man sequel. Feige rightly pointed out that audiences needed to be introduced to and made to care about the individual characters first. Marvel were able to build multiple satellite franchises that way, then merge the audience for the mega-hit Avengers.

So, of course, DC is going to do the exact thing Feige fought against, so we'll get Superman, Batman and associates instead of a rich, diverse, well established Justice League.

Oh, and the one hinky part is that pairing with Wonder Woman means Cap probably has a secret man-crush on Thor. Conceptually, they're strikingly similar.

LissBirds said...

Interesting. He was right—introduce the characters first, then do an ensemble film. See, I do really think having the vision of one person vs. that of a committee is what gives clarity to any creative project. (I'm not a huge anime/manga fan, but creating a manga involves far fewer people than a comic does, and that yields a different result.) Maybe Kevin Feige has a pretty strong vision.

The other thing Marvel did right is allow directors who have different styles to make different movies with their own unique feel. Thor, Iron Man, X-Men, and Captain America all strike a different tone—which is actually quite brilliant as it reaches a diverse audience. DC can only hit one note, and because of that, their audience is limited only to those who enjoy grim and dark. There are plenty of diverse stories in the DCU, but everything's getting shoved into a knockoff version of the Nolanverse like a square peg into a round hole. (Who would ever make a dark Green Lantern film when it should be a fun-filled sci-fi romp?) And if it doesn't fit the Nolan mould, it goes into the Smallville mould.

It also seems like Marvel is willing to experiment with directors a bit. Kenneth Branagh directing a comic book movie? That was a bit of a gamble.

Now Disney is steering the Star Wars franchise into similar territory by interspersing spinoffs. Who knows how that will turn out.

I honestly don't know what the wakeup call DC needs is, but it better come soon.

Haha...honestly I know next-to-nothing about Thor's origins, most of it from the movie, and the rest from Adventures in Babysitting.

Oh, and I never knew about Ross's team-up covers before this, but suffice to say I found his Adam Strange ones pretty quickly. Adam Strange and The Rocketeer together—finally!