By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
Captain America: Civil War, premiering May 6, stars nine previously established superheroes, plus a handful of pre-existing villains and supporting characters. But even with enough characters to qualify as a third Avengers film, Civil War finds time to introduce several more.
As usual, the characters on screen will have a number of differences from their comic book counterparts. But it’s worthwhile to look at those comic book versions for hints as to how their doppelgangers will act on screen – not just in Civil War, but in Marvel Cinematic Universe films yet to come.
Here are the new kids:
* Black Panther: Introduced in 1966, the Panther is arguably the first major black superhero – yet he isn’t really a superhero at all.
The Panther, real name T’Challa, arrived full-blown in the pages of Fantastic Four as the king of the fictional African nation of Wakanda. That kingdom had been blessed by the existence of a huge cache of a rare mineral called vibranium, a metal which absorbs vibration. That advantage jump-started Wakandan science far ahead of other nations, and they used their technology to remain largely hidden and apart from the world.
Nevertheless, years ago a German soldier of fortune named Ulysses Klaw (né Klaue) invaded Wakanda to obtain vibranium. He was confronted by T’Challa’s father King T’Chaka, whom Klaw murdered. The young T’Challa took Klaw’s hand, but the mercenary escaped and later became a supervillain. (Klaw appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron, losing his hand there as well.)
Upon his father’s death, T’Challa underwent a ritual to become king, which involved certain herbs, training and a vision quest. At the conclusion he gained the approval of the Panther God at the heart of Wakanda’s major religion, and donned the sacred Panther garb, which has a lot of vibranium weaponry – and happens to look a lot like a Western superhero outfit.
T’Challa is also an engineering and strategic genius. As the world’s most-prepared man, some call T’Challa Marvel’s Batman. Ridiculous. T’Challa has a lot more money.
So to call the Panther a superhero is underselling him. He’s a head of state, the head of a state religion and the head of high-tech military. He’s a moral man, yes, so he will fight bad guys. But his prime directive at all times is protecting Wakanda, and even his membership in the Avengers (he joined in 1968) was in service to that. Plus, he has a number of warrior “wives” named the Dora Milaje as his personal bodyguard, whom you do not want to mess with.
Chadwick Boseman (42) plays T’Challa in Civil War, and will star in the solo movie Black Panther, which premieres in 2018. It’s good to be the king.
Zade Rosenthal. © Marvel 2016
Black Panther, played by Chadwick Boseman, is one of the new characters introduced in Captain America: Civil War.
* Everett K. Ross: Ross is a U.S. State Department attache, who was assigned as a liaison to T’Challa during the Panther’s second series in 1998. The bulk of that series was written by fan favorite Christopher Priest, who also invented Ross. (In an issue of Ka-Zar, a Tarzan knockoff. Seriously.)
According to Priest (on his terrific website, digitalpriest.com), Ross was modeled on Chandler Bing of Friends, in that he was good at his job but terrible at interpersonal relationships. Further, his real purpose was to be the white reader’s POV character, so that white kids would have more interest in buying a book starring a black hero, and to allow the Panther to remain somewhat at a remove – an enigmatic genius whose plans we would never know. It worked, as Priest’s version of Black Panther ran 62 issues, the longest the Panther has ever maintained a solo title.
Ross is played by Martin Freeman, who has shown serious acting chops in Sherlock and Fargo.
Zade Rosenthal. © Marvel 2016
Sharon Carter (Emily VanCamp), also known as Agent 13 of S.H.I.E.L.D., is a returning character, while Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman) is new in this movie.
* Crossbones: This isn’t actually a new character in the MCU -- Brock Rumlow (played by Frank Grillo) was a Hydra goon in Captain America: The Winter Soldier who was badly injured and carried out on a stretcher at the end. He’s back in this movie in supervillain mode.
In the comics, Rumlow is the right-hand man of the Red Skull – skull and bones, get it? – who can give Cap a run for his money in single combat.
* Zemo: When Captain America was thawed out in 1964, the news enraged a masked man hiding in the jungles of South America. He was Baron Heinrich Zemo, a Nazi scientist who had battled the Star-Spangled Avenger in World War II, which resulted in a purple hood being permanently glued to his face. (How did he smell? Terrible.)
Zemo had never really appeared in any 1940s Captain America comics – Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made him up out of whole cloth in 1964 – but he was retroactively established as one of Cap’s main World War II enemies, and also the man responsible for Bucky’s death. (Cap’s wartime partner Bucky Barnes was dead, dead, dead in the early 1960s, and remained so until 2005 when writer Ed Brubaker dreamed up the Winter Soldier story.) So Cap and Zemo had some unfinished business, which resulted in Zemo being crushed by an avalanche in 1965. (Oops. Spoiler!) But Heinrich’s son Helmut carries on in the purple hood to this day, so it’s not as if we’re short a Zemo.
There were a lot of warmed-over Nazis in 1960s Marvels, not just Zemo but Baron Strucker and Hydra and the Red Skull and a few others here and there. That was perfectly acceptable in those days, because WWII was still in living memory. In today’s Civil War, though, Zemo (played by Daniel Brühl) will be from Sokovia, the country Ultron and the Avengers trashed a few movies back. Zemo is a Sokovian terrorist with a mad-on for the Avengers, so he’s not a Nazi and not a baron and not particularly a Captain America-specific bad guy. Also, he doesn’t appear to even own a purple hood. Alas.
* Miriam Sharpe: In the comic book version of Civil War, a group of young superheroes named the New Warriors were filming a reality show when they took on a villain whose power was – for real – to blow himself to smithereens. Nitro, as he was called, would then reform, and blow up again. But when Nitro blew himself up in a town named Stamford, Connecticut, while battling the Warriors, he killed some 60 children and more than 600 civilians overall. The public was outraged, resulting in the Superhuman Registration Act, which is what splits the heroes in a security-vs.-privacy argument. The face of “the Stamford Incident” was an activist named Miriam Sharpe, whose children were killed by Nitro.
Absolutely none of that will be in the movie. There will be no New Warriors, no Nitro and no Stamford. But there will be a Miriam Sharpe, played by Alfre Woodard, who will likely play the same kind of role – a reminder of what happens when superheroes aren’t careful.
Film Frame © Marvel 2016
Marvel’s flagship character, Spider-Man (Tom Holland), finally returns to his roots after five films at Sony Pictures.
* Spider-Man: I couldn’t find any information on this new character. Sorry.
Ha ha! Seriously, Spider-Man has only recently become available to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thanks to a deal with Sony Pictures, which owns the movie rights to the wall-crawler. Not only will a teenage Peter Parker appear in Civil War (played by Tom Holland), but he will star in his own solo movie by Marvel Films, Spider-Man: Homecoming, in 2017.
In the Civil War comics, Spider-Man was pivotal, first allying with Tony Stark and then switching to #TeamCap. The loss of his secret identity resulted in his Aunt May being shot, which resulted in a deal with the devil (called Mephisto in Marvel Comics), which resulted in Parker’s status quo changing so that he was single again, with his marriage to Mary Jane utterly erased from everyone’s memory.
So, yeah, that was a pretty big deal. It’ll be hard for the movie to top that, so they probably won’t try. And who cares? Spidey’s back in the Marvel Universe, and all’s right with the world.
Well, except for that whole Civil War thing.
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Replies
This Spider-Man character looks rather promising. If they gave him his own series he might even do better than the Black Panther's record 62 issue run.
Ha! Found him! The problem was the cover said Spider Monsters, while inside we're told he's a Spider Man.
First Groot and now Rorgg. Only a matter of time until Fin Fang Foom makes his theatrical debut!
Rorgg was a base pretender! He only has six limbs, meaning in truth he was an insect, not a spider at all! He abdicated in shame and was later stepped on by a 100-foot Giant-Man, who later wondered what was that goopy mess on the bottom of his boot.