By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
If you’re The Walt Disney Co. looking back on 2015, you have to be happy about your Marvel subsidiary. From comics to TV to films, it was a Marvel-ous year.
MOVIES
Paul Rudd starred in Marvel’s Ant-Man. Photo Credit: Film Frame © Marvel 2015
[Movie trailer voice] “Imagine a world … where an Ant-Man movie succeeds, and a Fantastic Four movie doesn’t.” [/Movie trailer voice]
Fantastic Four the comic book was the foundation of the Marvel Universe. It was such a success when launched in 1961 that it effectively created Marvel Comics. Encouraged by Fantastic Four, Marvel architects Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko continued with an entire pantheon of superheroes, including Avengers, Captain America, Daredevil, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Hulk, Iron Man, Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Thor and X-Men.
Oh, yeah, there was also Ant-Man, the one notable sales failure.
But not on film. Ant-Man made $180 million in theaters, with an 88 percent audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes. Fantastic Four (version 3.0), by contrast, made $56 million in theaters, with only 20 percent approval. Ant-Man already has a sequel scheduled (Ant-Man and Wasp in 2018), whereas the future of the FF is in doubt.
To comics fans, that’s just mind-boggling. But to movie fans, it makes perfect sense. Ant-Man was made by Marvel Films, a production company that understands the appeal of the Marvel characters – and has yet to make a bomb. Fantastic Four, by contrast, was made by Twentieth Century Fox, isolated from both the Marvel creators and the broader Marvel Universe of characters. And it was staggeringly awful.
To avoid this mistake, Sony Pictures -- which owns the movie rights to Spider-Man – has cut a deal with Marvel Films for the cinematic future of the wall-crawler. Fox, which also has the X-Men franchise, has yet to show that wisdom.
Meanwhile, arch-rival DC Comics – home of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman – had no movies in 2015. None. It had a few direct-to-video animated films, sure, but nothing in the theaters.
TELEVISION
Krysten Ritter starred in Marvel’s Jessica Jones, about an alcoholic ex-superhero suffering from serious PTSD. Photo by Myles Aronowitz/Netflix
Given its dysfunction on the big screen, it’s lucky for DC that it dominates the small one. From The CW to ABC, DC has five popular shows, namely Arrow, Flash, Gotham, iZombie and Supergirl. The one disappointment so far is the canceled Constantine. But the lead character on that show has already appeared on Arrow, and is rumored to have a major role in the second season of Legends of Tomorrow, which debuts in 2016.
That’s pretty impressive. But here again the big story belongs to Marvel, which premiered two successful series on Netflix. While ratings don’t exist yet for streaming services, both Daredevil and Jessica Jones received white-hot word of mouth and critical acclaim. Jessica Jones enjoyed a 93 percent rating from critics and 90 percent from viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, while Daredevil scored a nearly perfect 98/96.
Even more important, the two shows expanded the envelope on what a superhero story could be, by – paradoxically – reducing the scope. While The Avengers may battle alien invasions on 5th Avenue, Daredevil and Jessica Jones ply their trades in the grit and shadows of Hell’s Kitchen. Neither is entirely a hero, and their stories are small, human ones. That’s compelling television.
COMICS
There are a lot of interesting stories to come out of the comics market in 2015 which don’t involve Marvel and DC.
The No. 3 publisher, Image Comics, debuted more than 40 new ongoing titles – almost none of which involved superheroes. The Disney ducks and mice launched successfully at IDW, while at that same publisher the new Star Trek crew met Green Lantern, while the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles teamed up with Batman. Archie comics successfully re-launched its namesake character (and friends) for the first time since the redhead’s debut in 1940, while also revamping its much-revamped superhero line into something interesting for the first time.
But once again, the Marvel vs. DC storyline is the biggest and most compelling. And once again, DC lost decidedly – this time in a head-to-head, apples-to-apples contest.
It started when DC decided to move its comic book operation closer to parent Warner Bros. on the West Coast. The two-month move necessitated two months of fill-ins of some kind.
Making a virtue of necessity, DC decided to create a two-month “event” called Convergence, where previous versions of their characters would all appear on a mysterious world and battle each other for survival in a series of two-issue miniseries. After the two months, any characters or fill-in titles that sold well would continue into the current DC superhero universe, a few new, non-Convergence titles would be created and the rest of the line would continue as if it had never been interrupted.
It probably sounded like a good plan, but reader reception was tepid. The “Convergence” titles had mediocre sales, the new launches mostly met with indifferent response, while the titles that returned to their regular numbering also returned to their regular sales. (TLDR: “Batman” and “Justice League” good, everything else mediocre.)
Meanwhile, Marvel did almost exactly the same thing.
Marvel had always touted the fact that –unlike DC – it had never rebooted its line. But it announced an event called “Secret Wars” that sure sounded like a reboot, which Marvel denied. But here’s how it went:
Marvel ended its multiverse with a classic literary maneuver: It killed everybody. Seriously. It wiped out its whole multiverse, and everyone in it.
Somehow – we don’t actually know the details yet – various versions of their characters were mooshed together on a single planet, the only planet in the universe, called Battleworld. As the name implied, there would be a lot of fighting for survival.
Sound familiar? But there’s the thing: Where DC’s event didn’t work, Marvel’s did.
The central title Secret Wars #1 outsold DC’s central title Convergence #1 four to one, and later issues never dropped to worse than two to one. The temporary Secret Wars titles mostly did better than the temporary Convergence titles. And here’s the kicker: Instead of returning to the old numbering of its titles at the end of the event, Marvel re-launched its entire line, with all new first issues. Suddenly, Marvel was blowing DC out of the water.
Here’s the bottom line: In November of this year – the latest figures available – Marvel’s share of the market was 47 percent to DC’s 27 percent. This compared to November 2014, when the split was 34/27.
I can’t say if “Secret Wars” was a reboot. In some ways yes, in some ways no. But one thing’s for sure: It was a success, giving Marvel almost half of the North American comic book market as 2015 goes into the history books.
Somewhere, Mickey Mouse is smiling.
Reach Captain Comics by email (capncomics@aol.com), the Internet (comicsroundtable.com), Facebook (Captain Comics Round Table) or Twitter (@CaptainComics).
Replies
Even though it seems Marvel Films can do no wrong, the Ant-Man film being a hit was a pleasant surprise to me considering the character doesn't have a lot of legs in the comic book world. Henry Pym's feature in Tales to Astonish was one of Marvel's few Silver Age failures. He was Ant-Man in Avengers #1 and then Giant-Man the next issue, and of course later he was Goliath and then Yellowjacket. He went back to the Ant-Man persona a handful of times in Avengers. There was a brief Ant-Man run in Marvel Feature #4-10 in the 70s, book-ended by the first 3 Defenders stories and the first two Thing team-ups, which lead to the launch of Marvel Two-in-One. I haven't read MF 4-10 but I've heard less than complimentary things. Scott Lang became the 2nd Ant-Man in 1979; it would only take him 35 years to get his own book!
...I rather liked that Irredeemable Ant-Man series of a few years ago .
He was a renegade SHIELD agent and both Lang and his daughter were dead at the time ???
BHe
John Dunbar (the mod of maple) said:
Perzackly. The Marvel Films guys understand that the comics characters have been focus-grouped for decades already. Just take the most popular version of a character, put it up there with the fewest changes, and it works. What the Catwoman guys never understood is that thousands of people who understand good stories have already selected the workable version, if they'll just listen.
And I suspect the reason why is that Marvel Films respects the source material, whereas the other studios started from "We make movies, so clearly we know better about everything than those silly comic-book people."
Captain Comics said:
And I suspect the reason why is that Marvel Films respects the source material, whereas the other studios started from "We make movies, so clearly we know better about everything than those silly comic-book people."
The "we know better" attitude that used to hold sway has changed partially because the Marvel and Warner movie companies have a vested interest in the characters but also because many of the screenwriters and directors of today grew up with the characters and respect them.