#mcu synergy

[s10127470]

The MCU Synergy Problem

It’s been a month since X-Men ‘97 came out, and just about everyone’s has already pointed what makes it so good.

-Staying true to the spirit of the original while still striving for its own identity

-Staying true to the characterization and depiction of the characters, and in some cases, improving on their characterization such as in the case of Jean Grey and especially Morph.

-Introducing new concepts, elements and characters that haven’t been explored in other adaptations yet.

-Having so many callbacks to the original while not coming off as nostalgia pandering.

-The animation and action! MY GOD! The animation and action!

Really, the only problem people have with this show is the weird love triangle between Rogue, Gambit and Magneto.

We already had to deal with the infamous love triangle Cyclops, Jean and Wolverine in the original, we did not need this.

Not only is this just unnecessary, it’s also just weird since in the original, it was never even implied that Rogue or Magneto had any sort of history between each other at all.

But here, they met during Rogue’s days with the Brotherhood. And I think when they met, Rogue was still a teenager.

During that time, the two grew an attraction towards each other and although it’s not explicitly stated, it is implied that they did….ya know…

Man….

Although I do enjoy Magneto, unlike a lot of other people, I can acknowledge that he’s kind of an awful person.

He’s a supremacist, a terrorist, a mass murderer, a violent, abusive psychopath, and a deadbeat father (well, when he used to be a father but we’ll get to that soon).

But never though that “groomer” would be an addition to that list as well.

All I can say is that….if this show took place in the modern day, Magneto ain’t beating any allegations.

But besides all that, another major positive people have with this show is just how….comic booky it feels, which is something that’s been lacking with a lot of Marvel content for the better of a decade now.

But before we get into that, let’s take a little history lesson.

Marvel was founded all the way back in 1939 by Martin Goodman….but it wasn’t called Marvel at first, it was actually called Timely Comics. But by 1951, the name of the brand was changed to Atlas Comics. 

During this era, the comics saw the introduction of several characters include The Human Torch (the android), The Whizzer, Miss America, The Destroyer, the original Vision and The Angel. 

But the two most notable characters introduced during this time were none other than the patriotic fighter of justice Captain America and the anti-heroic aquatic incel Namor the Sub-Mariner.

But Marvel would become the comic book powerhouse we know them as today starting in April of 1961, when Altas Comics was changed to be part of the newly-named Marvel Comics brand, helmed by the legendary duo of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

And over the course of the 1960s, Marvel would not only quickly become the biggest name in the comic industry (only being rivaled by who else, but DC), but also introduce many of their most recognizable stars.

This would include the likes of The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Iron Man, The X-Men, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, The Inhumans, Black Panther, The Silver Surfer, Black Widow and Hawkeye, and of course, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

And in addition to tons of, in the words of Yogurt…..

Marvel would also see plenty of entries into the wider world of television. 

From the anthology series Marvel Super Heroes, to the acclaimed five-season run of The Incredible Hulk starring the legendary bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno, to the absolute meme-fest that was the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon.

But Marvel really found their footing amongst the public consensus in the 1990s, largely thanks to their animated shows.

We had X-Men ‘92, Spider-Man, Iron Man and Fantastic Four ‘94, and The Incredible Hulk ‘96. 

What made these shows stand out from their predecessors was that they strived to actually be adaptations of their respective comics.

Yeah, prior to these shows, all of the cartoons were largely villain-of-the-week shows with little to no continuity and apart from the characters, didn’t really take a whole lot from their source material.

But these shows actually went out of their way to actually adapt storylines from the comics, had ongoing plots, and much stronger characterization than before.

And even besides that, and of course, merchandising, Marvel was making quite the name for itself in the world of video games. Most notably the ones that were made by Capcom, which included the likes of The Punisher, X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, and most famously of all, Marvel vs. Capcom.

Their status among the public consensus became even stronger when the 21st century rolled around.

This was largely thanks to the multiple films based on Marvel Comics properties that came out during the 2000s.

This included the likes of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, Ang Lee’s Hulk film, Tim Story’s Fantastic Four duology, Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil, and (Sirs whose names will not be mentioned here at all)’s X-Men series.

And apart from the merchandising (which was stronger than ever before thanks to the movies), the 2000s would also see some of the best video games based off the Marvel Comics and its IPs.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: A New Age of Heroes, Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, X-Men Legends and its sequel Rise of Apocalypse, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, and Spidey himself had a multiple of great games from this era.

From ones based off his cinematic outings, to ones based off his alternate universe escapades (Ultimate Spider-Man), to ones that featured the characters’ worst voice actor to date and was responsible giving us that famous depressed Spidey walking meme (Web of Shadows).

But everything would change for Marvel in 2008 with the release of….

This film would not only serve as the invincible armored Avenger’s first outing on the big screen, but would also be the start of one of the most well-known and influential pieces of media in Marvel’s entire history…..

The Marvel….Cinematic….Universe….

Just about everyone knows about the MCU.

It only not made the characters of Marvel even bigger than before (along with introducing some of the more lesser-known characters to the general public), but also helped popularized the concept of the shared cinematic universe in general.

The franchise has gone on to become one of, if not, the biggest and most successful film franchise in history and has left a major impact on the world of cinema and even Marvel themselves.

And unfortunately, not really for the better…..

Everyone has already pointed how much of a negative influence the MCU has had on the media we consume.

From the multiple failed attempts from studios who desperately wanted to trend chase by making their own cinematic universe, only for these attempts to end up being massive failures, to a lot of writing in many films post-Avengers having this quippy and observational sort-of-write that while beloved at first, has gone on to become seen as annoying and tiresome…..

But I really want to focus on the effect it’s had on Marvel as a whole.

To start this off, let’s look the place where this MCU effect has been the biggest problem…..and it’s ironically enough, the comics.

Ever since MCU began, Marvel has been adapting elements from the MCU into the comics, which became especially more apparent after the first Avengers film.

And while Marvel is no stranger to adapting elements from Marvel media outside the comics, it’s never been to this extent.

This synergy has seen major changes in the appearances and characterization in many of its characters, including…..

-Iron Man being portrayed as far more snarky and quippy than he previously was. At first, people were on board with this change, not only because people liked Robert Downey Jr’s portrayal, but also because during the mid-2000s, Iron Man was not a popular character. Not in the frankly overused and tired “nobody knew who Iron Man was prior to the release of the first film” way. But more in the sense that everyone hated him during that time. This was largely thanks to the absolute clusterfuck known as Civil War, which turned Iron Man into a full-on villain. Plus he was indirectly responsible for One More Day, aka the worst Spider-Man story ever written.

-Loki became far more heroic and started looking and acting more like his MCU counterpart. Hell, the Loki we know today isn’t the same one introduced back in the 1960s. That Loki died all the way back in 2010, and the one we know today is essentially his reincarnation. And this reincarnation was not only introduced in the exact same year that the first Thor movie released, but in the exact same month as well!

-Thor started acting far more goofy and air-headed like his MCU counterpart following Thor: Raganrok.

-Hawkeye started giving off what could be best described as “uwu small bean tired dad” in the Matt Fraction run, which started just 4 months after the first Avengers film.

-Agatha Harkness having her appearance changed into that of a much younger woman following Wandavision.

-Introducing the Ten Rings following Shang-Chi, and having the titular hero being the user of them instead of just being Bruce Lee like he had been for last 50 years.

-Literally everything involving the Guardians of the Galaxy.

Its also led to tons of the characters getting somewhat phased out like….

-Iron Fist, due to the poor reception of his MCU show and complaints towards him being a “white savior”.

-Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, aka the original Ant-Man and the Wasp, who were also two of the five founding members of the Avengers. But despite that, neither of them appeared in the first Avengers film. And although it was a loose adaptation of The Ultimates, Hank and Janet were still present in that story as founding members of the titular team. Hell, Hank definitely has this the worst as he was killed off back in 2015, and was only recently brought back from the dead…..and he’s an old man now. I wonder why?

-Valkyrie, who was not only killed off permanently after Thor Ragnarök, but replaced with not one, but two characters very similar to the Valkyrie that appears in Ragnarök.

-The Inhumans, who had a major push in relevancy in order to promote their upcoming movie and TV show. But after the former got cancelled and the latter ended up being a massive flop, they ended up being banished to the shadow realm and barely acknowledged anymore. Also, the reason for their push plays into a later point.

-Quicksilver, which also plays into that later point I just mentioned.

-Black Panther, who Marvel seems to be somewhat edging out in the comics literally because of Chadwick Boseman’s passing.

And worse of all, retcons……such as…..

-Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch being revealed to have never been Magneto’s children nor mutants at all….shortly after the release of Age of Ultron.

-Shang Chi’s biracial heritage being rewritten to have him being fully Asian shortly after his film.

-Nebula, in addition to being made to look and act more like the movie version, also was revealed to be Thanos’ adopted daughter and Gamora’s sister….just like in the movies. 

-Ms. Marvel being revealed to have been mutant all along instead of an Inhuman…..just months before the release of The Marvels.

-Thor and the other Asgardians are not mythical beings, but actually aliens who were mistaken for gods by humanity….who just so happen to use magic (yeah this is a weird one because it constantly keeps flip-flopping between one or the other).

-Nick Fury being revealed to have had an illegitimate son who looks exactly like the MCU Nick Fury, who himself was based on the Ultimate Universe version of Nick Fury, who was African-American and modeled after Samuel L. Jackson. This is really weird because if they wanted a Samuel L. Jackson inspired Nick Fury, they could’ve easily just waited for the 2015 Secret Wars event and just had the Ultimate Nick Fury be one of the surviving inhabitants of the Ultimate Universe to be brought over to the 616 Universe along with Miles Morales, The Maker, and that son of Wolverine everyone forgot the existence of (even Marvel themselves!).

So yeah, as you can see, this is quite a problem.

Marvel has essentially been trying to make the comics resemble the movies rather than the other way around.

Which has not only gotten annoying and tiresome, but it’s also pretty disingenuous.

I mean, you’re pulling from a source material that has literal decades of content and lore to use, and now you’re actively trying change and contradict that lore just because of a series of movies adapting said source material?

This is obviously because they’re trying to appeal to new Marvel readers who came right from the movies.

But for some reason, Marvel seems to believe that general audiences have never heard the word “adaptation” before.

But this isn’t just an issue for the comics, it’s also an issue for…..pretty much every medium Marvel can be represented in.

For over a decade, Marvel has been essentially trying to push the MCU as the default everything.

Anything Marvel related: it all has to be similar to the MCU and barely anything else. And if it can, just utilize any of the comics written post 2010.

It’s pretty much the same problem that a lot of recent Spider-Man media suffers from.

When they’re adapting stuff, it’s almost always from the cartoons, Brian Michael Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man and Dan Slott’s run on Amazing Spider-Man.

And this has often come to the detriment of many of the non-MCU projects released during the 2010s.

Three of the best examples of this I could think of were Avengers Assemble, Square Enix’s Avengers, and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. 

Avengers Assemble is famous for being the Marvel cartoon that was only created just to ride on the success of the first Avengers film.

But in spite of this, it was apparent during the first two season that this show was striving to have its own identity. Specifically utilizing some of the lesser-known faces of Marvel.

But as the series went on, the MCU got bigger and bigger. And as a result, the show started to get bogged down by MCU synergy.

From having storylines that were obviously done to tie into whatever movie came out not that long ago, to even changing characters appearances in order to better reflect their MCU counterparts.

The best example of the latter was with Falcon, who was a member of the main cast.

During the first three seasons, he actually stood out from the rest of the team visually as his outfit wasn’t trying to emulate the MCU.

It wasn’t emulating the comics either because I think that outfit of his was wholly original to this show.

But during season 4, Falcon ends up going through a time warp. And when he comes out, he’s been aged up from a young college-aged man to a grown man around the Avengers’ ambiguous age range and is wearing an outfit similar to his MCU counterpart.

Now we come to Square Enix’s Avengers.

My God…..was there anything this game did remotely right?

Or at least competently?

And one of the many flaws of this game was its roster.

And this actually plays into another major point on how stifling MCU synergy is.

Ever since the first Avengers movie, whenever the titular Avengers appear in just about anything, they’re almost always shown having the same roster.

That being Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye.

Sometimes there will be other members like Falcon, Ant-Man, Wasp, Black Panther, Vision and Captain Marvel, but that’s because those guys are also major names in the MCU as well.

Like for God’s sake, switch it up a bit! 

For the next major thing the Avengers appear in, how about we have a roster based on like…..

The Heroes Return roster, or the Hickman roster, or the Englehart roster, or the New Avengers roster, or the Stern roster, or the West Coast roster, or even the Classic roster!

But back to the Avengers game, they didn’t even commit to that never-changing roster I just mentioned!

When the game released, the Avengers video game had Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and Black Widow as the main Avengers roster until Ms. Marvel joined up.

Yeah, Hawkeye didn’t appear as a part of the roster until his own DLC with Kate Bishop!

As for the other additions to the roster, we had Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Winter Soldier and the Jane Foster Thor.

Yeah, when looking at this game as an adaptation of the comics (which it barely was), the roster is absolutely pathetic when you look at the INSANE amount of members the Avengers have had over the decades.

And when looking at this game as an adaptation of the MCU, it didn’t even commit to that!

This is even more of the case when you look at the list of characters they initially had planned, but they obviously had to drastically cut all that for the sake of time constraints.

Hell, if you want to see something really sad, just look at the villain roster.

Over the 3 years this game was around, it only gave us 4 (yes 4) villains.

M.O.D.O.K., Taskmaster, The Abomination and Klaw….

Yep! Just these four schmucks!

No Red Skull, no Mandarin, no Baron Zemo, no Leader, no Ultron, no Kang the Conqueror, no Absorbing Man, no Wrecking Crew, no Enchantress, no Whirlwind, no Crimson Dynamo, no Circus of Crime….

Hell, they don’t even have Loki, the most popular and well-known Avengers villain!

It’s even more sadder when you consider the DLCs, i.e Spider-Man, who despite having undoubtedly the most well-known rogues gallery in all of Marvel, not one of them appear at all in his DLC!

In the wise words of a young redheaded YouTuber who likes to talk about Spidey….

“How easily you got showed up by Fortnite!”

If you want more detail on the history of this game and what went wrong, I suggest watching Matt McMuscles’ What Happened video on the game, but basically the reason that the game was the way that it was due to the laziness and apathy of Square Enix, the inexperience and slight incompetence of Crystal Dynamics, having WAY too many cooks in the kitchen (i.e., they worked with five studios, all of which were located in different parts of the world), and most of all, the utter greed of Marvel.

And funnily enough, this game ties into my next talking point…

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite! The fourth and possibly final game in the series….and is regarded by just about everyone to be the weakest game as well.

Just like Avengers, one of (if not) the biggest criticisms of this game was the roster.

Infinite had a roster of about 36 characters, having the second smallest roster in the series’ history, only surpassing Clash of Heroes’ 15.

This was quite the surprise when compared to the previous game, 3’s 48 characters and especially 2: A New Age’s 56.

As for the roster itself, it was made up of both veteran characters and new characters.

Returning from the previous game, we had Spider-Man, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Doctor Strange, Dormammu, Ghost Rider, Nova and Rocket Raccoon.

Also returning were two faces that hadn’t been seen since 2: Venom and Thanos.

As for the new characters, we had Captain Marvel, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Black Panther, Gamora and Ultron.

Yeah not exactly the most interesting roster.

And I’m sure many of you noticed by now, there’s something notable characters missing from the roster.

Namely the X-Men, their villains and Doctor Doom, all of whom have been staples of the franchise since the beginning.

And there’s a reason for that….

A very, scummy reason….

I already mentioned this in my X-Men: The Next Mutation post, but it does bare repeating her.

As the MCU became more popular, Marvel became focusing on pushing the Avengers as their premiere superhero team, with the Fantastic Four and X-Men essentially being dethroned.

Along with that, their relevance in the comics notably began to degraded, and barely began making appearances in media outside the comics.

The reason for this, apart from Marvel focusing on cashing in on the Avengers, was because despite still owning the overall rights for the FF and X-Men (which, why wouldn’t they?), their film rights were still owned by 20th Century Fox.

Since Fox was pretty much a rival company to Marvel until Disney bought them out, Marvel basically saw any form of FF and X-Men representation as free-marketing for Fox.

So they decided to essentially not to allow any FF or X-Men related characters to appear in any media outside the comics and even reduced their overall presence as well.

Which is why Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and the other non X-Men mutants were retconned into not being mutants, why Quicksilver himself has been sort of been an afterthought in recent years, why the Inhumans were pushed so hard, and why the FF and X-Men characters weren’t in this game.

Plus the justifications and excuses for this from the developers are absolutely hilarious, because you can just tell that they’re lying through their teeth while being held up at gunpoint by a bunch of Marvel executives.

Oh yeah, let’s bring up the other biggest elephant in the room and want led to Square Enix developing Avengers.

After Infinite came out and got quickly abandoned by the player-base, many people at Capcom have come out to reveal just how awful it was working with Marvel and Disney.

They weren’t just pushy with who and who couldn’t be in the roster. 

They were also pushy about how the characters that would be in the roster would be portrayed (specifically wanting them to heavily resemble their MCU iterations) and even changing their themes to be exactly like the MCU ones. 

Hell, this pushiness was so bad that for the trailers, they did not want the Marvel characters to be depicted as losing!

This was also an issue back during 3 as well, but it was essentially amplified during this game.

This really shows just how petty Marvel really is….

They’re willing to ignore and downplay the existence of two major players of their brand that people have loved for decades and were created by the two men them helped make the company they are today.

They’re unwilling to compromise and it has to be their way or the highway.

And this pettiness eventually came to bite them in the ass as Capcom’s statements about working with them eventually reached many of the other big video game developers.

And soon enough, when Marvel was trying to find someone to develop Avengers, none of the big game developers wanted anything to do with it!

Eventually, they did find a developer with Square Enix, who already had experience working with Disney via Kingdom Hearts.

It’s actually ironically hilarious that the heads at Marvel believed all three of these projects would actually be successful because of the MCU synergy, but they all ended up being flops because of said MCU synergy!

But this desire for MCU synergy has not only negatively affected non-MCU project of this time, but even ones that either came out before this desire or….never came out at all.

I’m sure many of you remember The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.

This show was essentially a love letter to the Silver Age comics of Marvel  and strived to be an near-faithful adaptation of many classic and even recent Avengers storylines, while also having its own unique spin on it.

Hell, in some cases, the EMH versions of these storylines are actually better than the originals, especially in the case of Secret Invasion. 

Sadly, the show got cancelled in 2012 after 2 seasons and 52 episodes…and to this day, EMH probably has one of the dumbest and scummiest reasons for cancellation in television animation history.

The reason this show was cancelled because Marvel wanted to replace with it a show that was more in-line with the MCU, aka Avengers Assemble.

Yep! Not low ratings. Not bad critical reception. Not budgetary reasons. Hell, not even bad toy sales, which was a major reason for a lot of action cartoons around this time getting the axe!

And it doesn’t get much better from here.

During the 2010s, there were a lot of promising Marvel projects that never saw the light of the day, with two of the most notable being the animated Deadpool series and Marvel Era.

Following the success of 2016 film, FX and Marvel Television decided to collaborate to created an animated series based on the merc with the mouth, with Donald Glover (yes, that Donald Glover) being one of the main showrunners, alongside his brother Stephen.

However, the series was cancelled almost a year within its development, with the main reason being that Marvel wasn't particularly big on the vision that the Glovers had for this series.

And apart Donald speculating racism on Marvel’s part (which given that Jeph Loeb was meant to be an executive producer on this series, that possibly could be the case), another possible factor for the show’s cancellation was because of Deadpool’s connection with the X-Men, and during this show’s production, Marvel was still in their “the X-Men don’t matter anymore” phase.

And it really sucks because the pitch animation for this was really good and made this seem like it was going to be a very fun show.

New we come to Marvel Era.

Out of all the cancelled projects, this was perhaps the most interesting.

Marking a first for their animated shows, this would’ve been an anthology series released in 2014 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Marvel Comics.

It was going to be produced by Powerhouse Animation (best known for Netflix’s Castlevania series) and it was gonna have 7 stories, with each one being themed around a different decade and focusing on a different character.

There would’ve been a 40s story focusing on Captain America, a 50s story focusing on either Wolverine or Namor the Sub-Mariner, a 60s story focusing on the X-Men, a 70s story focusing on The Heroes for Hire, a 80s story focusing on The Punisher, a 90s story focusing on the aforementioned Deadpool, and a 2000s story focusing on Captain Marvel.

This honestly seemed like it was going to be a really great show, which was enhanced by the absolutely gorgeous animation of the pitch trailer.

Unfortunately, Powerhouse announced that the project was cancelled because it wasn’t what Marvel Television were focusing on.

Which is code for: Marvel didn’t want it because it wasn’t MCU adjacent….

To wrap this up, I just wanted to bring up the reason I made this in the first place.

Over the last few weeks, there was a leak for a upcoming episode of X-Men ‘97, which showed a shot of Captain America’s shield.

And this led many people to somewhat groan, believing that this was yet another case of MCU synergy. 

And although this was proven to be false, it really does speak volume with how much influence the MCU has had.

Although it has brought lot of Marvel’s star characters into the mainstream, the MCU has shaped and changed them so much, that it seems like they can no longer exist as characters who have existed for literal DECADES.

They always have to be associated with a film franchise that has existed for about 1/6 of their existence in fiction.

But I think the biggest takeaway to all this is that this constant MCU synergy kinda shows a lack of reverence for Marvel’s legacy.

Look at this merchandising from the 2010s and 2020s....

In most of this merchandise, the character roster featured is almost always the same.

The Avengers, Doctor Strange, Spider-Man and the Web Warriors, and the Guardians of the Galaxy.

The Inhumans were also apart of this roster until, as I mentioned earlier, got banished to the Shadow Realm....

Occasionally you'll get some of the other cosmic characters like Nova, She-Hulk and some of the street-level heroes like Daredevil, Elektra, Ghost Rider, and The Heroes for Hire.

But those are few and far between.

But other than that, it's largely the four I mentioned earlier.

Because they're the main faces of the MCU, and as we all know, everything has to be related to the MCU in some way....

But now let's compare that to some Marvel merchandising from the mid-to-late 2000s and early 2010s....

Upon seeing this, you can tell that there’s a far greater sense of appreciation for Marvel.

This merchandising pulls from nearly every corner of the Marvel Universe you can think off and features characters from the heavy hitters, to the borderline obscure.

Plus it still heavily features the Fantastic Four and X-Men characters, who, may I remind you, spent a good chunk of the 2010s having their presence greatly reduced and their existence constantly threatened or denied because of movie rights!

All in all, Marvel really needs to stop the MCU synergy.

In spite of what they think, it’s clearly done nothing but harm and stifle many potentially good (even great) projects.

Not only that, but it’s also gonna start harming the Marvel brand itself with how homogenized they’ve made everything and the rapidly increasing lack of interest in the MCU.

Plus its also brought out the worst in Marvel.

From cancelling projects for stupid reasons, to showing a lack of respect for the legacy they’ve build, to literally being difficult to work with because of how they want everything to be their way.

But things do seem to be looking up a bit….

There’s been the multiple of Spider-Man media of the last few years , which has been one of the few Marvel projects that aren’t bogged down by MCU synergy.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur also ended being shockingly really good, and although it does have some MCU synergy, it’s pretty minor.

And now we have X-Men ‘97.

It does appear that there’s some kind of movement in Marvel to actually start making projects again that aren’t being made to be a glorified MCU circle-jerks.

And hopefully, this could led to some really unique and interesting projects, specifically for this year.

Since remember, this year marks the 85th anniversary of Marvel Comics, so that’s pretty big!

But then again, their corporate overlord had an utter embarrassment of a year for their centennial….

And Marvel themselves also contributed to that as well….

[lollylandgirl]

When Ewing's GotG run ended I expected Marvel to start burying most of the queer stuff as soon as they could but man putting what feels like the last nail in the riderquill coffin in pride month seems specially evil. Also ignoring all the 15 previous years of intense friendship just to be sure it's dead and buried... this is not a rough patch or anything this is deliberately killing a relationship that never had it that bad to stop them from showing their feelings.

Like holy shit you're making me miss Bendis. BENDIS RUN. BENDIS WHO'S UNABLE TO FOLLOW A LONG STORY WITHOUT CRACKS APPEARING EVERYWHERE. BECAUSE AT LEAST HE UNDERSTOOD SOME BASIC RELATIONSHIP STUFF

Like it seemed too funny (in a "i'd rather laugh than cry" way) to have a GotG run with such a big queer % of characters and the pride specials including like. 4. Not a single nod to riderquill oh they were killing it and it was so obvious but this is way more rude.

[wid0wd-archived]

NOBODY MOVE

[adamwarlock]

Marvel really wants me to kill myself what the hell is this 😭 what's wrong with Thanos' true motivation being love and loneliness that's what makes him interesting!!! I hate you MCU synergy

HE WOULD NOT FUCKING SAY THAT...... Literally a vital part of the plot in Thanos Quest/the Infinity Gauntlet was that Thanos would never force Death to be with him because he wanted to be her equal. It's like they read what Starlin wrote and just decided the exact opposite was true even though it makes no damn sense

[mostsanescarletspiderfan]

So that new TVA comic came out... Jesus Christ... They are inside our houses now...

[korokettes]

everyday i wake up and realise that my trio of scientific bastards get mischaracterised on the daily and its all civil war's fault

(and Cantwell for tony and hank is.....a whole another can of worms)

stop giving iron man runs to bitches who hate him its not that hard marvel

[wid0wd]

good morning i need to get ready to go to uni but guess who's gonna continue listening to bad blood on the train ride

[brw]

Tragic news; Hank is old in Moon Knight still 😔

[jademight]

SAM ELLIOT ROSS?!?!?!

[s10127470]

A response to myst1calx

So a few weeks ago, a made a post titled The MCU Synergy Problem.

In that post, I discussed how a lot of Marvel's projects during the 2010s and 2020s have been somewhat dragged down by being constantly forced to be adjacent to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

If you want to check it out for yourself, here's the link to it below.

As of right now, the post has gotten six likes and a reblog.

However, the reblog I got was essentially a written response.

And somewhat hostile one.

And weirdly enough, it was from one of the six people who liked the post.

So I'm not sure on whether or not they actually liked it or they hated it.

From the way the reblog was written, it seemed like they didn't really like it.

And in addition to that, they're also a sense of confusion as well.

So today, I decided to make a response to the person that did the reblog: myst1calx.

I'm going to respond to all the points they brought up in their reblog while trying to be as civil as possible.

Though there may be a point in this where I do seem pretty angry.

Now that we got that out of the way, let's get started.

"ok but the shows in the 2010s didnt suffer from mcu synergy because they activley fought against it"

This one is a both right and wrong.

Ultimate Spider-Man and Spider-Man (2017) are really the only shows that didn't suffer from MCU synergy.

Spidey hadn't been introduced into the MCU yet when Ultimate came out and when he was, it was during Ultimate's final season.

When Spidey wouldn't even get his own movie in the MCU until after Ultimate ended.

And Spider-Man '17 surprisingly didn't really have a whole lot of MCU influence despite lasting for most of Spidey's MCU trilogy.

It took more influence from Brian Michael Bendis' Ultimate Spider-Man and Dan Slott's run on Amazing Spider-Man.

Avengers Assemble, despite being created just to ride off the success of the first Avengers film, didn't really have a whole lot of MCU synergy at.....for the first two seasons.

But I'll touch on that a little later.

Guardians of the Galaxy.

Dude, out of all the Marvel shows of the 2010s, this one was undoubtedly the most blatant with the MCU synergy.

I mean, just look this promotional poster.

Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. also has blatant case of MCU synergy, but in a more subtle and honestly, sinister way.

The show was about the titular Agents of S.M.A.S.H. learning how to be a family and fighting off bad guys with a variety of high-tech gadgets.

Not exactly something you would think of from a show about the Hulk of all characters.

But let's turn our attention to the villains of this show.

Out of all the villains, this show only really features 7 of the Hulk's foes.

The Leader, The Abomination, The Absorbing Man, Titania, Wendigo, Xemnu and Maestro.

Yeah! No Wrecking Crew, U-Foes, Zzzax, Madman, Bi-Beast, Gargoyle, Flux, Grey Gargoyle, Umar, Nightmare, Man-Beast, Ravage, or John Ryker.

Now compare this to the other villains included in the show.

Besides the Hulk associated villains, the other villains in show include the likes of Annihilus, Blastaar, Ego the Living Planet, Laufey, The Mole Man, Doctor Doom, Galactus and his heralds, Impossible Man, Loki, Malekith the Accursed, Dormammu, Sauron, Ronan the Accuser, The High Evolutionary, The Red Ghost and his Super-Apes, Pluto, and The Supreme Intelligence.

Upon reading this, you probably that most the villains listed here are predominately connected to the Fantastic Four, not really Hulk himself.

This, along with the aforementioned focus on family and use of technology, has led many people to theorize that Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H. was originally meant to be a new Fantastic Four cartoon, but was changed to be a Hulk cartoon at some point development.

The potential reason for this was that this show did come out right at the beginning of Marvel's "The Fantastic Four and X-Men don't matter anymore" phase because of the whole movie rights bullshit.

And while there hasn't been any official confirmation about this theory from any who has worked on the show, the connections are still quite apparent.

As for why they decided to make Hulk the star of the show instead if they couldn't use the Fantastic Four, I guess besides the fact he's among the most prominent allies of the Four, it was because he was the only other option that people could see working with this premise.

The other ones that could possibly fit this would be The Avengers and maybe Spider-Man, but they already had their own shows going on around that time.

So all in all, the MCU synergy did affect most of the 2010s shows.

Some were definitely more apparent than others, but still.

"if you wanna make the claim that its all mcu synergy, you can see it starting in 2017, not 13"

Now this one is weird because a good chunk of the MCU synergized elements that occured in the comics happened before 2017.

-The current, obviously MCU-inspired Loki was introduced in 2011

-Hawkeye with the tired dad energy was introduced in 2012

-The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver happened in 2015

-Literally everything with the Guardians of the Galaxy in 2015

I think maybe they were trying to say that the MCU synergy became more apparent starting in 2017, which.....yeah, they are kinda right about that.

But I reason I say this is a weird statement is because what myst1calx says later in their reblog.

Which I'll get to.

"also advertising doesnt always mean mcu syndication slop dude"

Dude, I never said anything about the advertisement for the MCU being the same as MCU synergy slock.

Advertising for the MCU is perfectly fine. I mean, Marvel would want their project to do well, right?

But the problem is using a piece of Marvel media that isn't connected to the MCU and having it resemble the MCU.

It just doesn't allow it the product to stand on it's own.

"like dont bring avengers assemble and aos and usm into this"

Why shouldn't?

Avengers Assemble does play a part in the MCU synergy problem.

I didn't even mention Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. at all in my post.

And for Ultimate Spider-Man.....

I only brought up the comic for a point I was making about a weird similarity I noticed between most modern non-MCU projects and most recent Spider-Man media.

And if we're talking about the cartoon, I literally just said it didn't suffer from any MCU synergy at all.

"this is entierly a thing that started with the 2017 uni and it comics. just correcting because i'm tire dof the whole “ mcu syndication rhetoric” when talking about aa it's so fucking annoying"

The MCU synergy has been around before 2017, they think were just saying that it became before prominent and explicit than before.

But the whole "MCU syndication rhetoric" when about AA.....

While yes, Avengers Assemble may not have the most blatant case of MCU synergy out of the non-MCU TV shows of the 2010s (Guardians of the Galaxy say "hi" again.), it's hard not to mention it as it does play a big part in that show.

From the content within the show, to literally why the show was made in the first place.

"look at the comics or anything from like. idk 2017 onwards."

This one I do agree (sort of).

I don't what the comics have to do with AA (they're completely different continuities), but I do know that the MCU synergy has gotten worse with the comics since 2017.

I mean for God's sake, the latest case of this was just last year with Ms. Marvel being retconned into a mutant.

"like you COULD make a claim abt this but honestly i see it more as you guys just not liking new shit"

But I like some of the new Marvel shit.....

the Insomniac Spider-Man games, the Spider-Verse films, Midnight Suns, those Marvel animes, and that upcoming Marvel Rivals game.

Hell, I actually like Avengers Assemble as well.

I know I didn't mention it in my post, I actually do like this show a lot.

I know it's not as good as the show that came before it, The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, but I still acknowledge it merits and enjoy it as its own thing.

But most of the other non-MCU projects I'm just not that wild about.

Since let's be real, they're kinda just.....

"like being fr, have you ever watched or played any of these games or do you see that at face value"

Yes, I have watched and played both Avengers and Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.

And both of these are just not that good.

While they're definitely not the worst games ever, they're just nothing really home to write home about.

For Avengers, this game was pure wasted potential.

I mean, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics had access to an IP that at the time of acquiring it, had over 50 years worth of history!

That IP had hundreds of comics with numerous storylines worth adapting, an enormous roster of characters, a multitude of other iterations to easily take some influence from, and most of all, a movie franchise that helped make it into the powerhouse it is today.

But with all that, they found some way to screw it up!

The plot is nothing home to rave about. It's just you're standard "getting the band back together" plot.

The graphics are....passable. Just your standard very realistic-looking game.

The gameplay is repetitive as all hell and fails at making any of the characters feel distinct from one another.

The bonus content is a total joke. I mean putting aside the obvious micro-transactions, most of the purchasable costumes absolutely suck. They're either just half-assed attempts at recreating outfits from whatever source material they came from, or just recolors of each other.

And most of all, the game has some of the most pitiful representation of the Marvel Universe ever put to screen.

I mean, can you name any notable locations from the comics that was featured in the game?

The only one was Wakanda, but even that could've been done a little better.

There was no Asgard or any of the other Nine Realms, no Latveria, no Kamar-Taj, no Dark Dimension, no Atlantis, no Savage Land.

Hell, we don't even get to go to New York! Despite the fact that like 90% of the Marvel characters are based there.

All we got were primarily generic-looking bases, deserts and forests (occasionally with some snow).

And in my post, I mentioned that there was a list of playable characters planned to be in the game.

In addition to Spider-Man and Hawkeye, this list included the likes of Ant-Man, Black Panther, Captain Marvel, Captain Mar-Vell, Daisy Johnson, Doctor Strange, The Falcon, Kate Bishop, Mockingbird, Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk, The Vision, The Wasp, War Machine, and the Winter Soldier.

But only five characters from that list made it into that game, plus the Jane Foster Thor, which let's be real, that was only done just to coincidence with the release of Thor: Love and Thunder.

You can't tell me that the roster we got by the time the game finished updating was better than the one that was initially planned.

And I reason I say this game was pure wasted potential was because.....look at who the Avengers have had as members over the decades!

People don't seem to know this a lot or ever really acknowledge it, but the Avengers are like a melting pot, as they've had members from basically every corner of the Marvel Universe!

Heroes from the mystical side like the aforementioned Doctor Strange, Hercules, Black Knight and White Tiger.

Heroes from the cosmic side like the aforementioned Captain Marvels, Monica Rambeau, Moondragon and Nova.

Several street-level heroes like the aforementioned Spider-Man, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones and Shang-Chi.

A couple of mutants have been members like Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch and even members of the X-Men, namely Wolverine, Beast and Storm.

Hell. Literally every member of the Fantastic Four has been a member of the Avengers at one point!

Like, does anyone else see the potential I'm bringing up?!

There could've easily been several DLCs that got to explore much greater Marvel Universe.

But alas, we never got that....

As for Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite....

Jesus....

Apart from the admittedly decent gameplay, there's just nothing else good about this game.

The graphics totally suck. They threw away the gorgeous cel-shaded, comic book-inspired look from 3: Fate of Two Worlds for this bland, kinda ugly pseudo-realistic look for the sake of just like damn-near everything else in that game: MCU synergy.

Not to mention they look pretty cheap, especially in the cutscenes.

The reason being that this game had a pretty low budget.....and it really shows.

The music was mid, since, once again, they changed many of the characters themes in order to make it more MCU-inspired.

And while I do respect that this game is the first one in the series to have a story-mode, it's unfortunate that the story-mode sucks.

The plot was just so lame and was obviously riding the hype for the then-upcoming Avengers: Infinity War.

And I already brought up the absolute disgrace of a roster and the behind-the-scenes drama of this game in my poster.

All in all, these games may not be the worst games of all time, but they're just not worth anyone's time or money.

If you like these games, more power to ya.

"because i see more misconceptions about characters in deisgn and charaterizations in the 2010s morethan anything"

I'm not sure about this one.

Most of the stuff I said about the designs and characterizations in the comics is largely truly.

But maybe one of them was possibly exaggerated and not nearly as prevalent as most people make it out to be.

"and the thing is is that marvel will just keep doing this bullshit because you guys keep buying into it"

I just pointed it out that most of the stuff on the designs and characterizations is largely true.

It almost feels like they're trying to downplay just how prevalent the MCU synergy is in the comics.

Which is weird since they just admitted early with how prevalent the MCU synergy is in the comics!

And also.....

Fuck off with that bullshit.

Don't blame this on the fans.

They're (mostly) not the ones clamoring for this MCU synergy!

Marvel is doing this on their own term and are obviously doing this to appeal to more contemporary fans who got introduced to Marvel through the MCU.

And as I mentioned in my post, I'm convinced that the people at Marvel believe these guys have never heard of the word: adaptation.

Not only that, but they also seem to believe that these fans will get confused that the comics don't line-up with the movies 1-to-1.

And trust me, this isn't the first time something like this has happened with Marvel.

"this doesnt work for most of the shows pre 2016 in the 2010s marvel area because they didnt suffer from it until marvel started forcing it on them for maximum profits #which then ended up biting them in the ass when avengers assemble fans dropped the show after relazing that s5 became shitty mcu syndication"

Now this part is true.

The MCU synergy started to become much more prominent roughly around 2016/2017.

I already went into how this negatively affected stuff like Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, but let's head back to the main focus of this part, Avengers Assemble.

Although AA was created to obviously ride the wave of success caused by the first Avengers film, it surprisingly had very little MCU synergy....for, as I mentioned earlier, the first two seasons.

The only examples I can think of from the first two seasons was when they recreated the Chitauri in the Impossible Man, and a few references that got turned on their head like when Hulk tries to punch Thor, but he blocks it with Mjolnir.

But when season 3 came around....that's when everything changed.

During that season, it was pretty apparent they were really striving to be more like the MCU than in prior seasons.

The season featured Ultron as the main antagonist be he was in the latest Avengers movie at time, Age of Ultron.

Despite the fact that when the season premiered, Age of Ultron for almost a year at that point....

The Avengers got new outfits, pulled directly from the movies.

Hulk and Black Widow had something going on between them....like in the movies.

Klaw, who first appeared in Ultimate Spider-Man (which is connected to AA), receives a major redesign, looking like how he did in the movies, whereas before, he looked like how did in the comics.

The last four episodes were based off Civil War (I wonder why?).

They move their headquarters to a compound....once again, like in the movies.

And they predominately featured the Inhumans as recurring characters, since this was back when Marvel were trying to push them as the next big characters in order to replace the X-Men and promote their then-upcoming movie.

Which ended up getting cancelled and got replaced by a shitty TV show....which was cancelled after just one season.

In Season 4, this synergy was thankfully less present.

There was aforementioned Falcon redesign.

And Doctor Strange got one as well, to look more like how he did in the movies.

But then came along Season 5....

Dear God....

Not only was the MCU synergy just as prevalent as it was in Season 3 (maybe even more so, especially with the fact that it was heavily focused on Black Panther), but it even took place in a completely different continuity.

Yep! Season 5 was completely removed from the previous 4 seasons!

And to make matters worse, it was set in the same universe as Spider-Man 2017.....and Guardians of the Galaxy!

Which itself was connected to the first 4 seasons of AA.

HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK?!

"this didnt START from the 2010s. it started midway throu"

Once again, the MCU synergy has been around since the early 2010s.

It was only at the midway point of that decade where started to become more prevalent than before.

And outside of the comics, the earliest case I think of for this was with EMH, which had Iron Man acting exactly like how he did in the movies.

Hell, even Hulk looked pretty similar to how he did in his solo film everybody forgot about.

"and creeped its way in because you guys LET IT HAPPEN"

Once again, fuck off with that bullshit.

"half of the things mentioned arent even mcu syndicationy they just suffer from current realisitc game trends that we are the norm"

I can definitely tell they're talking about Square Enix's Avengers.

But in all honesty, but game didn't really have a whole lot of MCU synergy.

It was still there, specifically with how the characters look.

I mean, everyone has said it before, but the Avengers looked like the stunt doubles for the MCU actors.

But it wasn't as prevalent as some of the other Marvel media to feature it.

Doesn't really make it much better though.

The game is honestly sort of a Schrodinger's video game, where doesn't take much from the comics or any other iterations of the Avengers, but doesn't take much from the MCU either.

"like what is your point here? “oh not every marvel property is the same is the comics” dude nobody buys comic shit because they arent as easy to get into the manga you guys perpetuate this shit and then wonder why cb fandoms are always filled with normies"

And here we are....

Now this is the last part of the reblog, and the one that really annoys me the most.

My point of that post was to show how not only was the constant MCU synergy incredibly tiring, but also been doing a lot of harm to their recent projects that aren't connected to the MCU.

Like, Avengers Assemble could've gone down as one of the greatest Marvel cartoons ever made!

But it got bogged down by the MCU synergy of the later seasons.

So much so that the final season wasn't even connected to the previous ones!

And now, it's usually just seen as the "we have the MCU at home" show.

And I do I even need to bring up Infinite into this?

And not only that, but it's also been bringing out the worst in Marvel.

I mean, just look at my post and read up on how much they made Capcom suffer during the production of Infinite.

But the synergy has not only harmed potentially good projects and lead to promising upcoming projects to be thrown to the Shadow Realm, but even good projects in unintentional ways.

The Guardians of the Galaxy video game was really good and the people who played it all agreed that this was what Avengers should've been!

But despite the positive reception, the game ended up flopping hard.

And while this was largely thanks to the failure of Avengers (since Guardians was also produced by Square Enix), I feel like the growing annoying towards MCU synergy may've played a part in this as well.

Since remember: out of all the characters of Marvel, the Guardians have been the ones undoubtedly changed by the MCU the most.

It's like....not even a contest.

And not only is this synergy doing harm to their non-MCU projects, but also gonna start (and it's possibly already has been) doing harm to the Marvel brand itself.

This is largely because of how homogenized they've made everything, which is not gonna be helping them because of rapidly declining interest in the MCU (aka Marvel Fatigue).

I mean, last year was just not a good year for them.

Besides Guardians of the Galaxy 3, two other films that released that year (Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels).

Both those films were met critically with what could be described as a resounding "meh".

But the real damage came in their box office.

Quantumania was a box-office disappointment, grossing $476.1 million worldwide against a gross production budget of $326.6 million, being one of the few MCU films not to break even in its theatrical run.

And The Marvels.....

Oh man, The Marvels....

That film was a box-office bomb! Grossing $206 million worldwide against a gross production budget of $274.8 million. And it now holds the record for being the lowest-grossing film in the franchise's history!

That had to be hurting Marve!

And it seems so as just recently, Marvel Studios announced they would be limiting the amount of MCU projects they release a year.

And while Marvel largely targeted towards the MCU itself, I feel like could also potentially start harming non-MCU projects.

Since let's be real, one of the many issues people have had with the recent MCU is how formulaic and generic it's become.

From the trademark forced and frankly mediocre humor, to having damn-near every threat be potentially world-ending.

I'm pretty sure the same could be applied to what people usually expect from a modern non-MCU project.

It's gonna have a semi-realistic art-style.

It's gonna feature the big characters (Avengers, Guardians and Spider-Man) featured in the MCU and barely anyone else (Fantastic Four, X-Men, street-level heroes).

They're all gonna be wearing their MCU outfits.

Every character is gonna be a quippy asshole (expect the ones who are suppose to be quippy assholes like Hawkeye and Spider-Man).

And it's gonna have a world-ending threat, with either Loki or Thanos as the main villain.

(Maybe Ultron if you're lucky)

And if this keep going, I'm sure Kang the Conquerer will essentially become the next villain to always be the main villain.

Well, if he's still going to be used in the MCU....

On to the next point.

“oh not every marvel property is the same is the comics”

Okay.

This has been a topic of debate when it comes to comic book adaptations for years.

Whether or not all comic book adaptations should strive to be like, 100% faithful to the source material.

To me, I think the answer to this is, in the words of the Pirate Captain,....

If this is for a series like Watchmen, 300 and Invincible, I feel like you should definitely make the adaptation as faithful as possible.

But even then, there would be definitely be some changes to the source material, since they would have story elements that were either weak or just plain bad.

Basically, maybe people's ideas on adaptations is to utilize what works, and either strengthen or get rid of what doesn't.

But when doing an adaptation for the big dogs like DC and Marvel.....this is where things get really tricky.

Because DC and Marvel have ongoing continuities with no end in sight, doing a largely faithful adaptation of any of their characters' stories would be an absolute nightmare since that characters will often have literal DECADES of history, plus hundreds to thousands of comics to read in order to understand said history.

If you've noticed, a lot of adaptations of DC and Marvel aren't exactly 1-to-1 adaptations of the stories from the comics.

But the reason why they're held in such high regard is because in spite of that, they manage to stay faithful to the spirit, tone and characterizations of the comics.

And even then, they will still adapt storylines and elements from the comics, but just little more streamlined.

Essentially, the best way I can describe how adaptations of DC and Marvel work is that they use the comics as a basis (along with other iterations) and essentially strive for something that's familiar while still being different.

For example, let's look at some of the Batman cartoons.

Although having some similarities, the three shows I'm about to bring up are still largely different from each other.

Batman: The Animated Series focused on the adventures of an already experienced Batman (having been at this gig for years and already knowing his villains) and his relationships with those around him.

The Batman, while somewhat similar to its predecessor, is focused on a younger and slightly-less experienced Batman learning to become a better hero.

And Batman: The Brave and Bold, is completely different from the prior two shows as it's focused on Batman's adventures interacting with the much greater DC Universe, specifically the lesser-known side.

But despite that, from watching these shows, you can still tell that they all used the comics (along with other iterations) as a basis and just built upon that in unique ways.

Contrast that with many of the non-MCU projects/products of the 2010s, which were obviously using the movies as a basis....and nothing really else.

And not only is this limiting to what these projects could do, but it's also kind of disingenuous.

Remember, the Marvel characters existed DECADES before the MCU even came around.

But to see Marvel not really even bothering to utilize said source material (in addition to constantly trying to alter it for the sake of brand synergy) is kind of a dick move.

And as I stated before, they're obviously doing to this to appeal to a certain demographic.

All companies have done this before.

And that certain demographic are the people who got into Marvel via the MCU.

And that leads us to the tail end of this part.

I get it.

It's REALLY hard to get into comics, specifically of the big two: DC and Marvel, especially the latter.

This is largely because of how long their characters have been around.

And if that wasn't intimidating enough, these characters will often have multiple runs (sometimes running at once) and that can last to hundreds, even thousands of issues!

Though not all comics books are like that.

Namely the limited series ones.

Hell, even franchises that have had multiple comic runs like Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sonic the Hedgehog surprisingly don't have this issue.

In spite of having multiple comics runs, the reason they don't suffer is because each one (no matter how long they've ran for) usually takes place in a completely different continuity from the other.

And also, using the term "normies" is so lame and kind of insulting.

I mean, I thought that term died back in like 2016.

A better term for these people would be "contemporary fans".

But anyway, contemporary fans shouldn't be blamed for people not buying comics much anymore.

If anything, the blame should be more placed towards the companies themselves for not really having anything that could help ease them into the world of these characters and, as I mentioned before, constantly changing the continuity of the comics in order to make it easier for those fans to get into (which ironically I think actually makes it harder).

Like, remember back in the 2000s and the early 2010s, when Marvel used to have to storybooks, novels and encyclopedias that went into detail on the backgrounds of the Marvel characters.

I'm pretty sure that helped a lot of contemporary fans of that era get a good understanding of the Marvel characters.

And I'm sure it can work for the contemporary fans of today as well.

Well that's all I have to say.

This isn't meant be a call-out post, I just wanted to response to the points myst1calx brought up in their reblog.

And while writing for this, I kinda feel like I should've gone more in-depth on some of my points in the original post.

And even then, I do feel like they are confused on some points I made in the post.

But anyway, myst1calx, if you are reading this, I do hope we can reach a better understanding on this whole topic.

And if I sounded somewhat angry at some points, I do apologize for that.

But other than that, I'm gonna go eat something to eat.

Peace.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

the reason comic x men fans are so mad is because the reason why the state of the comics has been so awful lately is because of the fact that they were gonna be added to the mcu + x men 97s impact

alright how many things can we blame 97 for sound em off

[raregcms]

[ y'all go check out the official Marvel twitter page immediately

turns out they can do 1:1 animated adaptations comic-to-screen. happy 20th anniversary, Young Avengers! ]

[wid0wd-archived]

anyway ... the avengers are gone ... doom is controlling the world ... people are protesting and drawing graffiti of the thunderbolts symbol everywhere ... dare i say incredibly catastrophic things are ahead of us

[hetare-ttk]

This thing has Kevin Feige’s disgusting fingerprints all over it.

[tonkysexist]

The mutant identity being pushed on Kamala is doing a disservice to all involved honestly.

Kamala has always been a character who’s identity is very central to her development. Completely changing it feels like it could void a lot of her development. The comics have a habit of trying to soft relaunch characters who blow up in the movies as a completely different version of themselves. MCU Kamala impressed me in a lot of ways, but she’s distinct from her comic self. Anyone who loves her enough to come to the comics could absolutely roll with those differences. The mutant metaphor is very specific and I feel like a lot of people not in the X-office have a hard time understanding it. The various crossovers (like the cursed “unity squad”) have proven that. Rewriting Kamala to fit that feels like incredibly difficult territory.

Also how would an “inhuman mutant” work? Like I feel that we’ve spent way too much time going in depth on why it doesn’t. I guess retconming IvX might be a positive to this.

Not to mention— the X-Men have so many WOC who don’t get the spotlight they should. I would hate to see them get pushed even further back to accommodate the spotlight for a character who was never that closely tied to them being crammed into their IP.

[pickleslice]

i cant believe they killed krakoa for this.