#daredevil 1960s

[thatonemarveldude]

I was reading the Spider-man 2099 comics for the first time (thank you atsv fr) and I couldn't get the fact that Miguel kind of looks like Matt Murdock out of my head

Like,, they look so similar,,

Idk man my brain is just convincing me that they look so similar to each other

Maybe I'm just sleep deprived :/

[mzcain27]

Figuring out where to start with some comics is so painful jesus christ

[vertigoartgore]

Daredevil and The Owl Commission by John K. Snyder III.

[gwensy]

do u think gwen, not knowing that murderdock is just Like That, would bump into mike murdock on some other earth and immediately assume he was a matt variant instead

[wickedwaterwyvern]

It's sometimes really hard to get into the older comics (like pre 1990) because 99% of the women only think about romance and men. I'll be really enjoying a comic then the next panel will just be "Oh but I love him and he doesn't love me. I'm so sad and all I want is attention" don't get me wrong there are a few not like that, just like some of the newer ones are just as pathetic, but it really bothers me for some reason??

Anyways if someone has some older comic recommendations that have female characters who contribute more than being a (sorta shitty) love interest please tell me about them

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

ZAPPA & THE MOTHERS LOOKING FOR NEW CONVERTS IN THE PAGES OF MARVEL COMICS.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on a record ad for THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION then newly-released third studio album, "We're Only in it for the Money" (released March 1968 on Verve Records), from the pages of "Daredevil" Vol. 1 #38. March, 1968. Marvel Comics.

Cover art by Gene Colan (✝), story/script by Stan "The Man" Lee (✝). Resolution for "Daredevil" cover at 1102x1599.

OVERVIEW: "In March 1968, the Mothers of Invention unleashed their third mind-bending cultural intervention, known to all and sundry as "We’re Only in it for the Money." In a curious move, Verve Records, no doubt directed by Zappa himself, apparently selected the pre-teen comic book audience to be one of the target demographics to promote the album to. Specifically, "Daredevil" Vol. 1 #38, which came out the same month as the album, and featured a remarkable full-page ad promoting the record.

The ad was about as psychedelic as the rest of 1968, touting the Mothers’ first two albums, "Freak Out!" and "Absolutely Free," and promising “thrilling free fun!”

I’m sure the "Daredevil" demographic just couldn’t wait to check out a concept album dedicated to skewering hippies. In Verve’s defense, the album was part of Zappa’s “No Commercial Potential” project. Then again maybe Frank was fully aware that much of his audience were horny, pimply-faced adolescent boys. Maybe it was a good ad buy after all."

-- DANGEROUS MINDS, "Groovy 1968 Frank Zappa Advertisement from MARVEL Comics’ "DAREDEVIL" #38

Source: www.flickr.com/photos/53568131@N00/9483961752.

[ungoliantschilde]

happy birthday Frank Miller!

January 27th - he’s 67 years old. possibly the most influential cartoonist in the superhero comics medium of the latter 20th century. It’s the 1960s Marvel Bullpen (mostly Jack and Ditko, with a healthy dose of Buscema, Romita, and Wally Wood), and then Frank Miller. That’s what permeates the public perception of comics.

The Zack Snyder DC movies were heavily influenced by Frank Miller. That warehouse fight from BvS was a love letter to Frank Miller. Sin City and 300 were almost shot for shot adaptations of the source material.

Daredevil on Netflix was basically an adaptation of Frank Miller’s work on the character. The upcoming reboot is named after his acclaimed run on the title.

Batman. Wow. Look, the Adam West show is campy, but you don’t understand how popular it was. That was a big deal in its day. Neal Adams and Dennis O’Neil made Batman more serious in the 1970s. Frank Miller made Batman relevant in the 1980s. The Batman of the last 50 years is Frank Miller’s interpretation of the Dennis O’Neil/Neal Adams revamp. The movies are all Frank Miller. Tim Burton directly mentioned DKR as the primary influence.

Happy birthday to (arguably) the best living creator in comics history.

[daresplaining]

Mike Murdock's Sunglasses: On Character Design and Autonomy

I've written a little in the past about character design in regards to the translation of zany alter ego 1960s Mike Murdock into slightly-more-grounded, at least 85% more real 21st century Mike Murdock. Specifically, I talked with artist Phil Noto about Mike's outfits in Daredevil #606-612, and analyzed the clothing choices made by the creative team in the 2020 Annual. However, one specific detail that I find interesting in Mike's transformation from Matt's hyperactive id to his own autonomous person that I haven't really written about yet is his sunglasses-- when he wears them, when he stops, and how this shift may or may not align with his journey.

Matt: "Let's see now-- I'll just muss up the mop, to give myself that carefree tousled look! A fella like Mike wouldn't be caught dead with a simple Ivy-League hair comb! And, I'll have to give my specs a coffee break for a while, as I cover my sightless eyes in a more colorful way-- If the attorney-at-law business ever gets slow, I might just decide to open a school of method acting! Yessir! Stanislavsky had nothing on me! Now, all I've gotta do is change my personality! I figure a clown like Mike Murdock is sure to be on all the time!" Daredevil vol. 1 #26 by Stan Lee, Gene Colan, Frank Giacoia, and Artie Simek

Matt and his dark glasses were inseparable in the 60s-- literally, to the point that he even apparently wore them under his Daredevil mask (fortunately, he doesn't do that anymore). The clear hesitance of DD artists in this period to draw their blind protagonist's uncovered eyes is likely one of the reasons that when it came time for Matt to invent himself a fake sighted twin, the sunglasses stayed on. This has not always been the case. In the years since, Matt has taken on several sighted identities in which he does not wear glasses at all-- notably, con artist Jack Batlin in the 90s. Of the two approaches, the former makes slightly more in-universe sense. As someone with no vision at all, who was blinded in a physically damaging accident, logic suggests that Matt's eyes would look different from those of a sighted person-- most likely due to chemical burns/scarring, but at the very least from things like a lack of eye contact. Thus, the choice for Matt to simply switch up his style of shades for the Mike look, rather than taking the risk of foregoing them entirely, feels logical (even if it doesn't always match up with the way Matt's eyes are actually depicted, but that's a topic for another post).

As it turned out, the oversized, colorful shades ended up tying perfectly into the loudness of the rest of "Mike's" outfits, becoming a memorable staple of the look that Matt crafted for his fake twin-- a look that was as distant from the classic Matt Murdock suit and tie (and simple, dignified shades) as he could manage. These shades were iconically, undeniably Mike's. However, they were still born from the use of sunglasses as a visual shorthand for-- and Matt's in-character response to-- his blindness. A Daredevil reader in 1968 might have looked at ol' Loudmouth Mike and asked the question: If this guy were a real person, independent of Matt, with his own backstory and reasons for dressing the way he does-- would he still choose to wear dark glasses?

Mike: "Well, as I live and breathe! You're Daredevil, right? Friend of my brother, if I don't miss my guess. Real pleasure to meet you at last." Daredevil vol. 5 #606 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles ("As I live and breathe" is such a funny thing for him to say in this scene.)

Enter: Fragment-Boy Mike, and the beginnings of an answer.

When it came to transforming the concept of Mike Murdock into a fully realized character of his own -- not to mention pulling him out of the 1960s and into the 2010s-- some core Mike Murdock elements were dropped by the creative team, both for the sake of streamlining the narrative and in order to match the tone of the contemporary comic. Fragment Mike is no longer Daredevil's alter ego; in fact, he claims in his first appearance in Daredevil #606 that he has never even met DD before. Gone are the loud clothes, the primary colors, the waistcoats, the fedora with the feather in it. Curiously, all that remains of his original Look(TM)...is the sunglasses.

Foggy: "That is...correct. How did you...?" Mike: "Because I ain't him. I'm me. And now, Foggy...you need to call my brother." Daredevil vol. 5 #608 by Charles Soule, Phil Noto, and Clayton Cowles

Fragment Mike existed in a kind of limbo that neither he, nor Matt, nor even his "creator" Reader really understood-- a tortuous state of both being and non-being, in which he believed himself to be real and then had his worldview shattered by learning that no one else saw him that way. Mike claimed his autonomy and fought for his right to live throughout that story arc, but the simple truth was that he was born out of Matt-- specifically, out of Matt's case files, from which Reader accidentally spawned him-- and the memories he possessed of being anyone/anything else were false. He was nothing but a twisted, reanimated echo of an identity his brother had created, dark glasses included; Matt but not Matt, physically separate but still bound to his brother.

Mike: "I'm Matt Murdock's twin brother, but...but I'm not. I've got some fake memories. I'm like a shell of a thing...but inside...I can tell I didn't live through anything...and I think...I think it's driving me crazy." Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles

But! Fragment Mike, just like Matt, maybe because of Matt, is a fighter. He does not take being fake lying down. Through some Norn Stone magic, our fragment became a Real Boy, with real memories of a real backstory. And if we take a look through that backstory, we finally receive an answer to that 1968 DD fan's hypothetical question, because...

Daredevil vol. 6 Annual #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Manuel Garcia, Le Beau Underwood, Chris Mooneyham, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles

The moment Mike Murdock becomes a real person, the sunglasses vanish.

Look back through Daredevil volume 6. Once he is officially, cosmically real, the only time we ever see Mike wearing dark glasses is when he is dressed up as Matt (ohhh, the poetry of it all!). He is wearing them, standing in Matt's apartment, when he dies in Matt's place-- fated, in the end, to never entirely escape his brother's gravitational pull-- but what matters is that the sunglasses tied Mike to his origins as his twin in a costume, and the loss of them indicates fully and utterly that Mike has broken away and become his own person. We even get this fascinating scene at the beginning of volume 7:

Matt: "...It was Matt. He came back from rehab, went to his apartment... I don't know what the #$@% Fisk was thinking, but I know they've got history and... Ah, Butch. He killed my brother." Daredevil vol. 7 #1 by Chip Zdarsky, Marco Checchetto, Matthew Wilson, and Clayton Cowles

This is Matt Murdock, in the year 2022, once more pretending to be Mike...post-Norn Stone reality rewrite. And this time? No sunglasses. In fact, Matt claims that the key to a foolproof Mike Murdock disguise is in the eyes: "Not just making sure they faced the right direction...but that no matter what, he had kindness in them..."

Do I love Mike Murdock wearing smarmy shades? Of course I do. But I love a good piece-of-clothing-as-allegory just as much, and I love peeling back the layers of identity to discover who Mike really is when he is not his brother.

[brevoorthistoryofcomics]

BHOC: DAREDEVIL #157

In 1979, DAREDVIL was a series that had been limping along for years. Perhaps its only saving grace, the thing that kept it from being cancelled, was the fact that it was one of the original Marvel titles that had been launched at the start of the 1960s at the dawn of the Marvel Age. But the book was bimonthly, and its fortunes didn’t look all that great. Mind you, all of that was about to…

[snowviolettwhite]

Still can not get over the fact Athena and Bobby are old enough to be parents of Buck and Eddie, Buck and Eddie are young enough to be their kids.

Wonder would the effects their relationships compared to the other characters?

----

What is if wrote a cute one-shot of Athena and Bobby meeting little Buck and Eddie on 911 calls? Buck being the little daredevil he is does something dangerous and hurts himself and Eddie being the shy curious little boy is wonders off from his family and get lost.

----

Athena and Bobby had their kids late compared to their peers. Many people born in the 1960s and 1970s had kids in their late teens and early 20s.

Athena was born March 22 1968 and Bobby was born in 1968.

Athena would had May when she was 33. Her birthday is December 29 2001. She had Harry at 40. His birthday is February 7th 2009. Bobby's children would have been born in 2003 and 2005. Bobby would have been 35 and 37.

Buck was born in 1991 or 1992. Eddie was born in 1992 or 1993. Him and Shannon were in the same grades school and she was born October 16 1992. You have to have turned 5 before September 1st to start kindergarten, so his birthday would have been towards the end of 1992 or sometime in 1993.

[thatonemarveldude]

Been reading the 1960s comics recently

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

Rest in Peace John Romita Senior

And thus passes the third of the three men who laid the foundation for Spider-Man.

A lot of people, rightly, praise Ditko's work but I think it is important to bear in mind how vital Romita Senior was to the mythology of Spider-Man, and his pop cultural success.

Spider-Man went far more mainstream when Romita Senior began working on the title, in part because his style was more conventionally attractive. This is to not frame him as lesser than Ditko, they were both masters of their respective approaches, those approaches were just very different.

Ditko was the only man who could have co-created Spider-Man with Stan Lee, but Romita Sr. was the only man who could have taken Spider-Man to the next step of his place in pop culture and also the character's personal development.

This is the man who not only co-created staples of Spider-Man's mythology like Joe Robertson, the Rhino, the Shocker, or the friggin Kingpin and the Punisher, but who's artwork defined the looks of Peter Parker, Spider-Man, J. Jonah Jameson, the Green Goblin, Norman and Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy and essentially the world of Spider-Man from the mid-1960s-the late 1980s.

This isn't even touching upon the fact that his rendition of Mary Jane (a character he only technically didn't co-create, but might as well have) is the definitive take on the character Every rendition since 1966 has been defined by how similar or how different it is to his take upon her.

So influential was his era on Spider-Man that it became the default setting status quo for virtually every adaptation until the 2000s, and even then aspects of his work were liberally incorporated into what anyone else was doing.

His rendition of Spider-Man and his world was so iconic that Marvel essentially enshrined that everyone had to try and adhere to how he drew those characters throughout the 1970s and for most of the 1980s. Indeed, until arguably the 1980s, but definitely the 1990s, whenever you saw Spider-Man merchandise it was always Romita Senior's rendition.

Not to mention his MASSIVE body of work in the Spider-Man newspapers and critical contributions to other Marvel characters, Daredevil perhaps being the most notable example.

Whilst Kirby was the King of comics, Ditko was the Master of his style and niche in the medium, Romita Senior is the undisputed GOD of American Romance comics.

And where Spider-Man is concerned, if Lee and Ditko are Peter's father's then Romita Senior is undeniably his Godfather.

Rest in Peace legend.

[emeraldstorms]

Hi! I'm pretty new to the DD fandom. I saw your post about Matt making up Mike. But people talk about him like he is real? Is this fanon? Is Mike made up or not? I feel kind of stupid to ask because everyone else seems to know what's going on lmao

Please, don’t feel stupid for not knowing 6 decades of comic books by heart.

I’ll try my best to summarize the “Tale of Mike Murdock” as far as my recollection of things allows. I’m sorry I can’t keep it super short because sometimes I need to point out how silly Matt is. Like, I love him, but what a dumbass. 

(DD fans feel free to correct me if I misremember something).

Okay, here it comes(dialogue paraphrased lol)

Not to sound like J. Jonah Jameson, but… this is all Spiderman’s fault. 

In the beginning, Spidey and DD had a rivalry going on. While both acknowledged that they were on the same side, they weren’t exactly fans of one another.

Spidey finds out Matt is DD. Of course, he isn’t gonna out him, but he also apparently can’t just do nothing, but has to let Matt know he knows. So he writes Matt a letter, basically saying “I know you’re DD, but your secret is safe with me” and sends said letter not to Matt’s house or something. No, he mails it to the law firm “Nelson and Murdock”.

In a not so surprising turn of events, Karen Page opens the letter. You know, managing her bosses’ mail as secretaries do. She reads it and tells Foggy about it. Foggy and Karen confront Matt.

Matt is then like “haha, stupid Spiderman! Confused me with my… um… twin brother Mike!”. He says this not only to Karen. No, he also says it to Foggy, who is his best friend since law school, has been to Matt’s childhood home and to his Dad's funeral without seeing hide or hair of a twin brother. 

So Foggy says, “You don’t have a twin brother.” 

Matt says, “Do too! He’s just a loner and also Daredevil.”

Karen and Foggy remain skeptical. But Matt has the advantage that his friends don’t know about his super senses yet. So when a man, looking like Matt but interacting with the world like a sighted person, appears, they do buy it. (It’s a 1960s comic book after all).

For a while Matt juggles his three identities, but at one point it becomes too much (especially the Matt-Karen-Mike triangle getting out of hand). So he fakes DD’s and thus Mike’s death. Then he’s like “Very sad. But my brother trained a successor to be DD in case of his death.” So he can go on being Daredevil, but no longer having to play Mike as well. And that was that for a while.

Anyway, since Matt is not only a dumbass but also a dork, he had a dossier about Mike. For reasons, the dossier got in the hands of Reader, a blind inhuman who has an ability called “Literary Manifestation” aka what he reads (in braille) becomes real. This works three times between two resting phases (with kind regards to DnD xD). So he reads the dossier about Mike and Mike manifests. For emergency cases, Reader has a braille note on his belt, spelling “erase”, but Mike senses the danger and flees before Reader can use the note.

Mike then kidnaps Foggy to get Matt to meet and talk to him. Afterwards, Matt feels it would be wrong to “kill” Mike and lets him go. 

Mike becomes a criminal - I’m not sure if because Matt created him as a “roguelike character” or because he has no other choice with not having any papers. So he joins a group of burglars at one point whose leader has a Norn stone. The burglars use it to open doors, make walls disappear etc, but Mike steals it and uses it to change reality.

So far he is real only for himself, but he changes the world so people remember him, his mother, his brother, childhood friends etc.

TLDR: Mike was just a fake identity of Matt, but now he is real because of inhuman power and a norn stone 

I hope this helps and you’re a bit less confused. <3

[wanderingmind867]

I think 1985 was the year when comics completely almost lose themselves to me. Based on reading marvel (and reading about DC) I know that this date has to be the date comics lose interest to me. I'll explain: comics from the 60s to the mid 70s seem okay. 1960 to 1974 or 1975 are the peak years, in my opinion. But then things start to go downhill in the late 70s. Frank Miller ruins Daredevil with his edginess, Chris Claremont kills Jean Grey and messes with the X-Men, The Hulk loses his love interest in Jarella, Denny O'Neill ruins Batman by making him darker again, Gerry Conway kills off Gwen Stacy (for no good reason!) etc. I know the Gerry Conway one was a bit earlier than the mid to late 70s, but it was still a bad decision.

Anyways, things only get worse from here (at least for my sensibilities). If i thought the mid to late 70s were bad, the 80s become a bit of a train wreck. Jim Starlin kills Captain Mar-Vell and Jason Todd, The Hulk has the Professor Hulk saga (something I don't really like), John Byrne messes with the Fantastic Four and Superman, Walt Simonson makes Thor ditch Don Blake (which I hate). Really, Jim Shooter messes with Marvel and sadly oversees a lot of bad stuff (I don't know if that's all his fault, but I get a negative impression of him as editor).

But I have time for one last paragraph, so let's talk more about 80s DC. Alan Moore gets brought in, and he brings his horrible pessimism and darkness over to DC. As someone who's already prone to sadness, I don't need depression in my fiction. But even besides Alan Moore, DC had issues. Like the Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was meant to uncomplicate things (but may have complicated things more). Then DC gets Frank Miller, Jim Starlin and John Byrne, and it all goes downhill. I'm really just repeating slander against certain people, but I guess it's just that I'm always opinionated about these sorts of things.

[froggynelson]

hihihiiii so i love daredevil and recently started reading the comics but my knowledge pretty much caps at the netflix show

so i was wondering: who’s mike murdock?? i’m assuming he’s either from a comic (alternate universe?) or a fan concept, but i’ve been trying to figure it out but bc most of the fandom is in hibernation leaving very few comic enjoyers to elaborate, i couldn’t find anything

mike is a real boy and we love him

ok so he started out as a lie matt made up in daredevil #25 back in the 1960s, as an excuse as to why he is not daredevil to the inquiring karen and foggy. no i am not daredevil, my twin brother none of you knew of is :). and he went on to character act good ol' mikey, until all the fake twin business got too complicated, resulting in matt killing off the mike persona.

now fast forward to 2018. up to now, mike was just a silly little thing that happened in the silver age that got referenced every now and then. but one day the daredevil writer charles soule changed this. by making use of the character the reader, an inhuman with reality warping powers that can make anything he reads into a real construct, brought mike to life as he fell asleep reading through daredevil's files. now mike is a real boy, and the silly little guy we knew evolved into someone painfully aware of his existence as someone who wasn't real to begin with. the silly guy is a tragic figure now.

he ends up stealing the norn stones, magical asgardian artifacts, from a criminal he was collaborating with at the time, because he felt tired and depressed of existing as a non-person, and with its power he makes himself into existence as if he had been real all along. now he is a Real real boy, but if the silly guy wasn't enough of a tragic figure, his desire to fill the gaps in his memories and to become a real person backfired with the pain of his father's death, his broken relationship with matt, and the guilt he carries knowing he wasn't real to begin with. and it gets worse because we as readers also have the tragedy of his potential not being fully realized in a lackluster comic run

can you feel him

[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, 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….