The Big Picture: Miracle, Man.
- Thread starter MovieBob
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Aw man, you used a picture from the Ace Attorney movies! That's pretty cool because now i can feel good about recognizing a rather obscure reference!
Also, i am not very familiar with Gaimans history in comic book writing. But i do enjoy his novels.
Also, i am not very familiar with Gaimans history in comic book writing. But i do enjoy his novels.
And this is why you spring for the lawyers when you're writing up the contracts rather than waiting until shit hits the fan...
So comics are weird, but intellectual property rights are weirder. Here's hoping that Gaiman gets the rights to Miracle Man and Medieval Spawn, then writes a comic where the former kills the latter.
Also, does anyone know why Bob used a picture of Big Bird as the "giant middle finger" (around 5 minutes in)?
Also, does anyone know why Bob used a picture of Big Bird as the "giant middle finger" (around 5 minutes in)?
Can you do an episode on Avengers/Justice league super villains?
I just started playing a mobile game Marvel War oh hero's and I've taken an interest in some characters I've never heard of like Black Bolt and Ultron.
So I realized I barely know any of the the biggest villains in comics like Darkseid or that pink guy at the end of the Avengers. I'd like an episode to see what kind of stuff we could expect from the future Avengers 2 and JL.
I just started playing a mobile game Marvel War oh hero's and I've taken an interest in some characters I've never heard of like Black Bolt and Ultron.
So I realized I barely know any of the the biggest villains in comics like Darkseid or that pink guy at the end of the Avengers. I'd like an episode to see what kind of stuff we could expect from the future Avengers 2 and JL.
You know, Walt Disney wasn't all that great of an animator. He didn't even animate a lot of his shorts (though HE did do some). He was definitely more of a visionary and a rally cry then the kind of guy who could actually do what his company is famous for... I don't know why, but hearing about who Todd MacFarlane was more interested in merchandising then actually drawing/writing comics, it reminded me of Walt Disney, especially how in later years, Disney was more interested in pushing Disneyland and Epcot then his movies.
Though I have to admit, comparing Walt Disney to Todd MacFarlane is pretty bad on my part, so, sorry.
Though I have to admit, comparing Walt Disney to Todd MacFarlane is pretty bad on my part, so, sorry.
The only two things I took out of that is that there may be a vapid TnA character in the next Avengers movie (cause there isn't one already, right guys?) and that the mental image of Todd McFarlane going super saiyan is an awesome one. So all in all, a pretty informative Big Picture for me.
does MArvel (the company) need a another Marvel named person in their universe? They already have captain Mar-vel, mr. marvel, and mrs. Marvel and i feel like there was a team named the marvels at some point or another. maybe i'm wrong about any or all of those so it may be exaggerated from my perspective. still though.
Man the comics industry is one big clusterf*** huh?
Man the comics industry is one big clusterf*** huh?
Yeah, that movie sums up the entire pointlessness pretty well.Urh said:
Also, being European, this is all a book with seven seals to me. At the same time, all of it sounds frighteningly like stuff people do. It's just that it's all about comic books that makes it feel kind of weird.
Odd thing about this: the same thing happening over games or novels or movies doesn't...
I am only British, but via pop culture osmosis, I swear Americans often refer to putting the middle finger up as 'giving someone the bird'. That would at least make sense.Thunderous Cacophony said:
You know, there are several things in nerd/geek-dom that I never got into.
Tabletop gaming, Dr. Who, Comic Books being a few..
After watching this today I actually found myself saying "Comics are Weird". I'm rather glad I never got into them myself. It seems like an expensive and confusing hobby.
Tabletop gaming, Dr. Who, Comic Books being a few..
After watching this today I actually found myself saying "Comics are Weird". I'm rather glad I never got into them myself. It seems like an expensive and confusing hobby.
IP laws: Fuck 'em.
The comic book industry is probably the most self-evident example of how these failed imitations of "ownership" being applied to monopolistic art regulations and publishing censorship, are just resulting in stories that are entirely twisted around to fit arbitary legal fictions.
Just let everyone write whatever the hell they want to write about, at least about anything that is already older than a decade. Problem solved.
The comic book industry is probably the most self-evident example of how these failed imitations of "ownership" being applied to monopolistic art regulations and publishing censorship, are just resulting in stories that are entirely twisted around to fit arbitary legal fictions.
Just let everyone write whatever the hell they want to write about, at least about anything that is already older than a decade. Problem solved.
Who owns Big Bird? Muppets people or PBS? Might have something to do with the matter.Thunderous Cacophony said:
ITMT: Miracle Man is a British adaptation of Captain Marvel. Cap is owned by Marvel's competitor DC. This is gonna be weird.
Me? I don't care. Issues 1-15 of Miracle Man were among the best I've ever read. Just get more stuff in print ASAP!
I really hope Bob's wrong about Marvel maybe introducing Marvel/Miracleman in Age of Ultron. See, Marveleman was really only notable for Alan Moore's reworking of him, before that he was just a generic,ripoff of Captain Marvel and by extension Superman. The Eclipse Comics stuff though, put him down into a world where there were no other superheroes and Moore wasn't bound by a status quo, which allowed Moore to go crazy with the character, throwing him into apocalyptic battles and dark conspiracies and questions about identity, ultimately ending the series as a quasi-benevolent dictator of a transformed Earth.
Putting Marvelman into the the Marvel universe though, would mean that he can't do any of that stuff, because at the end of the day Marvel Comics wants their fictional universe intact so that they can still tell stories and sell comics with the X-Men and Thor and all their other properties.
We saw the same thing when Marvel introduced the Sentry, that kind of superman-analogue just doesn't fit into the Marvel Universe's paradigm, so they're left awkwardly shuffling from story to story, no writer ever quite sure what to do with them.
Putting Marvelman into the the Marvel universe though, would mean that he can't do any of that stuff, because at the end of the day Marvel Comics wants their fictional universe intact so that they can still tell stories and sell comics with the X-Men and Thor and all their other properties.
We saw the same thing when Marvel introduced the Sentry, that kind of superman-analogue just doesn't fit into the Marvel Universe's paradigm, so they're left awkwardly shuffling from story to story, no writer ever quite sure what to do with them.
I'd like to point out that the whole "Angela is coming" thing kinda dropped out of the press either before or shortly after last week's episode. What happened was Marvel said she's showing up and the nerd media went on a massive "The fuck?!" and blew it way up.
It's not really that absurd, I did an even more basic summary of it in response to the first half of this. Basically Mcfarlane and Gaiman were partners of a sort, had a falling out, hate each other, and have been slap fighting over the rights. Mcfarlane being a money hungry douche of the highest order.canadamus_prime said:
The big problem with Bob's analysis is that he spends a lot of time knocking Angela because he doesn't paticularly care for the character, it, and it's popularity, is pretty much anti-thetical to his entire persona and what he wants to think. The rights to that are not only attached to Spawn, but the character itself has held onto enough of a following where during movies a mere walkthrough by someone who might have been that character got a lot of attention for that reason. What's more I'd argue that while renegade demons and hellspawn are a dime a dozen, you don't see all that many characters with Angelic or Celestrial powers and origins in comparison, and really Angela could be argued to be the reason why the few characters like that that we've seen even exist.
Given that Spawn is pretty much Mcfarlane's biggest success, the entire issue of someone else owning part of the rights based on the old "Image" contracts is awkward especially with his failing fortunes. Someone putting characters added into that continuity into other comics opens some unplesant doors for them to ultimatly claim usage of the rest of his universe and creations.
To be honest I think Bob might have things a little backwards here in that while Marvelman might have been a big deal for a while, he's hardly that well known or popular as a concept. I mean even Bob points out that he's pretty much a "Captain Marvel" knockoff, and while The Big Red Cheese was at one time the world's most popular super hero, he's now kind of a B-lister to the point where in looking at the promotional material for "Infamous" people like me actually had to explain to some people who he even was (who was that boy who is not a boy fighting Doomsday?) and this was here on The Escapist which is pretty much geek central. Angela on the other hand is a character more comtemporary comics fans recognize and who has a degree of enduring fandom leftover from the 1990s and Gen-Xers who liked the character and the universe. With Angela they have something of a build in fan base for an event, with Marvelman I suspect they would have to pretty much sell the character from scratch, and really given that it's a giant Captain Marvel ripoff, it probably amounts to trying to sell a character who despite apperance in a lot of modern media including the DC Animated Universe has pretty much remains a B-lister... except in this case they don't even have the real deal, but the knockoff. It could be done mind you, but it seems like more of a long shot than using Angela for a 90s nostolgia cash-in and perhaps working on the "heavenly" aspects of The Marvel Universe (even if she's a renegade).
Bob's theory seems to be based largely on the fact that Gaiman wanted the Marvel/Miracle-man rights and was willing to give up his Spawn-verse characters for them at one point. However I'd imagine the situation then was a bit differant than it is now, and he didn't have the connection with Marvel, or Marvel it's current movie-based popularity, to turn this into something of a quick, immediate, payday, with some long term prospects. With Marvelman it relies on tapping a nostolgia market which would have been better at the time when this avenue didn't exists, and the very risky venture of rebooting an old, once-popular character for a new audience which is something that tends to backfire with comics as much as it succeeds. Angela is more of a guarantee even in the short term, Marvelman seems to be a dice roll.