How superhero movies have dulled the comics that gave them life
The pressure to turn comics into films has transformed a once gleefully lowbrow and willfully weird art form into middlebrow mundanity, and not everyone’s happy
This year, the Marvel/Disney movie Captain America: Civil War, which opened last week, takes the coveted spot of Superhero Movie that Kicks off Blockbuster Season. Which could also be known as A Good Time to Be Reminded that Superhero Comics Are Now Way Too Much Like Movies.
I am not going to complain about superhero movies as movies. I don’t care that once-colourful costumes are forced to be muted and dark and tough-looking on human actors (Batman v Superman, the black leather X-Men). I don’t care that too many superhero movies rely on disaster-porn clichés (Man of Steel, Avengers) or that the Marvel Cinematic Universe/shared universe theory of storytelling turns movies into episodic entertainment rather than something that can stand on its own (even Age of Ultron director Joss Whedon has complained about this).
OK, maybe I care a little. But I’m here to complain about how superhero movies have not made superhero comics better.
If anything, since the first Spider-Man movie crossed the US$300 million mark back in 2002, superhero comics have, on the whole, stagnated. One is reluctant to point to a direct causation, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck …