I've had a thought I haven't been able to shake lately. The more success comic based films get, the more thankful I am for the comic books they're based on.
But then the pendulum swings, and the more I think about the comics they're based on, the more I appreciate what the movies are doing.
But nothing makes me love either like having the ability to love both. If you're not indulging both, then you're penis really only getting half the story.
In short, you're fuckin' up, kid.
Don't take that as some kind of nerd/genre gatekeeping - I fucking love the films, and I'm not one of those assholes who's going to tell you "but, umm, actually, the books are better".
They're awesome. All of them. Even the bad ones are fucking awesome. They're four color fun on print and they're 90 minutes of insanity on that thing that used to be celluloid. It's entertainment to the nth degree. All of it, no matter which way you slice it, if you wanted to slice it at all.
I'm thankful for the comics because after 10 years we more or less still have them the way we remember them, while the actors like Chris Evans, RDJ, ScarJo - the dudes have got to be exhausted right? Nobody can blame them for hanging up their respective tights.
But in the past ten years of comics, Peter Parker has aged maybe 6 weeks tops. I missed a few dozen issues, so Mephisto, the devil incarnate, could've showed up again and maybe even made him younger, who's to say? And if not, that could totally happen next month, because comic books are crazy like that. There's almost no real consequence because next month is another story.
It took Marvel a month to put out the four issues of Spider-Man's One More Day story (with the aforementioned Mephisto), but all that took place in the span of a single night. All four weeks in a few hours, because one of the coolest things about the comics is how they condense time better than Eisenstein ever did on that damn staircase. The scariest thing is how the live action movies, by their nature, simply cannot do that. The comics stand alone. The pendulum swings.
They expand and contract like a living thing, and the films are about to get their first taste of that, and while they have to march forward in a way that makes it harder to go back than the comics (unless that de-aging CG shit Lucas/ILM has been playing with keeps going, which I hope it doesn't), then we're lucky enough soon to have the best of both worlds.
The comic books have the freedom to revert to the status quo and reset the barometer for new, lapsed, and continuing readers alike, letting them understand the "classic" beginning of the character and watch things blow up from there until the next contraction to the new status quo. But then the pendulum swings back.
This constant assurance that there's going to be a reversion to the familiar leaves little room for consequence. Johnny Storm will die, but only for a few months. Steve Rogers will get shot, but he'll actually fall through time fighting to come back out. Peter Parker gets to work for Tony Stark and finally not worry about money, until he does.
But the movies, the movies are about to do something super exciting - they're about to get a fucking ending. We're getting to the point where a door closes and that's unheard of in comic books. If superheroes are your jam, then that might be the most exciting thing of all time. We're getting a version of a Marvel Universe that begins, and then ends, and then adapts, and finally evolves. You can't put the genie back in the bottle because fuck you if you try while ScarJo or Chadwick Boseman are still alive, you maniac.
That makes me so glad I have the comics to fall back on when I miss Steve Rogers being Steve Rogers.
Which in turn makes me so glad I have the movies I can go to when I want to see what happens when the Infinity Gauntlet or the Cosmic Cube can't be used to make the world what it used to be. When I want a beginning, followed by a middle, and then punched in the face by an ending.
That's batshit.
That's incredible.
That's why you're fucking up if you're only dippin' your toes into one Marvel or the other. Because the pendulum, man - it swings.