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  1. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Electricmastro View Post
    I was going off on how you said, "The movies haven't exactly brought in a truckload of new readers to Iron Man comics."
    Well in the 40s you had serials of Captain Marvel and that brought in readers to the comics. In that same decade you had Fleischer's classic Superman cartoons which also increased readership and so on but not to the same extent as Billy Batson. More recently, you had the Raimi Spider-Man movies which engaged new readership like never before (comics sales of Spider-Man significantly rose after the movies came out), with Ultimate Spider-Man and the JMS era doing very well.

    Adaptations can bring new readers to comics, so long as the comics reflect the qualities that attracted audiences to the adaptation. The Adam West Batman show for instance didn't bring as many new readers in which is why a few years later, Julius Schwartz and others decided to take Batman comics to a darker place with stories like Joker's Five Way Revenge. The reason is that the Adam West TV-Show had this garish pop-art sensibility and celebrity casting for villains and so on that do not cross over effectively into panels and balloons.

    The Iron Man of the MCU is not really faithful to the Tony of the comics. Villains like Justin Hammer who were impressive in the comics in their big stories are made into jokes in the movies. Villains like Iron Monger and Whiplash are totally altered. The Mandarin was removed because the character's a racist caricature and instead you have the great Ben Kingsley as the hilarious Trevor Slattery...and now it turns out that a comics-accurate Mandarin is going to bother Shang-Chi instead. Likewise, in the MCU Tony and Pepper have this love story and commitment that the comics Tony is just incapable of...Pepper Potts comes and goes in stories in terms of importance. Jarvis in the comics is a butler and in the movies he's an AI. So there's nothing to keep readers invested in the Iron Man comics because what they liked in the movies is just not there.

  2. #17
    Lazy Struggler BitParallel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Well in the 40s you had serials of Captain Marvel and that brought in readers to the comics. In that same decade you had Fleischer's classic Superman cartoons which also increased readership and so on but not to the same extent as Billy Batson. More recently, you had the Raimi Spider-Man movies which engaged new readership like never before (comics sales of Spider-Man significantly rose after the movies came out), with Ultimate Spider-Man and the JMS era doing very well.

    Adaptations can bring new readers to comics, so long as the comics reflect the qualities that attracted audiences to the adaptation. The Adam West Batman show for instance didn't bring as many new readers in which is why a few years later, Julius Schwartz and others decided to take Batman comics to a darker place with stories like Joker's Five Way Revenge. The reason is that the Adam West TV-Show had this garish pop-art sensibility and celebrity casting for villains and so on that do not cross over effectively into panels and balloons.

    The Iron Man of the MCU is not really faithful to the Tony of the comics. Villains like Justin Hammer who were impressive in the comics in their big stories are made into jokes in the movies. Villains like Iron Monger and Whiplash are totally altered. The Mandarin was removed because the character's a racist caricature and instead you have the great Ben Kingsley as the hilarious Trevor Slattery...and now it turns out that a comics-accurate Mandarin is going to bother Shang-Chi instead. Likewise, in the MCU Tony and Pepper have this love story and commitment that the comics Tony is just incapable of... Pepper Potts comes and goes in stories in terms of importance. Jarvis in the comics is a butler and in the movies he's an AI. So there's nothing to keep readers invested in the Iron Man comics because what they liked in the movies is just not there.
    It’s not that Tony is incapable of commitment, it’s that writers can let the man be happy with his loved ones.

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Well in the 40s you had serials of Captain Marvel and that brought in readers to the comics. In that same decade you had Fleischer's classic Superman cartoons which also increased readership and so on but not to the same extent as Billy Batson. More recently, you had the Raimi Spider-Man movies which engaged new readership like never before (comics sales of Spider-Man significantly rose after the movies came out), with Ultimate Spider-Man and the JMS era doing very well.

    Adaptations can bring new readers to comics, so long as the comics reflect the qualities that attracted audiences to the adaptation. The Adam West Batman show for instance didn't bring as many new readers in which is why a few years later, Julius Schwartz and others decided to take Batman comics to a darker place with stories like Joker's Five Way Revenge. The reason is that the Adam West TV-Show had this garish pop-art sensibility and celebrity casting for villains and so on that do not cross over effectively into panels and balloons.

    The Iron Man of the MCU is not really faithful to the Tony of the comics. Villains like Justin Hammer who were impressive in the comics in their big stories are made into jokes in the movies. Villains like Iron Monger and Whiplash are totally altered. The Mandarin was removed because the character's a racist caricature and instead you have the great Ben Kingsley as the hilarious Trevor Slattery...and now it turns out that a comics-accurate Mandarin is going to bother Shang-Chi instead. Likewise, in the MCU Tony and Pepper have this love story and commitment that the comics Tony is just incapable of...Pepper Potts comes and goes in stories in terms of importance. Jarvis in the comics is a butler and in the movies he's an AI. So there's nothing to keep readers invested in the Iron Man comics because what they liked in the movies is just not there.
    I wouldn't say that at all.

    Tony was very committed to Beth but she left him to help her ex-husband. In Busieks' run he was betrayed by Rumiko. He was shot by Kathy Dare so I don't blame him for ending that. His longest relationship was with Whitney Frost and she betrayed him because of her father. So it's not like Tony has had this fear of commitment and backed out of relationships.

  4. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by BitParallel View Post
    It’s not that Tony is incapable of commitment, it’s that writers can let the man be happy with his loved ones.
    True but it's also hard to work that in. Pepper married Happy Hogan, and then Happy died. Tony Stark has been a serial womanizer before and after he became Iron Man. In the movies, Tony once he becomes Iron Man has eyes only for Pepper and becomes totally monogamous...you can't work that level of character development into the comics because there's no foundation to that there. Fraction's Worldwide Man Hunt did a lot of work with Pepper but that comic also had Tony cheating on Pepper with Maria Hill...or Tony cheated on Maria with Tony but didn't tell either of them.

    If you saw the movies, then RDJ's Tony is the guy who tries to change and prove he has a heart after that and does make efforts to change, which is reflected in his relationships with his supporting cast. In the comics, fundamentally Iron Man is more or less the same guy before and after the cave with box of scraps. So readers are wondering what's the point.

    And ultimately the real issue is that MCU Iron Man offers a complete story. If you see Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony then he has a beginning-middle-end. That's pretty rare for an actor who introduces a superhero to the public. Chris Reeve didn't offer a complete story of Superman in his movies, nor did Michael Keaton's Batman, or Tobey's Spider-Man. Christian Bale's Batman did yes but since he wasn't a foundational actor it was seen as one interpretation among many. With RDJ's Iron Man you have that. So after getting the no-filter best version of Tony, you go to the comics and see perpetual f--k-up dude who goes from girl to girl, then it will be hard for audiences to sustain interest.

    Quote Originally Posted by Marvell2100 View Post
    I wouldn't say that at all.

    Tony was very committed to Beth but she left him to help her ex-husband. In Busieks' run he was betrayed by Rumiko. He was shot by Kathy Dare so I don't blame him for ending that. His longest relationship was with Whitney Frost and she betrayed him because of her father. So it's not like Tony has had this fear of commitment and backed out of relationships.
    That falls into a lot of sexist cliche patterns, i.e. the casanova who always gets his heart broken and so on.

  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    True but it's also hard to work that in. Pepper married Happy Hogan, and then Happy died. Tony Stark has been a serial womanizer before and after he became Iron Man. In the movies, Tony once he becomes Iron Man has eyes only for Pepper and becomes totally monogamous...you can't work that level of character development into the comics because there's no foundation to that there. Fraction's Worldwide Man Hunt did a lot of work with Pepper but that comic also had Tony cheating on Pepper with Maria Hill...or Tony cheated on Maria with Tony but didn't tell either of them.

    If you saw the movies, then RDJ's Tony is the guy who tries to change and prove he has a heart after that and does make efforts to change, which is reflected in his relationships with his supporting cast. In the comics, fundamentally Iron Man is more or less the same guy before and after the cave with box of scraps. So readers are wondering what's the point.

    And ultimately the real issue is that MCU Iron Man offers a complete story. If you see Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony then he has a beginning-middle-end. That's pretty rare for an actor who introduces a superhero to the public. Chris Reeve didn't offer a complete story of Superman in his movies, nor did Michael Keaton's Batman, or Tobey's Spider-Man. Christian Bale's Batman did yes but since he wasn't a foundational actor it was seen as one interpretation among many. With RDJ's Iron Man you have that. So after getting the no-filter best version of Tony, you go to the comics and see perpetual f--k-up dude who goes from girl to girl, then it will be hard for audiences to sustain interest.



    That falls into a lot of sexist cliche patterns, i.e. the casanova who always gets his heart broken and so on.
    You can try to categorize it but that doesn't make Tony afraid of commitment.

    And if you read the issues themselves, you'll see that Tony was in love and had his heart broken so I'm not seeing any kind of "cassanova" in any of the scenarios.

  6. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Marvell2100 View Post
    You can try to categorize it but that doesn't make Tony afraid of commitment.

    And if you read the issues themselves, you'll see that Tony was in love and had his heart broken so I'm not seeing any kind of "cassanova" in any of the scenarios.
    Whatever the reason, Marvel frames comics!Tony that way.

    Psychologically you can argue that Tony tends to enter into dead-end relationships that he passives sustains only for women to break his heart, which in turn feeds into a self-righteous drive to continue being a womanizer as a shallow excuse. See "it's not his fault, he gets his heart broken"...pretty convenient and totally transparent. Something similar was done in Grant Morrison's Batman where he pointed out that Bruce tends to enter into self-destructive relationships with female villains or bad girls because he knows there's no future to it, and that factors into his self-perpetuating war on crime. Of course Batman, Post-Crisis tends to be written as a functional madman, and not entirely balanced. Tony though is rational and generally balanced and he doesn't inhabit a gothic world like Batman does, so you could form more grounded looks into his mentality.

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by BitParallel View Post
    It’s not that Tony is incapable of commitment, it’s that writers can let the man be happy with his loved ones.
    Agreed.
    Depends on the writter of course, but for a "womanizer and sexist" character the level of commitment to a woman the majority of the writers put on Iron Man is something of note.

  8. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Whatever the reason, Marvel frames comics!Tony that way.

    Psychologically you can argue that Tony tends to enter into dead-end relationships that he passives sustains only for women to break his heart, which in turn feeds into a self-righteous drive to continue being a womanizer as a shallow excuse. See "it's not his fault, he gets his heart broken"...pretty convenient and totally transparent. Something similar was done in Grant Morrison's Batman where he pointed out that Bruce tends to enter into self-destructive relationships with female villains or bad girls because he knows there's no future to it, and that factors into his self-perpetuating war on crime. Of course Batman, Post-Crisis tends to be written as a functional madman, and not entirely balanced. Tony though is rational and generally balanced and he doesn't inhabit a gothic world like Batman does, so you could form more grounded looks into his mentality.
    Or you can psychologically argue that relationships end for various reasons and not have it be an indictment on anyone.

    Marvel comics doesn't frame Tony as a casanova. When he is single, he dates. When he is in a relationship, he is committed to that relationship. That's what most people do.
    Last edited by Marvell2100; 10-19-2019 at 01:30 PM.

  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Star_Jammer View Post
    Um...Bendis didn't write Iron Man till 2016, and Fraction in 2011/2012.
    Bendis was writing Iron-Man in his Avengers run, and he was very Downey JR-esque.

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by your_name_here View Post
    Bendis was writing Iron-Man in his Avengers run, and he was very Downey JR-esque.
    Which run was this? New Avengers or Avengers?

  11. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by Marvell2100 View Post
    Which run was this? New Avengers or Avengers?
    New Avengers. The whole Civil War tie-ins etc.

  12. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    True but it's also hard to work that in. Pepper married Happy Hogan, and then Happy died. Tony Stark has been a serial womanizer before and after he became Iron Man. In the movies, Tony once he becomes Iron Man has eyes only for Pepper and becomes totally monogamous...you can't work that level of character development into the comics because there's no foundation to that there. Fraction's Worldwide Man Hunt did a lot of work with Pepper but that comic also had Tony cheating on Pepper with Maria Hill...or Tony cheated on Maria with Tony but didn't tell either of them.
    Serial womaniser when he is single, and a serial monogamist when he is in a relationship.

    Pepper and Tony were never a thing like the movies, I can only remember one intimate moment with em two.. Tony didn’t cheat on Pepper with Maria, he was in the process of deleting his brain. He don’t remember sleeping with Pepper. He didn’t deliberately cheat on either.

  13. #28
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    Yeah, Pepper and Maria had sex with him when he was literally suffering from progressive brain damage that made him incapable of remembering that he'd had sex with one before having sex with the other. If Stark had been a woman and Pepper and Maria men, they'd be done as characters.

    Anyway, Stark has generally been a serial monogamist, not a womanizer. Which is to say, the same as most Marvel heroes.

  14. #29
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    Yeah don't think Tony has ever cheated on anyone ever.

    To answer the OP, it was a risk because despite having been an important character in-universe, it was an expensive movie on a character that had no major mainstream popularity before (unlike Spider-Man and X-Men who had popular cartoons in the past) starring an actor who had previously had a prison stint due to drug use. That alone shows you how questionable it was.

    But as we've seen, the rest was history. Choosing Iron Man to be the lynchpin of their cinematic universe is honestly one of the greatest decisions Marvel ever made. Now Iron Man is one of the most popular superheroes in the world. Would never have believed this 15 years ago

  15. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by The Kid View Post
    Yeah don't think Tony has ever cheated on anyone ever.

    To answer the OP, it was a risk because despite having been an important character in-universe, it was an expensive movie on a character that had no major mainstream popularity before (unlike Spider-Man and X-Men who had popular cartoons in the past) starring an actor who had previously had a prison stint due to drug use. That alone shows you how questionable it was.

    But as we've seen, the rest was history. Choosing Iron Man to be the lynchpin of their cinematic universe is honestly one of the greatest decisions Marvel ever made. Now Iron Man is one of the most popular superheroes in the world. Would never have believed this 15 years ago
    Iron Man's success probably made Marvel realize that projects like Guardians of the Galaxy or Black Panther would have an audience. The RDJ Iron Man movies work mainly because it brought new kinds of genres and ideas into the superhero movie genre. The first Iron Man movie was almost like a parody/satire of the genre. Robert Downey Jr. really brought his irreverence to the character (in the same way Johnny Depp did in the first Pirates movie before the sequels ruined it). That bit at the end where he outs his secret identity was part of that.

    To a mainstream audience, Iron Man in 2007 was as obscure as Guardians of the Galaxy was when the first movie came out. Same with Black Panther. So it was a real proving ground.

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