“Marvel, 75 Years: From Pulp To Pop!” Review

For the first time since the premiere in September, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. took Tuesday night off. In its place is Marvel, 75 Years: From Pulp To Pop!, hosted by Agent 13, Emily VanCamp. If you recall the last Marvel special that ABC aired, I freaked out a little too much. Did I do that this time? Let’s recap what was covered.

Rather than start from the beginning, we start with the heart of Marvel Studios and what they’re currently doing. It’s a lot of behind-the-scenes clips that have been part of bonus features on various DVDs/blu-rays of Marvel movies. But combined together, it makes you feel really good about everything Marvel has done since Iron Man. They talk about how they hire good directors and good actors, and the good actors part I’ve heard mentioned a lot in recent weeks, mostly due to the reveal of Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther. Marvel hires actors–not just people who look like the characters. They get those who they believe can bring them to life, and they are better off for that.

They talk about how they wanted to do something new and unexpected, and that ushered in Guardians of the Galaxy, which everyone wrote off from Day One as being a risk and look how successful it has been. The decision to make movies themselves changed Marvel into the behemoth that it is now.

The special then took us back to the 1930s, when Benny Goodman was topping the charts, when Marvel Comics was just Timely Comics, far from what it is now. Superman kicked off the superhero genre, and Timely Comics couldn’t help but follow. They created Marvel Mystery #1 with the Human Torch. I’d love to keep giving you a low-down of the history, but my local Channel 7 decided to cut in with election updates for about three minutes.

Captain America became a call to arms for the American public as World War II began. Pretty much take the first Captain America film and that’s what you’ve got… minus Steve Rogers being a real person. Of course in a post-World War II world, comics came under fire for being a bad influence on young boys and hundreds of people lost their jobs.

Stan Lee’s creation of the Fantastic Four added a level of realism to comic book heroes that had never been there before. They didn’t have costumes and they honestly didn’t have helpful, cool powers. After that came The Hulk. Spider-Man, the first teenage superhero who had to deal with the ramifications of being Spider-Man as well as put up with all of Peter Parker’s problems. Then Thor, Ant-Man, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, the Avengers, the X-Men… they all came to light in a short period of time.

In the 1970s, Marvel Comics went from six books/issues per month up to the mid-twenties up to nearly fifty. There were cartoons with their characters, but they were huge disappointments. But Bill Bixby in The Incredible Hulk TV series did so incredibly well with the public. Then came the 1980s when most of the comic books featured antihero main characters, like Daredevil, Punisher, Wolverine (sans the X-Men), and it was then that Marvel passed DC in revenue… only to go bankrupt.

Naturally, because we’re watching a show on a Disney-owned channel discussing a Disney-owned company, the depth of the bankruptcy is breezed over. There is a passing comment about selling off assets yet wanting to keep them together, but no mention of which assets or who owns them now is completely avoided. So if you’re looking for any mention of the X-Men or Spider-Man movies from the early and mid 2000s, look elsewhere.

They do make mention about “Marvel movies pre-2004, 2005,” but nothing other than that leading to their decision to make their own movies and for their comics to go back to the beginning, so think Civil War and the relaunching of Spider-Man as two of the bigger name restarts.

We all know the story from here and where Marvel now sits. They discuss the sale to Disney and how it made sense (because, let’s be real, Disney owns everything (and I am totally okay with this, says the girl who’s going to Disney World in like three weeks)). Marvel is all about brand quality now. They proved it with Iron Man, The Avengers, and when they want to make a movie about a talking raccoon whose best friend is a walking tree that only says three words, you’re darn right you’re going to go see it without thinking twice. It’s Marvel–they’ve shown they know what they’re doing.

And it’s the best part of the show: We are treated to a bit of Ant-Man filming footage as well as some from Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s all behind-the-cameras, raw footage, so it’s nothing fancy. They make mention of their Netflix shows as well as their animation, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Agent Carter.

We are then given an exclusive clip from Agent Carter, re-introducing us to Peggy and Howard Stark and giving us Edwin Jarvis, Howard’s butler. Howard has Peggy on the lookout for a piece of paper with a formula written on it; if it’s ever fabricated, it could be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands. Upon meeting Jarvis, we cut to a scene of Peggy kicking a guy’s ass in a kitchen. I’m already in love with this series and it hasn’t even aired yet.

Things I Probably Missed Covering: All the special guests that were creators of particular comics/issues/characters. The other special guests included Jimmy Kimmel, Stan Lee, Alan Fine, Seth Green, Patton Oswalt, Kevin Smith, and Joe Loeb to name a few. The lack of Tom Hiddleston on my television. Did anyone else think Emily VanCamp was a little too nervous spouting those lines? Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko deserve more praise than they get. Special guests and Marvel people kept saying how Marvel is all about wanting to tell good stories about incredible people doing amazing things against the odds.

So what did you guys think of the Marvel special? Of course it’s a lot of glad-handing and self-congratulatory praise, but I greatly enjoyed how they didn’t just focus on what they are now and how it brings a multitude of people together, but how they showed us the history of it all that everyone likes to gloss over and forget.

Next week, we return to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. where the crew is after Grant Ward, whose disguise is a baseball cap designed to make him look like Jimmie Johnson. It’s bound to be high-stakes fun!