Author Treacher’s current Column? Newsletter? offers a bit of musing on comic book movies passing their expiration date again:
But a Black Widow movie? After they already killed her off? It just feels like an afterthought. Maybe it would’ve been a huge hit if it had come out in 2016, which is apparently the year it’s set. But now? Nah.
I wonder if the Marvel movies will have the same problem the comics had back in the ‘70s, after being such a commercial and cultural phenomenon in the ‘60s. Once the novelty wore off, the brand name alone wasn’t enough to keep fans forking over their dough. Pumping out titles with second- and third-string characters didn’t cut it. The magic was gone. You could still find some gems here and there, but the golden age was over.
You know, I kind of felt that after the Avengers story arc ended with Avengers: Endgame. I have not yet seen the most recent Spiderman movie. I only saw Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 this month because the resort we stayed at let us borrow the movie for free to watch in our room. The Black Widow? Doctor Strange II? I don’t think I’ll see those in the theaters either. Nor am I hastening to get a streaming service to watch Loki, Paul Bettany, or any of the Star Wars properties over there.
Is it because I’ve grown up? Unlikely. This weekend, I stopped at the local game shop as I mentioned, and I bought a stack of one dollar comics (but not Sarah Hoyt’s Barbarella since it was not in stock). Given what I have seen from modern Marvel comics that I bought at the Comic Cave for a buck each back in the day, I’m probably best served by buying older comics with more elaborate stories than simple stories with Comic Art.
(Ace also offers commentary on the movie’s box office performance.)
