DEATH BATTLE

Comic-Quill........ well at least before the movies got big isn’t a man-child.

He’s just unscrupulous. Actually has my respect for doing whatever it takes to keep the Guardians together regardless of standards.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 15th 2019 at 11:48:02 AM

Yeah. Pre-MCU Comic Quill was an awesome albeit unscrupulous badass. He fought in both Annihilation Wars, opposed his dictatorial father King J'son of Spartax, and kept the Guardians together through duct tape and charisma (also some mind control).

They Chris Pratted him up for the MCU, where he became The Chris Pratt Character. The character Chris Pratt plays in every movie. That guy.

And, as the films often do, this had a domino effect that resulted in Chris Pratting up the comic character as well.

Honestly, his moniker is the best demonstration of the difference between the two:

• Comics: Star-Lord is the title granted him by the Spartax Empire for his princely status. He bears the mantle, but also rejects his planet's tyrannical ways.
• Film: Star-Lord is a stupid asshole made-up name that stupid asshole Peter Quill made up for himself, because he's a stupid asshole.

EDIT: Oh, wait, I think there was something about his mom calling him that? I just remember everyone he meets laughing at his stupid name.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 15th 2019 at 12:47:36 PM

The more I listen, the more it sounds like Marvel reworks their comics in response to movies at the drop of the hat.

I feel like there was a big shift even before the movie actually came out when Bendis took over the book.

I think the characterization changed in advance to be like the movie. Also why Bendis Guardians was whittled down from the bigger cast pre-Cancerverse to be just the movie cast on a spaceship when prior they operated out of Knowhere.

And then when the movie was big successful the comics doubled down.

Edited by Bocaj on Jul 15th 2019 at 2:49:31 PM

The name Starlord was, in fact, given to Quill by his mother (she calls him "my little Starlord").

Oh, they totally do. They even brought Sam Jackson Nick Fury into the comics, even though he was already in the comics.

MCU Fury is based on the Nick Fury from the Ultimate Marvel alternate continuity, who Marvel contracted Sam Jackson's likeness rights to for some reason. Jackson agreed on the grounds that if Nick Fury ever appears in a movie, he gets to play the character. This was about eight years before the MCU would even get its start with Iron Man 1.

MCU Fury became so popular that the comics subsequently brought Nick Fury Jr., who is the Sam Jackon Nick Fury, into their main 616 universe. They also immigrated the entire cast of Canon Foreigners from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. series while they were at it.

There's a huge Broken Base in the comic fandom over whether the constant adjustments made to stay in-line with the cinematic universe has improved or sabotaged the comic universe.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 15th 2019 at 12:53:32 PM

I recall the Spartax thing is a part of the animated series as well.

It is a shame that Quill was worsened by his movie, even if Movie Quill has his virtues and good points (which I no longer care about).

I mean, he did rally them to fight Ronan despite how hopeless it seemed, and has shown himself to have a good heart.

But he's also a jackass, so screw him.

It makes sense economically. TV shows and movies cast a way wider net than the pathetic audience comics have.

The problem is that these elements are frequently incorporated badly as the writers are just doing it to fulfill an editorial mandate and do it as quickly as they can.

And comic audiences remain pathetically small so you're not getting many television viewers watching Agents of SHIELD and coming over to see if there are any comics starring their favorite comic character Agent Melinda May.

The more movie based Quill actually worked for me during the short period right before Infinity Countdown and Infinity Countdown itself. He never worked for me with Bendis because Bendis can write like one thing well and Guardians wasn't it. And I don't think Bendis was too interested in the Guardians either because it felt very lifeless and the only time he ever felt like he was actually invested in the book he was writing was when he was moving pieces around so he could make a JEWS IN SPAAAACE joke.

But Beard Quill, I'm going to call him Beard Quill, worked for me.

Edited by Bocaj on Jul 15th 2019 at 2:59:06 PM

Guess try to split them wouldn't work.

That wider net also has the problem of adaptations reaching writers as much as readers.

We talked about this back when Carnage v. Lucy was the big thing. Brian Michael Bendis, in both his Ultimate Marvel and 616 renditions of Carnage, gave the character the ability to drain people's "life energy" from their bodies using his tendrils.

This is not a thing. It has never been a thing. The only place he could possibly have got it was the 90's animated Spider-Man cartoon, where Dormammu granted Carnage this power as a Moral Guardians workaround; it allowed Carnage to massacre people and leave trails of bodies like he does in the comics, but also for all of those people to come back to life and wake up when he was defeated.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jul 15th 2019 at 1:00:49 PM

Alas, wikipedia simply didn't exist apparently, Bendis.

Didn't Marvel also sweep X-Men aside because they couldn't get movie rights back?

Comic-Quill may have been a jackass but he was one cool & competent jackass.

Yup. Well, they still had comic running but there was a lot less emphasis put on them and they didn't show up in stuff like Marvel Vs Capcom.

Effectively they tried to replace them with the Inhumans, which did the Inhumans no favors.

Then they launched a big comeback using the 90's Cartoon theme as a backdrop theme.

They were still printing X-Men comics. But they did try to make Inhumans the new mutants, so to speak. They released a lot of comics trying to enhance the Inhumans' visibility while at the same time pushing the Inhumans on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. They slated the Inhumans for their own Phase Three film, which became a Phase Three TV show, which became the worst thing Marvel ever produced.

The hard push on the Inhumans didn't pan out well, mostly on account of the fact that the Inhumans suck and nobody likes them. We got some cool new characters out of it, though; most notably the new Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan, who is great and deserves her own movie.

The Inhuman push on Agents of SHIELD was good though.

Inhumans you say,they should have a TV show,it has potential..

Yeah. I don't know what the opinion of the Inhumans was before their ill fated push, but the entire thing tainted them for all time.

And they already had some shit on their plate (apparently they have slavery? I mean, not sure why that's still a thing with them? You'd think Black Bolt would outlaw it), which people who hated them due to their push latched on to.

Because of this, Inhumans is ruined as a brand. I fully expect when Kamala does join the MCU, Marvel would pull a Scarlet Witch and MCU Quicksilver on her and find a way to remove her connection to them (despite her only connection being the source of her powers).

By then the FOX merger will probably be complete. Be funny if they make her a mutant to sidestep the Inhuman debacle.

In the comics Black Bolt did outlaw slavery in the 70s.

I mean, he did so because of a giant shame robot that Maximus the Mad built powered by the collective societal guilt that Inhumans had over having slavery. But end result it did end up banned.

Edited by Bocaj on Jul 15th 2019 at 3:18:39 PM

See, stuff like that is the reason I'm starting to think Maximus is actually Crazy Sane, because the so called crazy one shouldn't need to create a shame robot to force you to stop slavery.

Comics are weird.

@Love interests: It’s actually kind of interesting to think that most comic book adaptations these days don’t even stick with “canonical” love interests and just put the characters together with whoever’s available because they have to have a “true love” story right this very minute.

Off the top of my head, the only live action superhero media currently running who have characters together with someone they’ve been together with in the source are The Flash CW w/ Barry and Iris, Vision and Wanda in the MCU (which ended badly nonetheless in both incarnations), and Lois and Clark in the DCEU

I remember that made things awkward in the Netflix Marvel shows, because they clearly wanted to have their cake and eat it: put Jessica and Luke together at some point, but kept having to put it off because they didn’t want them in each other’s shows, leading to stuff like Claire being sold as Luke’s girlfriend then awkwardly written off a season later and weird scenes between Like and Jess in crossovers that didn’t really reflect where they were in their home series.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 15th 2019 at 1:04:04 AM

To think Spider-Verse is already ship-teasing Miles & Gwen due to that one crossover between their series that had them dating for a couple of months in real life.

They haven't been a thing in over a year. Hell Gwen is currently dating her universes Harry Osborn while Miles has a girlfriend with the two having no relations with each other anymore.

Edited by slimcoder on Jul 15th 2019 at 1:33:00 AM

Long distance relationships are hard to make work