Saturday, June 28, 2008

DC and Marvel via Brian Reed

Brian Reed had a great line at WizardWorld Chicago, at the "Bendis vs. Johns" panel. He said that anything can happen in the DC Universe, but the Marvel Universe has a different set of rules: "Wonder Woman can come home and have gorillas in her living room and people are like, 'that's cool.' If Professor X came home and there were gorillas, fans would be like, 'that doesn't make sense.'"

That sounds exactly right to me, but what is it about the Marvel Universe that doesn't allow random gorillas?

And does such mentality destroy any chance of success for the upcoming Marvel Apes mega-crossover?

3 comments:

seth hurley said...

The one time (I remember) Marvel had a gorilla was Agents of Atlas, and that was ten kinds of greatness.

and I totally have that copy of Weird War Tales in my spinner rack.

Kyle White said...

Goddamnit, Marvel, monkeys aren't apes. Marvel Primates. Accuracy, people. Hell, humans are primates too, so the whole thing is silly. In a good way, mind you.

Chad Nevett said...

I can't understand why Marvel is doing this, what with "JLApes" being such a big success and all...

Of course, Warren Ellis got a good gag out of this sort of things in Nextwave #11, but that was also for a few pages where the weird little creatures didn't do much but get beaten by the team.

As for that mentality, I guess it depends if you're going for a serious story or just having a laugh--you can play dumb shit like this serious in DC, but you have to play it for laughs at Marvel, because there's no way in hell anyone is looking at a fucking ape in a Daredevil costume and doing anything but laughing. It's absurd. There's a long and noble tradition at DC for taking that sort of thing seriously and to have Superman break out in a fit of giggles now... well, that just wouldn't work. Or something, I dunno.