Women And Comics

In my last post, I started off ranting a bit about women and comics.  I will paste it below:

"As I get older, I, like many others, find myself in front of news stories about gender equality and see people raving back and forth about whether or not there is a problem, just what the problem is, and if there is a problem how should it be solved.  This is something which comes up a lot in entertainment mediums and particularly in movies, video games, and comic books.

The arguments generally are, 'Should women have greater representation?' 'Do women already have enough representation?' 'How should we represent women?' 'Should we cater to social pressure?' 'What about writer's rights?' 'Is it a comic distributor's responsibility?' and many others I'm sure you're already aware of.  Many people see this as a pretty simple question with simple answers of 'yes' and 'no.' In truth, the problem is far more complex and while some recognize that, many others simply make their answers more complex to fit the role rather than explore the situation at hand.  Some will give a 'free market' answer along the lines of, 'Men read comics predominantly, and so comics cater to men, and so long as men read comics then comic companies should cater to them.'  Others will respond, 'No, women are equal and are treated as second string.  Women don't read comics because there are no comics for women.'"

I finished it with a lame ass, "The answer... NEXT TIME!" sort of bit because I really wanted to talk about Marvel's Agent Carter.  But this is something I do wish to talk about.

Women and comics is something of a very sensitive subject for many reasons.  Some take direct offense, some just discomfort, some take it up as a sword, some take it up as a shield, and really it's just a very controversial subject to most who look at it.  As I quoted above, several questions are raised in regard to this subject both for, against, and even indifference to it.  These questions become more numerous, and in some ways more polarized, as women continue to expand their role in the comic industry and comic companies want more female readers, a market attempted and failed at several times.  And it's not because comic companies haven't sort of tried, from launching short lived series with female leads to launching the Tsunami imprint which hoped to attract manga readers which have a large female following.  The reason the comic companies keep falling flat is mainly because they keep relying on old formulas which have appealed only to young and just under middle aged men, or have had men write series they believe women would like, under-represent women in their ranks, and even fans just brushing this off.  This isn't to say only men write and like comics and related movies, but so few women do that I might as well be and some companies are worse than others.  Traditionally, the Big Two have been called out for lack of diversity with Marvel being yelled at harder for being the worse of the two.  DC has been a little better than Marvel with showcasing and continuing to hire premier female talent in the likes of the wonderful artist Amanda Conner and fantastic scribe Gail Simone, while Marvel's arguably largest female writer was Louise Simonson back in the 90's with some featured artists and writers here and there. DC has been very consistent with women having something of a large presence via Wonder Woman, the Birds of Prey with Oracle in particular, the current World's Finest with Power Girl and Huntress, Power Girl running the Justice Society, Black Canary as chairwoman of the Justice League, strong Batgirl titles. While Women in Refrigerators, Identity Crisis, and some other bits of oddities DC has come up with, they have remained not bad as far as women go.  They do have the most female characters, though one may argue they are generally female counterparts to male heroes, something Marvel doesn't do as often.  However, DC is more willing to press on and give these characters voices such as Batwoman, Batgirl, Black Canary, and well... Oracle, which are pretty much all people I mentioned above.  Renee Montoya got a lot of panels as the Question as well.  Marvel on the other hand tends to have brilliant female titles, but like all their more brilliant titles Marvel tends to fumble, forget to advertise, and quickly cancel books without real support.  She-Hulk has had at least two volumes which were both critically acclaimed and both were cancelled for under-performing because Marvel basically relied on word of mouth to get that sold.  It didn't help they didn't make them part of the larger Marvel Universe like they do with any other book they care about succeeding.  This is pretty reflective of how Marvel handled anything concerning women both in and out of books.

As Tim Hanley points out, Marvel's upcoming "Woman's Month" will temporarily increase how many women actually worked for them as creators and artists.  He goes on to say, "You can use one hand to count the number of women writing Marvel comics right now, and then use the other hand to count the number of female interior artists, and you won’t use up all of your fingers." And this is damning, because this is the state some people are outright content with.  Some people honestly believe that since some women are succeeding, the job is done.

Bust out the aircraft carrier with the "Mission Accomplished" banner, strap on your flight suit, and strut your stuff because the fact Marvel hires any women at all should be a sign of of a job well done and not simply just progress milestone towards a brighter future.

It pains me to see people who see things like this and say, "There. Are you happy?  We now have some women in comics and so the problem has been solved.  Can we stop complaining about this?" like some people did when a visually black man became president and some people felt that erased all the racial problems with the United States somehow.  Or when people defend the male focus of the industry because of sales statistics while pushing out the context in a short sighted way.  Early in 2014, Kevin Feige made a comment that Marvel wasn't making female centric movies simply because Marvel was just too busy making movies, and many fans pointed to the idea that Marvel had a structured idea and basically if a woman character wasn't really in it then Marvel really was too busy.  Smartly enough, someone did say that if Marvel did have this plan years ago why didn't they just simply plan a woman into it?  It's a good question, because Marvel simply put the Black Widow as second fiddle to Iron Man and the Avenger's movie and her representation in the Avengers was by far the worst of them when they could have had her tied into more movies like they did with Fury.  Maria Hill was just there to say there was a woman other than the Widow, and her part was negligible and pretty much there to make Nick Fury look smart.  Kevin Feige since then has gone on to talk about the responsibility of the industry to push diversity since the backlash of idiocy his excuses have generated (there's been more than just this one such as just not being sure when it can be done), and now there is a Captain Marvel movie confirmed a few months later.  But the explanation is crap because Feige claims it's been in the works as long as Guardians of the Galaxy was despite him saying before the idea of this movie was sort of kicked around but there were no plans at all.  This gives the idea that this Captain Marvel movie has been in work for a long time when it clearly hasn't and was only really pushed ahead after Marvel was getting barked at for its not making female oriented movies.

Now allow me to back up a few paces and talk about the good Marvel has done with women characters and comics.  Four characters jump right to mind: She-Hulk (duh), Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel, and Squirrel Girl.  The first two have been sort of in and out of the Marvel spotlight for years and years with everything from them being Avengers to them breaking down, to having their own series off and on.  She-Hulk has commonly been pointed out as a very smart book under Dan Slott and unfortunately was cancelled due to low interest.  Carol Danvers had much the same problem under her Ms. Marvel books, though the relaunch under Captain Marvel has been met with applause and whistles of glee for a strong woman. Ms. Marvel is a new book not about Carol Danvers, but about a teenager named Kamala Khan who is Marvel's first headlining Muslim character and something of a very unique character in how she doesn't necessarily fit the Marvel mold of women.  Finally is the recently launched The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl who both humorously and confidently goes about being a superhero with a conspicuously big and conspicuously awesome butt (though that's only in her disguise to hide her tail).  The latter two are great and perfect examples of what can be done with female characters at Marvel, and while I don't think they'll be supported and eventually cancelled, I do hope I'm wrong.  But four characters and four books aren't really enough to fix this problem, just enough to start us in the right trend.

But in short, the way women are still regarded isn't right, it isn't good, and this sort of problem will forever ensure a terrible projection for the future of comic books.  Women readership is growing, and if the industry wishes to maintain or further this demographic, it needs to better acknowledge this beyond the here and there bits and pieces. The debate, points, and solutions are far more complex and wide spun than this little article can have and I hope to talk about this more because I haven't even talked about the idea of responsibility, fan backlash and entitlement, why these problems even exist, and why we sometimes refuse to acknowledge them. 

Normally I feel good after ranting a bit (the point of the blog), but honestly I don't this time.  Heck, I just focused on Marvel when there is so much more across the comic spectrum to talk about.  So unfortunately I will have more posts on this.

The Comic Bubble

Good day.  I hope everything is doing good for you.

Anyways last post I was talking about Variant Covers and how it was helping to inflate the Comic Bubble and potentially may be hastening the bubble burst. I didn't?  Well, it is.  But just what is the comic bubble, and what are my worries?  I guess I should somewhat explain what I be talkin' bout.

Not this sort of bubble

More like this sort of bubble, the fragile kind that when you "KAPOW" it, it just pops

See, the comic industry like any industry which relies on speculative value and work to expand influence.  Basically the comic industry like all industries will grow and deflate over time, and when it happens with comics it tends to be extreme.  But it's not because that's just how people are (though it has something to do with it) it's because how some in the comic industry are looking to turn a very quick buck.  In my previous post I talked about variant covers and market glut, and this is a huge part of it.  However there are other factors such as saturation of product, visualization, outlets, publicity and so on and so forth.  

Let me try to organize my thoughts into a slightly more coherent view and start at the bottom.

The basic market for all comic book companies are the primary comic book fandom.  These are people who generally buy comics and will spend more and take risks on different series and stories as they grow as fans and collectors.  From here comic companies test their products and see how dyed in the wool fans respond.  Then comic companies reach out to kids with toys and cartoons, and more recently the public at large with movies and tie in deals and food company advertisements and all sorts of stuff.  The merchandising aspect of comic book characters is insane and even the movies make far more money than comic books because movies are easier to get into and don't require a monthly investment.  Comic books do.  And that's where comic companies are having a hard time right now with converting movie watchers and other fans into comic purchasing fans.  This is reflected with how comic books actually begin to reflect their cinematic counterparts, such as Iron Man getting the Robert Downey Jr. effect in Keiron Gillen's relaunch of Iron Man (pre Guardians of the Galaxy which was pre Superior Iron Man).  Cap's new costume, the entire lineup of the Avengers, the Chituari becoming a Skrull subspecies as opposed to being alternate universe Skrulls, the entire Guardians of the Galaxy being changed from a cosmic horror team into a more lighthearted space adventure, the prominence of DC teams and characters who are getting movies (though it could be argued DC is simply trying hard to generate interest in these characters from two fronts).  Okay, so Marvel's a little worse about it.  But let's face it, Marvel is happy to whore it out to whomever pays up.  That's the Disney/Marvel way.  And not that this is particularly bad in some ways, but it is bad in the whole "Bubble" aspect, and here's why: Comic Character Movies are a fad.  

Sure, comic movies have been popular to some degrees since the 70's with a few successful and critical Superman films, the first couple Batman films, the first two Raimi Spider-Man/Singer X-Men films, and the Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy.  These were far from the only comic films as several were rolled out during the 2000's, but none of them really managed to catch on like the Nolan Trilogy which truly changed everything in 2005.  When Batman Begins hit, the movie going public and greater public in general began to more seriously contemplate and pay for superhero movies.  This was a big change in the industry after X3, Spider-Man 3, and Batman & Robin pretty much kept shoving superhero movies back down into the gutter.  But Batman Begins proved that the public was ready to embrace comic book characters as action heroes and Batman Begins launched them to the big time.  After Batman Begins, superhero movies were the big thing.  And not to say all superhero movies were as well received as the very next year with Superman Begins, the public wasn't as receptive.  However, Marvel found unexpected success (from many fan's at least) with Iron Man.  And from Iron Man, we all know how prevalent the superhero movie is every year now.  So for a decade starting next year, superhero films will have dominated cinema releases alongside YA movie adaptations for a decade.  It will not last.  And the comic industry is going to crash again when the movies fold?

"I don't see why the movie industry folding will crush comics, Mak.  You just said the industry has a hard time making readers out of viewers, and the readers should remain so stop being a bitch."

Wrong.  Why?  Because readers will ditch for the same reason viewers will: Burnout.

In the 90's, comics crashed due to things like oversaturation of covers, terribly written sensational stories, fatigue, and the fact you couldn't turn around without superheros trying to insert themselves into something.  Also Rob Liefeld should get some personal blame since Image (and his work in Marvel) were pinnacles of what was wrong.  And we see this now repeating with modern times with companies re-employing heavy usage of variant covers, TWISTS!! TURNS!! EXTREME RETELLINGS!!, redrilling into terrible 90's ideas, ridiculous changes to characterization, and the fact they have an Earth shattering big event every single year, sometimes more than one a year.  This is not to say comics are ONLY doing this.  When the burst happens this time, it won't be as bad as companies are doing their best (through pressure of the public) to branch out and try to appeal on levels that aren't simply extension of movie fun.  With women and minorities getting an expanded role, comic companies will not hurt as bad when they crash.  But crash they most likely will, because riding a boom on the very edge of it for a quick buck ensure that when the bubble bursts, the fall is just that much further down. I do want to talk more on this and explain why these herald a dark time, but maybe not.  We'll see.

The man who drew this, Rob Liefeld, was the highest paid comic writer and artist of the 90's.  'Nuff said.  We're also sort of returning to this mentality. 'Nuff said...?

New Week, New Topic: Variant Covers and they tie to the Comic Bubble

Alright, I'm ready to just start the rants about things I love and hate about comics and today I'm taking a shot at something I vehemently dislike: Variant Covers.

Oh lawdy, variant covers.

First off, sorry it's been a couple weeks since my previous entry but life's tough and shizz.

Second off, let me reiterate: FUCK. VARIANT. COVERS.*

*Sometimes they're okay.

Earlier yesterday I was bopping along the internet searching about comic news as I will when I came across something in The Escapist about the new Marvel Star Wars comic having 20 variant covers.  It attributes these covers to the fact this issue will outsell any other single comic book in a long long long time.  I clicked the link to Bleeding Cool (The Escapist's source) only to find out over 60 covers are planned for this series and they're only up to issue 1.  Wait... Yeah, that's right.  ISSUE FUCKING 1.  The first blitzing issue has over 60 planned variant covers.  Granted you can't hop on down to your LCS and find all sixty plus covers.  No.  Some of these will be far rarer than others, and your LCS has to shell out for X amount of copies to get access to some of them at all.  This is a direct appeal to collectors and investors in comic books and this is fucking disgusting.

FUCK THIS PRACTICE.

Let me tell you why I hate variant covers.  Do you remember the 90's for comic books?  I sure do, it's when I actually started getting into them, and I used to love comics a lot from that era since I didn't know better.  Comics during the 90's (early 90's) was the biggest time for all comic books and comics sold like hotcakes, pressing people into literally investing into comics by buying all the editions they could.  Marvel in their infinite glory and wisdom began to make variant covers by the truckload to directly appeal to speculators and collectors and the like.  This meant that many issues of comics would be sold with several versions of a cover to have people who were looking to cash in on the future but the same issue multiple times.  The same story over and over and over again just in the idea that if you were to sell this issue it would be worth so much as a collection.  

This tied in directly with the feel of excess the 90's carried.  America was doing great, economy was on the rise, do what feels good was the fun, the whole investment thing was bigger than ever.  Comics reflected this in the worst way.  We were growing out of the 80's into a more extreme decade which meant everything had to be turned up "TO THE XTREME!!"  No time for that first "E" that shit just gets in the way of how XTREME comics were becoming.  Variant covers were the ultimate expression.  Only an XTREME fan would have all the issues because the future looks so bright with dollar signs from collecting the four X-Men covers with the chromium sheen and gold/silver/regular covers to Avengers stories.  XTREME covers to match the XTREME stories.

Then the crash.

See, the problem with this sort of blaring overabundance is that eventually the entire medium suffers and it drives the fans away.  It was a model unsustainable because you can only go so far with comic books.  The market crashed on comic books and now books from that decade are straight up worthless.  Some hold some value, yes, but on the general curve you can't barely give them away.  I was in my LCS some years ago when a guy walked in with three boxes of comics (long boxes, not the short kind) and the owner gave the man a pained and sad look and told him he couldn't buy them because nobody wants them.  Comic books designed only to BE collected just wouldn't sell because of the missing covers, the lackluster stories, and overall poor quality.  The entire crappiness of an industry destroying trinkets people held on to for a decade and a half just for the former collectors to be told their fake loyalty was a waste of potentially thousands of dollars.

Okay, I'll back up a bit.  I do not hate variant covers.  At least I do not hate the idea of variant covers.  The very first time I came across a variant covers was during Marvel's "Heroes Return" bit when heroes who previously were jettisoned into a Counter Earth dimension ("Heroes Reborn") were coming back to regular Earth and to celebrate were relaunching these lines with alternate "Sunburst covers."  So each new first issue would have a regular cover and one with the hero coming over some clouds with a symbol resembling their power (or something) like a sun shining with the character over this.  It was special, because this was a special event.  This makes sense for variant covers.  I also sort of give a pass  for variant covers in the "flavor of the week" style.  These will have variant covers for an entire week (sometimes far longer which is inexcusable) and feature a theme such as "Deadpooling" or having the DC titles look like child cartoons.  I guess these can be okay so long as they don't get out of control.  However, they tend to and that's crap.  There is also a subtype of variant cover I also do not mind which is the Chase Cover.  A chase cover is when a print of an issue is reprinted with a new cover to be sold at stores after the first printing has run out.  Basically there is a "First Print" cover and a "Reprint" cover.  This gives an air of specialness (which I also somewhat dislike) for owners of an original issue.  THAT is special.  THAT is okay.  What's not okay is when specialness is artificially given to an issue by having multiple covers printed at the same time without any expiration of supplies.  That is just industry crap forcing the idea onto you that these issues are so special you need to buy them all.  "But Mak," you retort, "I don't have to.  Nobody has to.  If you don't want three covers of the same issue, then you don't buy them.  Comic companies aren't twisting your arm on this one." But you're wrong.  They are.  This implied specialness is real.  Especially when variant covers are reduced in number compared to their more plentiful "non variant" cover.  This makes the variant cover seem actually more special than the already implied special issue.  It makes collectors feel their collection is incomplete without these potentially more expensive covers.  And don't be fooled, these covers CAN be more expensive than their "regular" siblings.  And this practice is crap because it's like the industry is acting like getting this cover is some sort of special cover not available to other issues, but when you buy this cover and the other one and walk away, you realize the original cover already WAS individual to the cover.  In this way you're being deceived into thinking the issue is groundbreaking, great, acclaimed, or otherwise something more than just another issue of your favorite character.  It is banking on your feeling of being left out or incomplete when there is a variant issue presented.

"Comics make money this way.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Comics should ride this boom."

Alright, I understand this mentality.  Comics are riding a boom since the early to mid 2000's.  And it's welcome since the huge crash of the early to mid 90's.  I get it.  Comics are a bigger business than pretty much ever with all the tie in entertainment.  And variant covers figure into more sales since it encourages readers to buy more than one copy.  While the speculator boom is nowhere near as bad as the 90's, a similar feeling is pervading this boom.  There is much reporting on certain comics going sky high at auctions, lots of media coverage such as this Star Wars one, and the tie in comics (which is a topic for another time) shows us that comics are again very popular and sales show a growth.  Variant covers are a symptom of growth, but the perverse amount coming out is nothing short of disgusting and will fuel another pop when collector glut reaches another nauseating level when comics again decline after the public moves on to the next big entertainment fad and production costs can't keep up with the shedding of collectors who will begin to realize all these covers are a waste of their money.  If you really think that beloved Valkyrie variant of Secret Avengers #6 or vampire, Adventure Time, Lego, Hollywood, retro, and Tron (to name a few) variants are going to be worth anything in the next twenty years, you are fooling yourself.  None of those issues were worth of note, none of them had any demand to be recollected, and when you go back to look at these issues you'll more or less wish you had the hundreds of dollars back to respend on something else. Probably another waste of time and money, but at least a different waste rather than the same thing.

"But it's only a few bucks.  That's not bad, Mak."

A few bucks here and there becomes hundreds of dollars.  If you're a semi-"serious" collector, you probably buy a few issues every week, and we'll say 10 issues a week total.  Otherwise known as 30 bucks because Marvel and DC charge anywhere between three to five dollars per issue.  Let's say 2 issues every week come out with a variant cover and you being the semi serious completionist feel the need to buy them.  Another six to ten dollars a week.  This comes out to be around 520 dollars per year in variants alone.  And that's IF the variants are the same price as the regular covers, which they aren't always.

"We don't have to buy them."

I already talked about this, but I'm repeating myself anyway.  This is technically true.  In the same way we don't have to do pretty much anything like living in increasingly nice places, eating well, going to the doctor, buying new electronics, buying trendy clothes, or really anything.

"Mak, don't be such a stupid drama queen.  That's not the same thing.  You're comparing apples to oranges and reaching hard for this one."

Wrong.  It IS the same thing.  If it seems exclusive, special, trendy, or otherwise "cool," we as people want them.  We want them MORE than the things we currently have and others might not even if we already own them.  It lends us this air of exclusivity we don't normally have.  Like buying a fancy hat which you know will look "cool" or buying a new phone because it's flashy, variant covers do a very similar thing to us.  We can easily justify and compartmentalize this because it's significantly cheaper, but as we do this we end up allowing ourselves to spend more and more on these things.  It's why people own a hardcover Absolute Edition of the Watchmen while already owning the issues and soft cover TPB of it already.  It's why people own several colors of the same pair of shoes or jackets or hats.  Even makeup does this.  And the fact comic books do this is terrible.

Is This The Best Time For A "Jumping On" Point In Mainstream Comics?

As the title asks, "Is this the best time for a jumping on point in mainstream comics?"  Clearly not verbatim.

It's a good question.  The answer is no.  That would've been the early 2000's when the Big Two (Marvel and DC) decided to pull the nearly dead body of good comics out of the financial gutter and breathe life back into quality and sales.  So unless you have a time machine you will have to settle for this point in your life.

But this is a good time to jump into the big two superhero factory comic companies, and that's because of the hair width, finely tuned, sweet spot planet aligned placement the two companies are in right now.  Let's start with Marvel.

With Marvel, as I've talked about two posts back, we see they're gearing up for some huge multiversal event which promises to bring out many of the most well known Big Events and somehow have that lead up into what seems to be (from the art provided by Alex Ross) multiversal fight between the current timeline and possibly their past counterparts and even other universal counterparts.  And while I'm not sure, I am sure about one thing: Continuity of only the most important parts will come to light.  With all of these Big Events possibly being revisited, which really only reinforce how I feel about modern Big Events and how they mean nothing, new readers will be treated to a rare conglomeration of points in important moments of a character's life.  See the photo below for reference:

See the two Iron Men there?  One all white, and one all retro?  One of them isn't Tony Stark.  Well, at least in the original Secret Wars.  This would be a very interesting conflict as Jim Rhodes is actually acting as Iron Man as his Tony is lost in the pit of alcoholism and had recently relinquished his role and responsibility as Iron Man to Rhodes.  Rhodes would see Stark is back in a fantastically futuristic armor and only 40 times the dick he was when Rhodes knew him.  Cap is fighting his protege who has taken his place.  Heck, Iron Man 2020 and Miles Morales the Ultimate Spider-Man are even in there.  Thor fighting new female Thor, etc.  With all these characters converging on one point, and all these Big Events being teased up to it in a single year, Marvel will have to be working in overdrive to get important character points (especially points in time) about the differences between characters.  If a new reader ever needed a synopsis and comparison about a character's past, this would be it.  And like I said, it seems Marvel is looking toward some sort of reboot and so maybe this would be good to get a taste of what might be coming.  I'm pretty sure I see Earth X in there as well, MC2, and definitely Marvel 2099.

For DC.  If Marvel ever had a reason to not reboot their universe, DC is that reason.  While the House of Ideas isn't exactly ashamed to copy what DC does, it at least tries to not make it so obvious (though both do steal and both fail at subtlety).  DC has this history about rebooting their universe both hard and soft.  They've done it quite a few times actually. And while each time is met with groans, it seems everybody forgets and adapts to the new universe with positive reactions.  Such is also the case with their Post-Flashpoint New 52 universe.  Not to be confused with their New 52 post Infinite Crisis where Superboy Prime retcon punched the universe until it changed history in the fallout.  This New 52 is much more severe in that it completely reset the entire universe and merged DC's other imprints (which were their own dimensions) into the fold.  Superman got a new start and was no longer married, the Justice Society was now Earth 2 specific, etc.  DC just basically pressed the reset button on their universe so they can tell similar stories, but in new and potentially exciting ways.  While you may think, "Well Mak, shouldn't the jumping on point have been three years ago when they actually pulled this stunt?" I'd say the answer is, "No."  Why?  Simple.  DC has had three years to put this new universe together, which means that you get to jump in AFTER the confusion of the reset.  You don't have to wonder why Tim Drake wasn't the Robin, but is Red Robin, or why certain characters behave as they do now.  You can read a few issues knowing they're still fairly recent, and if you like them you don't have a gigantic several hundred issue backlog to look up.  You can just go and pick from the previous few dozen issues which exist in their print line.  Granted the New 52 isn't a completely hard reboot, but is just mostly a hard reboot.  Just shy of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which means that some of the stories prior to Flashpoint are still relevant and you can search those out as you desire.  So long as they have nothing to do with Power Girl or any of the JSA.  So with only a few back issues and most of the wrinkles iron out of the Post-Flashpoint universe, you can jump in and have yourself a good ol' time in the Big Two publishers.  I'd talk about Image, Avatar Press, and all the rest, but I'm sure if you're new to reading you've probably watched DC and Marvel movies and want to start there.