The theme for this post is really tied to this panel from Kabuki: Circle of Blood: 
So last night I am bumbling through my tumblr account to stumble across this great little message from one of my favorite creators of all time, David Mack :
You can read the backstory here.
You have no clue how stoked I am about this. I have talked about Mack before (which you can read here). Why am I sitting here like a kid in toy store that was told they could have all the toys?
1) David Mack has always been one of my favorite people. Not only is he brilliant as a creator/storyteller but I have had the good fortune of meeting him on a few occasions and you couldn’t find a more humble person than Mr. Mack. That and he’s a riot to hang out with.
2) Captain America (outside of Daredevil) is probably tied for my second favorite Marvel hero (Thor is in second place also). If you haven’t read Ed Brubaker’s run on Captain America, you will totally be flabbergasted about who Winter Solider is. If you have already figured it out, trust me, you don’t know how he came to be. Its a great story line.
3) Take an epic story line and mash it into film with some of Mack’s art? *mind blown* Just to give you an idea take a look at this picture:
If the picture is large on your screen, that’s intended. I want to make sure you can see the mind boggling detail. Yes. Those are actual feathers.
Want to see more of his art work? You can go to the official unofficial website here or follow him on Tumbler here. I could wax poetic about all of the different styles of awesome art that Mack has done over the years, but that’s not entirely the point of this post.
This is the reason for the toy store analogy above.
Marvel yet again are playing the smart card. Most mainstream people know about the Marvel comics books (here on forever after referred to as the East Coast office) and the Studio (West Coast office). What many people don’t know is how much these two have been working together. Mack working on the title cards etc for Captain America: The Winter Solider is just the latest of it. Since 2007 when Marvel took out a loan with Merrill Lynch to start the studio division, I have pretty much trolled the news about ANYTHING that had to do with the company. As a comic book fan, I knew Marvel had a tendency to do things “The Marvel Way” and I was wondering how much of that would translate over into the film industry that is nothing but rules and regulations.
Marvel has been the first for a lot of things, including the East Coast office of writers, editors etc in setting the bricks for the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) was the smartest idea. The Winter Solider storyline was done in comics back in 2005/2006. That’s like yesterday when you take a look at how long some companies take to adapt a storyline. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, that Marvel needs to pay their casting directors and script supervisors in gold because they are the most crucial when it comes to the adaptations of the comics. Grant it, if you read Mack’s post, it was really a round about way that he was included in on this project (it really was based on the art/concept pitch), however, his art is very distinct compared to most artists out there (and I am not NOT curtailing that to only comic book artists, but to artists in general).
Why was this so smart? How many times have you watched a movie or seen a poster done and go “man, I really like that and would totally
Cover to Daredevil V2 Ish 20– one of the prints hanging on my wall.
hang it on my wall”?? At least once or twice in your life. Mack is one of the types that people either really LOVE him or go “ehhh”. I personally have a number of prints hanging on my wall by Mack and gotten a lot of commentary about them. That’s the point of this, commentary. Apples to Donuts, when you go see Captain America: The Winter Solider you will be going “Man, that’s pretty effing cool. I want that”. Marketing at its best folks.
Not only that, but you have the loyal fans of Mack’s talking about this because they are excited. That helps him indirectly because of course I am telling you about him and his work. Which hopefully (and I beg you too) will encourage you to read some of his work or get some prints etc.
You are probably saying that’s not any different than any other movie. Yes it is, because in this case, Mack has done a TON of work in the East Coast office, particularly on the Daredevil and Alias books (which I cannot recommend enough). How many of you would be tempted to go and try out these books either on the Marvel Digital Comic Website or at your local comic book shop?
Having the people that have laid the ground work in the comics put their two sense into the MCU makes so much sense I am shocked that other companies *cough* DC Comics *cough* are not doing this at all or if they are, its not enough/not working. Jeff Loeb, who many of you know as one of the creators of Heroes, is VP of Television at the west coast office. He also wrote TONS of comic books and knows the stories as well as anyone else. Everything that has worked in the past in the East Coast office has been implemented/tweaked to incorporate into the West Coast office.
IT WORKS.
Hollywood take note, whatever magic Marvel is doing you need to start trying to figure it out. The box office numbers alone should prove this (let alone digital copes, rentals, dvd/blu-ray/3d discs and merchandising). I can tell you one secret I have figured out to get you going Hollywood:
Hire people that actually care about the source material. If you look at everyone that has worked on the films from Iron Man all the way through to trailers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy PLUS Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D you can see that every single person working this truly loves the characters and the story.
That’s why Marvel is so awesome, they hire great people- like David Mack.
Pop Zeitgeist 