Marvel’s Secret Invasion returned viewers to a simpler era of superhero shows, back when they were boring and not very good. It’s not worth re-litigating the decisions that were made – the internet has made it clear that things will never be the same, that the damage is done. War Machine was an alien for a little while. You just can’t come back from that.
And maybe we shouldn’t have to. Maybe this is just what the MCU is now: disappointing comic book stories turned into even more disappointing comic book TV shows. We had a good run, but it’s time to accept that the best days are behind us. That the greatest yarns from Marvel Comics have already been spun into memorable live-action sweaters. That it’s time to give the comics that nobody likes their turn in the spotlight.
And so, we turn a hopeful eye to the future of the MCU, and to the backlog of garbage that they could film next.
7: Ultimatum
The holy grail of bad editorial judgment. The perennial taker of the top spot in terrible comic book movie lists. Have you ever wanted to see Benedict Cumberbatch’s face herniating, or Michelle Pfeifer getting eaten by a large man who is then, in turn, eaten by Michael Douglas? If you have, there’s probably a helpline that you should get in touch with. In the interim, there’s Ultimatum.
A narrative fireworks show designed by a franchise arsonist, Ultimatum was designed to shake things up in Marvel’s Ultimate universe. Cliff’s Notes: Magento got mad and shifted the Earth’s magnetic poles, doinking with the tides and splashing lots of stuff with water. Wolverine died. So did Professor X. And Magneto. And Cyclops. And Angel, Daredevil, Thor, Juggernaut, Beast, the Blob, Hank Pym, Doctor Strange, most of Manhattan, the nation of Latveria, and Dazzler. They tried to kill Spider-Man, but it didn’t stick, and the little guy got a stay of execution that lasted just over two years. The Thing got bummed out and squished Doctor Doom’s head like he was half-heartedly wringing out a loofa.
Why did it happen? Shock value.
Would it make a good movie? No.
Who should direct it? Roland Emmerich.
6: That time when the X-Men threw subtlety (and theology) out the window
You know how right after Star Wars came out, a suspicious number of movies started popping up featuring scrappy teams of space underdogs trying to blow up evil superweapons? How you could see that a lot of them came from a place of enthusiasm and love for the genre, but they just didn’t have the chops to make it work? X-Men sort of did that to itself 20 years ago. The movies made a super loose adaptation of the classic “God Loves, Man Kills” story, and the comics made a TransMorphers ripoff of the same thing to cash in.
Chuck Austin’s 2003 X-Men two-parter, “Holy War,” sort of reads like Jack Chick got to work at Marvel Comics for a week as part of a flubbed Make-A-Wish. It opens boldly with a bunch of mutants crucified on the lawn of the X-Mansion, then ramps up hard to the revelation that religious extremists wanted Nightcrawler to become the pope because he looks like the devil. In a very “Step Three: Profit” approach to planning, the bad guys figured that this would cause civilization to collapse, and make mutants even more hated and feared than they are on any other given Wednesday. Also, both issues feature a lot of talk about how Nightcrawler can’t keep it in his leotard. A lot of talk.
Crucifixion, horny mutants, and the Vatican. Basically, it’s fun, but will it play in Poughkeepsie? Drop $200 million on the big-screen adaptation and find out, Disney, you cowards.
5: Civil War II
The premise for Civil War II seemed simple enough: “What if we took a bunch of NyQuil, turned on Minority Report in the background, and scripted Marvel’s next summer event without any second drafts?” Easy. Inspired. But somewhere along the development process, things started to fall apart.
Bland and featuring too much Inhumans drama to be any fun, Civil War II: Even Civiler War sees a superpowered newbie able to predict the future. Some superheroes think that they should use his gifts to stop crimes before they happen. Others feel differently. Fisticuffs ensue. It’s just. So. Boring.
It’s bonkers to think that this was a story by Brian Michael Bendis, the comic book auteur who gave us some of Marvel’s defining series from the last 30 years – the contemporary introduction of Jessica Jones, House of M, All-New X-Men and a decade-plus of Ultimate Spider-Man, as well as its breakout star, Miles Morales. Then you remember that he’s also the guy who made the Age of Ultron summer event and the Guardians run that nobody liked and… hoo, boy. Secret Invasion. And that’s when you realize how unreasonable it is to expect any writer to bat a thousand, besides Tom King.
Anyway, the comic works as a solid follow-up to what happened in Disney’s Secret Invasion. This story also doesn’t care what happens to War Machine.
4: Pretty much anything with Sasquatch
As the list of characters that the MCU hasn’t adapted yet gets shorter and shorter, Alpha Flight stands, ever more eager, like the last kid waiting to get picked for dodgeball, just excited to be part of the team.
For the sake of journalistic integrity, I want to be clear: I love Alpha Flight. I read every story about Canada’s quiet, well-mannered answer to the Avengers that I could get my hands on growing up, from the John Byrne beginnings to that extreme ‘90s run where you could tell that the writers were watching a lot of X-Files, to the mid-2000s and the introduction of Centennial, the superhero whose Superman-style powers didn’t manifest until he was 96 and waking up from a coma. I would have kept reading, but once you’ve filled a long box with nothing but the adventures of a bunch of guys from Quebec, you sort of have to throw yourself a one-man intervention.
More to the point, Alpha Flight is – and I say this with love – a sweaty rat king, narratively speaking. For evidence, we turn to the life of Walter Langkowski, a staple of the team’s roster and mascot for their oddness. Since his debut in 1979, Langkowski has:
- Turned into a sasquatch
- Died
- Had his soul stuck in a robot
- Come back from the dead as a lady sasquatch
- Turned back into himself
- Died again
- Come back again again and taken over the body of a different superhero
and that’s with the team not even having their own monthly title for most of their existence. In short, Alpha Flight is the Canadian comic book team for messy drama sponges. It’s General Taxpayer Funded Hospital. It’s also unfilmably weird.
3: Eve of Destruction
Everybody loves Eve of Destruction. Remember? It was 2001? Marvel introduced a whole new team of X-Men! There was a guy whose skin was see-through and a bada-bing Sopranos guy and at the end of the first issue, Dazzler showed up and that was the big reveal? You don’t remember?
Well not being memorable isn’t exactly a barrier to entry for the MCU anymore. How many Skrull names did you retain after Secret Invasion? That’s what I thought. Eve of Destruction is going to fit right in.
2: Howard the Mouse Homophobe Duck
Let’s do a quick pass at some backstory: Howard the Duck creator Steve Gerber had a contentious relationship with Marvel Comics. Marvel Comics, not yet swallowed up by its future corporate overlords, had an equally contentious lawsuit with Disney over Howard the Duck looking too much like Donald Duck. Steve Gerber begrudgingly returned to Marvel to tell a new story about Howard the Duck, and to make sure that the character wasn’t overly similar to Donald Duck, he transformed him into a big, talking mouse with white gloves. There, problem solved.
The third volume of Howard the Duck is dripping with contempt. It’s also a proud entry in Marvel’s MAX imprint, which featured familiar IPs in very adult situations. An example: This series kicks off with Howard taking on a supervillain who is, no kidding, growing boy bands in cloning vats and then using special electrical crotch harnesses to measure whether or not gay men are attracted to them. We’d say “it was a different time,” but this series came out the same year as iTunes.
1: Original Sin (but do all of it)
It’s not that 2014’s Original Sin would make for the worst Marvel movie. There are parts of the story that would fit the MCU like an unnatural-looking CGI glove. The murder mystery at the core of the series has eight premium episodes of Disney Plus content written all over it.
No, what would make Original Sin an appropriately exhausting follow-up to Secret Invasion is if Disney adapted all of it. Not just the main throughline. Every single panel of all 64 books in a series that squirmed out over the course of half a year. Do all of it. Comic book nerds were expected to care about that time when J. Jonah Jameson felt bad about firing someone? Great, now so are Disney Plus subscribers. For one terrible summer, some of us shelled out $50 a month for access to gems like “Daredevil’s mom had postpartum depression.” If that doesn’t deserve its own spin-off in a world where someone pitched “Emilia Clarke gets bigger arms” as a dramatic climax and got a TV series out of it, nothing does.
