--- Alan Zabaro <azabaro@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> My little conspiracy theory: Captain America is a
> hard character to 
> write for in an ongoing series that ties into other
> titles' continuity 
> (he's different as a standalone character), mostly
> because he isn't 
> prone to being morally compromised or hated (unlike
> so many Marvel 
> characters since Spider Man). What Marvel's done
> here is to take Captain 
> America out of circulation while there isn't a movie
> deal for him (the 
> real moneymaker as far as Marvel's concerned*),
> which keeps bad 
> storylines from devaluing him. He'll be trotted back
> out when Marvel 
> thinks there's a movie deal (or TV deal, or
> something else where they 
> can profit on the character), and at that time
> they'll flood the market 
> with as much Cap stuff as possible in order to
> maximize profits.
> 

The MSNBC story I read mentioned in its very last line
that Marvel is... "developing a Captain America
movie."  I'm not sure how close to an actual film that
is, but Marvel has its own film division these days
that is supposed to release films starting in 2008.

And you're right in that Captain America doesn't
really fit with a lot of what Marvel is writing these
days.  He's the Star Spangled Boy Scout of Marvel's
super-hero community, and more and more Marvel seems
to be obsessed with stories about conspiracies and
other under-handed dealings.  Someone like Cap doesn't
really fit in with that sort of thing (at least not on
a regular basis).  Thus one of the reasons that I'm
not as surprised by this as I might have been.

Or another way of putting it using DC characters -
Cap's the Superman of a Marvel Universe that seems to
be wanting to emulate the atmosphere of Batman.

> * My understanding is that these days, Marvel's
> monthly comics are 
> basically break-even, slightly unprofitable, or very
> slightly 
> profitable. They basically continue to exist as IP
> laboratories, 
> generating either new character IP for Marvel to
> license, or new 
> storylines to increase the value of existing
> characters. It's kind of 
> sad, but these days Marvel is basically all about
> licensing its 
> intellectual property rather than about telling
> stories.
> 

According to the stories that pop up from time to
time, video games have taken the market share that was
once dominated by comic books.  Thus the need to
develop intellectual property to license in order for
the company to continue to make money.


junior




 
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