Jack Kirby – Page 4 – Through the Shattered Lens

One great thing Marvel has done this year for San Diego Comic-Con 2011 was the begin the major media and ad campaign for their 2012 summer tentpole blockbuster in The Avengers. This is a superhero team project which has been 3-4 years in the making. It all began with 2008’s Iron Man and finally concludes with 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger. In-between these two films we got other members of Marvel Comics’ iconic Avengers team make their introduction through their own films and/or make appearances in all the films like Thor, the Hulk, Nick Fury, Black Widow, Hawkeye and SHIELD.

One of the coolest things to come out of the Marvel Studios/Paramount Pictures part of Comic-Con 2011 was the release of the concept art posters for not just The Avengers but for all the characters who make up the team. Each character poster shows each team member (even SHIELD gets their own with Nick Fury leading the agents) in a striking pose with background images showing scenes from past films which comprises what is being called “Marvel’s Cinematic Universe”. That term is just one way of saying that these films do not follow the timelines set down in the primary Marvel Comics universe (Marvel-616).

I’m not exactly sure who was the artist responsible for these concept art, but they’re great and brings to mind such cover artwork as Alex Ross, Drew Struzan and Dave Dorman. I’m sure someone over on Twitter or on Facebook will be able to figure out just who this awesome artist is. Some of the details in the background should make the comic book fans quite happy like the Quinjet in the Black Widow poster and the SHIELD Helicarrier which appear in both the Hawkeye and SHIELD posters.

With Comic-Con winding down the hype machine for The Avengers will definitely be on full swing with New York Comic-Con this October up next. Captain America: The First Avengers is now out in the theaters earning universal acclaim. The Avengers will assemble for a May 4, 2012 release date.

Source: Marvel

The summer of 2011 has been called the Summer of Superhero Films. In early May we had Marvel Studios’ Thor film premiere to good reviews and it has had a certain level of success (though not the level of The Dark Knight success rabid fanboys and jaded film bloggers think every comic book-based film should be doing). Then next up was the fourth X-Men film from Twentieth Century Fox by Matthew Vaughn that seem to reboot the franchise from it’s downward spiral begun by the third film and the Wolverine origins film. This film garnered even higher praise than Thor and many saw it as equaling or surpassing the X2. While it’s box-office success has been good it didn’t make the sort of money previous films in the franchise have made in years past. Then we come to the recently released Green Lantern from Warner Brothers and DC Entertainment.

This film was to be the next crown jewel to join DC’s successful Batman film franchise and iconic Superman series which seems to be the only DC properties to have had a successful live-action adaptation. While the film did very good in it’s first weekend the reviews of the film range from “ok and fun” at best to “downright awful” at its worst. All three films have huge budgets and, most likely, all three will be a profit for their studios, but not runaway hits.

Maybe the public has begun to tire of superhero films as a cause for the less than cosmic box-office returns. One other reason could be that too many people have been blinded by the massive box-office success of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight that every superhero film must now be compared to that one fair or not. This makes the job much harder for Marvel Studios’ second film of the summer, Captain America: The First Avenger, as that film looks to cement the foundation for next summer’s major blockbuster ensemble superhero film, The Avengers.

I don’t see Captain America doing TDK level money, but early screenings of the film has earned it some major positive buzz that had been missing from Thor. That early positive buzz and this latest trailer which really showcases the action of this period piece of a superhero film should help push Captain America to be a success no matter if it makes 200million dollars domestic or more.

One thing I’m sure of is that this latest trailer should be more people excited for Captain America: The First Avenger when it comes out on July 22, 2011.