If you're among the handful of moviegoers who, at this point, have not yet seen "Avengers: Endgame," there will be a spoiler or two in a paragraph or two. Perhaps more spoilers and paragraphs than that. We'll see. But, in any case, this is your warning just in case you still want to see the movie (and, if you have no interest in comic-book movies, you may just want to skip this post altogether, with no offense on my part).
At any rate.
I discovered Marvel Comics when I was, at a guess from my slowly fading childhood memories, about seven or eight years old (or, about 1963 or 1964). I'd already been introduced to Superman and the DC Comics world, so I was already hooked on comic books. But there was something different about Marvel's books. I didn't know what it was, right away, until 1966 when my family moved to a new neighborhood and, for a time, I felt unmoored emotionally. A classmate in my new school shared some of his Marvel books, so I began to slowly read more of them. And soon, I was buying almost all of Marvel's magazines, every month. Ah, for the days when a dollar could get you eight--EIGHT--comic books, plus four cents that I could give back to my dad.
What I'd figured out at this point was why Marvel seemed different, and more attractive to me than other comic book companies. Like me, their characters were unmoored. They had super-powers, but not-so-super personal lives. Even worse, perhaps, their efforts to save and protect others were often misunderstood, and under-appreciated, by the society they attempted to help with their unique abilities. They seemingly could only find solace by themselves, for the most part.
And, memorably, with each other. Marvel created several super-groups that showed these heroes and heroines fighting and suffering together, sometimes breaking apart, but often coming back together. The Fantastic Four. The X-Men. And the Avengers, which, over time, have incorporated almost all of the other characters in the Marvel comic-book universe.
For about three years, I read almost everything Marvel put out, getting into their work so much, and especially their inventive artwork, that I would spend hours copying art by their best artists (my efforts fell very far short, but it was still fun). Then, I entered adolescence, and my interests changed just a bit. I gave up comic books altogether, but still followed Marvel's growth into a company that started to branch out into other media, with decidedly mixed results. I give props to Bill Bixby, Lou Ferrigno, and everyone else for "The Incredible Hulk" TV series, for focusing on the character's human dilemmas and not his rampages. But that illustrated a problem: for decades, the technical limits of the medium prevented TV and film producers from exploiting the full potential of the characters in a visually plausible way.
So when the year 2000 arrived and "X-Men" was released, I thought that it might be possible to revisit my childhood. Not only because the world of special effects had finally caught up to the world of comic-book art, not only because the film had A-list actors, but because the filmmakers took the themes of alienation and flawed personal lives and actually used them in a serious way in the movie. As did the later "X-Men," "Daredevil," and "Fantastic Four" films.
And on their heels came the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which Marvel used to launch its own studio. Twenty-two feature films, filled with my all-time favorite characters, telling a unified story across the course of more than a decade.
I was excited, at first, but also worried. I wasn't worried about how the films or the characters would look. But I was worried about how faithful they would be to the characters, their concerns, the way they would interact with each other and the non-super-heroic characters in their lives. I guess that, to a degree that surprised even me, the advent of the MCU managed to wake up the 10-year-old that still resided deep inside of me.
Now that the 22-film arc is complete with "Endgame," I can honestly say that the 10-year-old is feeling very happy for the most part. I can't honestly say that I agree with all of their choices, and with the leaving-out of some aspects of the books I read. Nor am I completely happy with the deaths (and, in one case, the transformation) of several beloved characters. But, to my complete and utter surprise, they moved me in a way I wouldn't have expected in over 50 years. All while somehow telling a completely unified story.
To paraphrase a line from one of my all-time favorite films, "Lawrence of Arabia": before they did it, I've had said it couldn't be done.
I don't know what lies ahead for the MCU. But, whatever it may be, my inner 10-year-old and I will continue to look forward to enjoying it.
'NUFF SAID!
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