Until 2002 we had always been used to living the adventures of the Marvel characters only through comics but from that year on the Spider-Man movie radically changed things. It was a sort of watershed in how we understood super-heroes, who from that moment began to hit the big screen as well.
Spider-Man’s webs are the first big change
One of the most sensational things for fans of the first Spiderman film was the fact that Spider-Man could throw out webs directly from his wrists. For all the lovers of the comic book character, in fact, until that moment Peter Parker had only been able to create webs using devices that he had built.
The strong influence of the films on Marvel comics
From the release of Spectacular Spiderman onwards, we soon realised that the emerging Marvel film universe was inevitably going to influence the world of comics, only taking on its official, definitive form in 2008 with the release of the first Iron Man movie. After all, the dynamic could not have been any different, considering that the films were designed for very large audience, much larger than that for comics or reading. In this sense, it was much more logical to produce comics that adapted the events and the characters that the general public had already got to know on the big screen, thus trying to win more new readers.
Marvel today: a mutual exchange between films and comics
Today the situation seems do different, in that the largest income stream that fills the Marvel coffers is movies. This shows that the intuition of the early 2000s was right, and that the producers had already understood what was the right path to follow. Despite this, today the Marvel universe is very much a dynamic world in which ideas, elements and characters transfer easily from one medium to another.
Two contrasting examples of this bidirectional dynamic are Nick Fury and Phil Coulson. The former, who can be considered somewhat of a red thread running through all Marvel films, was introduced in 2001 as the head of SHIELD looking identical to how he would later on the big screen.
The latter, Phil Couslon, enters viewers’ hearts in 2008 with Iron Man, still as head of SHIELD, later getting killed by Loki in the Avengers movie of 2012. Lovers of the character didn’t even have time to feel down about his demise because he reappeared the same year in the comic Battle Scars, going on thereafter to figure actively in the Marvel paper universe.
Not only movies and comics, Marvel’s now on technology too, with Tribe!
All lovers of super heroes will not be disappointed to know that in addition to the world of cinema and comics, Marvel characters are also now in the technology world, too. You’ll find all the Tribe figures inspired by the Marvel characters in faithful 3D reproductions on USB sticks, and on smartphone accessories such as USB cables, battery chargers, headphones and earphones!
