Avengers Assemble: But more women next time, hmm?

This past weekend The Avengers went down in comic-book movie history.  It broke box-office records, making over $200 million in just one weekend.  More importantly, it was a success in terms of its goals-- bringing together the Big Damn Heroes of the Marvel Universe from their individual movies and teaming them up in a big, satisfying way. 

So it goes without saying that Avengers 2 is a lock.  They even threw in the obvious Sequel Bait in the credits sequence.  I'm just hoping they lock down the details relatively soon, because I'm already excited.  Unfortunately, I can't see them getting it together earlier than Summer 2015.

If I have one complaint about Avengers, it is that it comes too close to the Smurfette Principle: the team is Black Widow and five guys.  This is not Joss Whedon's fault, I'm sure.  Knowing his work, he probably did a lot of fast talking just to get Maria Hill in among the cast. But I know that the team of the movie was essentially handed down by studio edict.  So, hopefully, Avengers 2 is going to rectify that.  Though, reasonably, there are only so many New Avengers that can be added, and they aren't all going to be women.

It seems like they really might get the Ant-Man movie off the ground, so he would be a likely add.  With him, it's pretty easy to add Wasp to the team (if she isn't a key part of the Ant-Man movie, which she totally should be).  And it wouldn't hurt to maintain her original background, if for no other reason than to be a counterpoint to Black Widow: a socialite heiress with a solid head on her shoulders.  She's not Paris Hilton; she's Ivana Trump.  If, you know, Ivana had superpowers. 

My other key choice would be Ms. Marvel, aka Capt. Carol Danvers.  Since it's looking like Avengers 2 will be going cosmic, her origin of being an Air Force pilot who is empowered when exposed to alien technology would fit in quite nicely.  Plus Ms. Marvel ought to be (but isn't really) Marvel's equivalent of Wonder Woman: the universe's most notable female hero.  Frankly, the Marvel Universe doesn't have someone would quite fits that bill.  Black Widow isn't it.  Nor is Invisible Woman, Elektra, Phoenix or Storm.  Let's give Ms. Marvel a proper showcase.

I would personally love to see Mockingbird show up in Avengers 2, and she has the advantage of fitting into the world of the Marvel movie-verse quite easily.  SHIELD agent turned hero, with strong emotional ties to Hawkeye, and like Hawkeye and Black Widow, she's a highly skilled "normal" instead of superpowered. Though it works best if she and Hawkeye are married, so unlike having a strong professional bond that he and Natasha have in the movie, they can be a hot couple who kicks ass.  The Mr. and Mrs. Smith of the Marvel Universe.  Of course, her actual comic-book background is pretty damn close to movie-verse's background for Black Widow.  So close as to seem redundant.  And while I'm a big fan, she's a bit too obscure.  (Though, apparently, they are considering an Alias-like show starring her for ABC Family, that will be tied to the Marvel Movie-verse.  So, you never know.)

Those would be my choices.  Many fans seem to be pushing for Scarlet Witch, though I respectfully disagree.  I understand the reasoning: she was the second woman to join the team, she's a long part of Avengers history.  But given her backstory is entangled with elements that the Marvel Movie-verse can't use (mutants and Magneto), and you'd HAVE to bring Quicksilver along with her... eh.  It seems too much.

Breaking the glass and hitting the Big Red Button

One of the Big Stories out there this week is how DC Comics is apparently planning a hard reboot of their entire universe, re-launching everything as #1 with 52 different series.

Whenever news like this comes out, I try to approach it with a healthy dose of skeptical optimism.  It could prove really interesting, or it could fail horribly, but I want to believe that it'll prove interesting. 

For me, the most interesting aspect is the fact that they are going all in.  When Marvel did Heroes Reborn or their Ultimate line, they didn't stop publishing their regular universe.  They were both toe-in-the-water experiments, with varying degrees of success.  DC, in some ways, had intended to do exactly this back in 1986 with Crisis of Infinite Earths, giving an in-story reason for a hard reboot.  The problem was there wasn't full commitment to the hard reboot, and there certainly wasn't a cohesive editorial vision behind it.  Here it seems that DC is doing a full jump-out-of-the-plane bold move that could soar or crash, but they aren't hedging their bets.

Now, for me this sort of idea can work a lot better for DC than it would for Marvel, because when you come down to it, DC's characters are more iconic.  The proof comes when you try to parallel the DC characters to Marvel counterparts: the main DC characters tend to embody a iconic Big Idea, and the equivalent on the Marvel side is somewhere in the C-list.  The Flash is super-speed, while Quicksilver is a superfast guy who is more known for being a creepy, possessive anti-hero.  Aquaman is the ocean-based hero, while Submariner is... more known for being a creepy, possessive anti-hero.  (I would argue the only major DC hero that has a solid Marvel counterpart is Green Arrow, who matches Hawkeye, both being definitive bow-wielding heroes in their universes.)

My point being, the DC universe is one where you can boil down the characters to their core, restart them and do something very interesting with them.  That was the core idea behind Marvel's Squadron Supreme and Supreme Power. (And it should be noted, DC has never really successfully done the same sort of treatment with Marvel's characters.)

So can this idea work, and be a huge success?  Absolutely.  Will it?  Hard to say.

I have to admit, I do have a twinge of jealousy towards the writers on these projects.  The opportunity to write these iconic characters, but starting from scratch?  That's potent.  If I had my druthers, do you know who I'd want to take on in that context?  Aquaman.  My big idea there would be to change Atlantis into a far more complicated political landscape-- many nations with loose alliances and straining relations.  Cast Aquaman as the Ned Stark in an underwater Game of Thrones, if you will.  Throw in some environmentalism and intrusions from the surface world, and set the whole thing on a low simmer.  Oh, yeah.  That would be fun to write.