Although comic book superheroes are some of the the biggest moneymanufacturers on the big and small screens lately, the creators who brought them to life in the first place rarely achieve more than a fraction of that financial success. But like Marvel The hawk and the winter soldier cooks a storm at Disney +, comic book writer Ed Brubaker has opened up about how big this disparity is.
Brubaker, alongside artist Steve Epting, colorist Frank D’Armata and lyricist Randy Gentile, formed the team behind the Captain America they run comics this caused Bucky Barnes to return from the grave apparently as the former assassin of the Red Soldier Winter Room in 2005, half a century since Barnes had been an active regular character in Marvel comics. But from that of Sebastian Stan iteration of Barnes he transformed into a winter soldier by the second Captain America film al Marvel Cinematic Uuniverse — and it is he now co-stars in his own eponymous program with Anthony Mackie’s Falcon at Disney + —Brubaker and his creative partners have been treated … well, less than ideally as his character has it shot at pop cultural stardom.
“I remember sitting there in the third movie … and just remembering that Jack Kirby ulcer growing in my stomach and saying,‘ That’s what I thought, boy, except a hundred times worse, so fuck you, “Brubaker recalled. watching Captain America: Civil War during a long, frank appearance on the Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin podcast Fatman Beyond (his appearance starts around 56:45 in the following video) earlier this week.
Brubaker opened his strange relationship with the Winter Soldier’s rise to the MCU, of how it would take weeks later Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘s Comic-Con ad before Marvel Studios contacted him with the news, rejecting a check for a thank-you credit Civil war which he described as “an insult” and how the writer makes more money with his brief cameo Winter soldierthe flashback sequences that not in the waste of having given life to the Winter Soldier. “Over the years, I started thinking‘ how come we won’t get anything for it? “We can get a ‘Thanks to’ or a credit, but these movies make billions of dollars and it looks like we have a bad deal.”
He has created an animus for the writer who is now hearing how Bucky is growing even more at the moment, co-starring in The hawk and the winter soldier at Disney +. “I think he could be the only person in America no excited about this program,“said Brubaker, who so far has not seen any of the series. “When I see ads from [The Falcon and the Winter Soldier], it makes me feel a little sick to my stomach. “
He added: “As a company, why would you do that? [Marvel] do you want it to be the way creators feel? When I work with people, I try to give them the best possible offer and, if something ends up being something bigger, I will try to adjust their offer … I want everyone I work with to feel good and they will be treated well. he treated well ”.
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Outside of his brief and recent remarks on The hawk and the winter soldier in your newsletter, Brubaker has kept relatively out of commenting on his feelings about the success of Marvel movies and their relationship with them. But he went on to explain that after an experience of drowning about to die led him to contemplate what would be left behind for his wife, he began to realize the great disparity between what he sees in his Marvel play, beyond his iconic career in the Captain America the comics, still printed today as a definitive print run of the current character, and the worldwide success of films inspired by his work.
“It’s ridiculous. That, having been a co-creator of the Winter Soldier … I shouldn’t be worried about providing for my wife if she dies right now,” the writer added. “He started to get the feeling that ‘this hurts,’ a little bit, to overlook that way.”
There’s a point to say that Brubaker and Epting didn’t create Bucky Barnes, the character: Bucky is much older than the Winter Soldier, as old as Captain America himself who appeared alongside Steve in the pages of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. Captain America comics # 1. But it’s hard to deny that Bub’s transformation of Brubaker and Epting isn’t critical to the version of the character we see played by Sebastian Stan in the Marvel movies and now The hawk and the winter soldier—And that, even if they are not direct creators, their vision of the character is certainly the one that is used much more than the previous iteration of Kirby and Simon.
“I’m not unhappy with my life, or that I’ve written this,” Brubaker noted. “I am super proud of all the work I did Reckless, a Cap, I don’t love mine X Men run but there are people who liked it. I loved working at Marvel, I had a great time. But at the same time, I also want to, you know … be a little more generous? “
It makes the already messy treatment of rights to comics increase with the way big publishers like Marvel and DC they have dealt with advertising messages for decades, even before the boom of the superhero movie, even more messy when you start to think not just who created these box office heroes, but that version of them is what you are doing off-page and into multimedia empires. But no matter how messy, with superheroes written it’s a conversation that needs to be held more publicly, and candid comments like Brubaker are just the beginning.
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