Comics connections

When I got back from seeing Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Captain Marvel, the thing I wanted most was to talk to someone who has read comics relevant to the movies. I didn't even know where to go for that.

I swear I have real-life friends who read comics, but generally not my closest friends, plus I had just had several hours of respite time and needed to return to my care-giving life. There's a reason that most of what I want to say comes out in the blog.

There is still not just the blog. I can get to that in a roundabout way, but let me say a little about the movies without giving a full review of them, or really even any spoilers.

I liked both. I liked Captain Marvel more. At least it pumped me up more.

I have read a lot of Captain Marvel, much more than the various iterations of Spider-Man. That could be part of it. I think that people who have not read the books should still be able to enjoy the movies, but they are definitely much richer if you have the background.

Captain Marvel was also made much better by the inclusion of a cat (spoiler coming) or something that mostly looks and acts like a cat anyway. That is partly my love of cats - which extended to Chewy in the comics - but they also made great use of Goose. For those wondering about the name change, this is probably not something that is going to happen, but having this be Goose may leave room for there to be a Chewy somewhere.

This did a good job of honoring what has come before while still leaving room for the future. Kit Renner is a young girl who is Captain Marvel's greatest fan and she was not in this movie. Based on her backstory, it would not make sense for her to be in this movie. However, there was another relationship in the movie that echoed it, both hitting those emotional chords, and also giving another future possibility that makes sense. There were things that reminded me of Kit and Marina, and there were things that reminded me of Helen. With so much from years of comics needing to go into a movie, that ability to evoke quickly is important. That is connecting on an emotional level, and there was a lot of that going on, even though I was there as a solo person.

There were little things, like Brian Bendis and Steve Ditko popping up in Miles Morales' phone contacts. There were big things, like the Stan Lee cameos and a pre-credits tribute to him before Captain Marvel. Someone a couple of rows ahead of me said she was going to cry right then. I felt a little misty myself.

I felt a connection through that which is not as concrete as reading comics with my friends (which has never been a regular activity for me) but was still meaningful. It sent me back to 2013.

I have not started going over my old music reviews yet, but I have thought about what is coming, and how many amazing things happened as I was getting started. That was a critical time for comics too, and a big part of that was attending the International Comic Arts Forum that year.

The main attendees were creators and academics, That meant a lot of people already knew each other, or if they didn't had plenty in common. I was neither, so was a bit of an oddball there. I wasn't completely outside of it either.

There were at least six creators there whose work I was already familiar with, and three creators whose work I sought out after. I talked to all of them.

I talked to college students studying comics and people working in comics. I am not sure that we exchanged name (I know I don't remember their names). I still remember the conversations, though, because we were talking about comics we had in common and that we'd had strong responses to and shared thoughts about. Without any kind of permanent relationship, we still had a sense of community there.

I have seen comments about the movies, and will see more. Sometimes I may reply, or post my own, depending on how it feels. That happens on line and it even happens in person, sometimes, often unexpectedly. I am sure many people will see Captain Marvel who have never read Captain Marvel.

There is a wider world out there, and sometimes it feels pretty small.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-global-comics-village.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/06/social-construction-or-broader-world-of.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-power-of-kindness.html