Girlz 'N' Games #52: Marvel meets the House of Mouse
This Girlz 'N' Games comic was inspired by the recent news that Disney has purchased Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion - which, out of interest, is just over half of what the House of Mouse paid for Pixar!
When the takeover news broke, many geeky types immediately started panicking about the fate of so many beloved comic books and characters. Would Disney impose their wholesome value system and make the comics, film adaptations and related merchandise more family friendly? Would they file down the edgier, violent characters into a bland, socially acceptable form, or erase them completely? Admittedly I had my concerns... until I read this article, and remembered I had already seen these cutesy monstrosities, and these, on Toys R Us shelves - which Marvel did all on their own, without any Disney influence. I mean, look what they did to Daredevil and the Punisher?! *shudders*
Anyway, with this new GNG comic I took the "sanitisation" fear and applied it to one of Marvel's more mature, darker heroes - Blade the vampire hunter. After all you really can't get more removed from Disney values than the blood rave/orgy that opened the first Blade movie.
Of course, in making Blade family friendly, we need a conventional (and tedious) family movie plot - overworked Dad loves his kids but ends up neglecting them for his job - as well as a family friendly cast. That meant dumping Wesley Snipes for Eddie Murphy, who, for some inexplicable reason, continues to appear in horribly juvenile dreck like Daddy Day Care, Meet Dave and Imagine That. For God's sake, this is the man who once gave us the hilarious, and definitely Adults Only Raw and Delirious! Oh, and instead of somber, squinty Kris Kristofferson as Blade's mentor, who is a more warm, reassuring presence than good ol' Dick Van Dyke? Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, anyone?
Anyway, in terms of the technical challenges of making this GNG comic a reality, I learned the following 2 important lessons:
1) Shiny leather coats are a bitch to get looking right in terms of lighting!
2) Without his trademark grin, and with his expressive eyes covered by sunglasses, Eddie Murphy looks surprisingly like Wesley Snipes. Give Murphy Snipes' Blade hairstyle and outfit and the situation is made only worse.
Anyway, if you are intrigued by the idea of, and enjoy, Disney/Marvel mashups, head here and here to check out some of the best, like this one:
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Comments
I hadn't thought about the sanitization of the traditional Marvel storylines. But that's a good angle. And, you're exactly right, what the hell happened to the Eddy Murphy from Raw!?
I mean, I know George Carlin settled down in his later life and did Thomas the Tank Engine voice overs (which are awesome, by the way), but he still did Kevin Smith movies, too. Murphy seems to have taken the reinvention of himself to a whole new level of bland.
As for Murphy, I thought for a while maybe he had signed some hellish contract that forced him to make such rubbish family films, but it looks like he makes them for ALL the studios, which rules out that theory. Maybe he's just got lazy and is happy to creatively slum it for a big fee (with the exception of Dreamgirls)? This said, Norbit is a quotable guilty pleasure of mine :P