Board 8 > MCU General 10 - I Am Groot

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's really the unquantifiables, too. Googling Avengers and getting Ant-Man right at the top. Looking for comics at your library and finding Avengers classic editions, Avengers Forever, Ultimates. Easier access to animated films featuring Ant-Man like Ultimates.

Definitive opinions care not for the facts apparently

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Avengers EMH was very popular and only got canceled to put out a show that aligned with the MCU feel and characters, like they did with the rest of their cartoon properties.

Like Spectacular Spider-Man. That and EMH were our greatest losses, a deep cut that still pains me.

The MCU had to make sacrifices I guess ;_;

Spectacular Spider-Man was a truly phenomenal serialized account of the Peter high school years. I think it was absolutely tremendous!

Josh Keaton has and always will be the voice of Spider-Man whenever I read his comics.

I refuse to let my mind replace him with Yuri Lowenthal!

Man Spectacular Spider-Man is another incredible one. They were both victims of the MCU and the idea from those dopes Man of Action or whatever who claimed that kids can't follow overarching plots and can only handle self contained one episode stories.

Edit: Can we all agree that Ultimate Spider-Man was very not good?

It's forever annoying to me how society continues to underestimate the intelligence of children. And in their formative years, wouldn't you WANT shows to challenge a kid's patience and ability to pay attention? ...I might start getting into conspiracy theories if I continue this train of thought so I'll just end this now by saying Ultimate Spider-Man was a disgrace.

I mean whatever guys.

I'm just saying

1. Ant-Man wasn't mainstream relevant before the MCU to any remotely notable degree.
2. Among comic book nerds, which are a huge minority in and of themselves, he isn't vastly better known than Shang Chi.

The scarlet appreciation squad teaming up to repeat the same thing when your silver bullet is supporting roles in a few (imo obscure) animated series is not convincing. Next you're gonna tell me Silver Samurai is super well known cause he was in a few Marvel games and an X-Men episode.

But who cares you don't need to convince me. Just move on with your lives.

I don't think anyone is arguing Ant-Man was necessarily mainstream relevant before the MCU, just that he's notably more known than Shang-Chi, which wasn't hard to accomplish. Notably more known doesn't mean he's A-List.

But you've apparently been surveying a bunch of people about whether they knew either character before their movies, so I guess you've got the definitive evidence there.

Lopen posted...

The scarlet appreciation squad

From the beginning of this conversation, you keep calling me out by name, and I'm really not sure what the hell I've done to earn all of this enmity. But the half-hearted apology you offered earlier? It's not accepted.

Lopen posted...

I mean whatever guys.

I'm just saying

1. Ant-Man wasn't mainstream relevant before the MCU to any remotely notable degree.
2. Among comic book nerds, which are a huge minority in and of themselves, he isn't vastly better known than Shang Chi.

The scarlet appreciation squad teaming up to repeat the same thing when your silver bullet is supporting roles in a few (imo obscure) animated series is not convincing. Next you're gonna tell me Silver Samurai is super well known cause he was in a few Marvel games and an X-Men episode.

But who cares you don't need to convince me. Just move on with your lives.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/9/6/AAPhobAADbCs.jpg

Lopen posted...

1. Ant-Man wasn't mainstream relevant before the MCU to any remotely notable degree.
2. Among comic book nerds, which are a huge minority in and of themselves, he isn't vastly better known than Shang Chi.

Nobody was arguing he was mainstream relevant, we were proving that Ant-Man was a more well known name than Shang-Chi. Even among comic book nerds, most of us didn't know who the hell he was before the movie. Whereas we sure as hell were plenty familiar with Ant-Man considering he has been a mainstay Avenger for most of the team's history.

Note that "more well known" does not equal "everyone in the world" as you seem to be taking it. He was a C-List hero, Shang-Chi was E-List.

Shang-Chi wasn't even on the list, that's how much of a nobody he ultimately was.

Ant-Man at least makes the list.

I don't even know how I knew of Ant-Man before his MCU debut, but I did. Had never heard of Shang-Chi. When him and Eternals were announced, I thought "Shang-Chi and the Eternals" was the name of a single movie for a long time.

SO I finally got the chance to watch She-Hulk ep 1. My issue is this character is just blatantly free of any consequences of her powers at all - which makes me think episode 2 is going to be that she gets sued by Titania. She was just such a brat that I have to assume the idea is going to be that we double down on the lawyering and how it will affect her new identity.

And I have no idea why anyone is upset about the Captain America virgin thing. Seems like exactly the sort of puerile banter that normal people have with their friends!

Lopen posted...

I mean whatever guys.

I'm just saying

1. Ant-Man wasn't mainstream relevant before the MCU to any remotely notable degree.
2. Among comic book nerds, which are a huge minority in and of themselves, he isn't vastly better known than Shang Chi.

The scarlet appreciation squad teaming up to repeat the same thing when your silver bullet is supporting roles in a few (imo obscure) animated series is not convincing. Next you're gonna tell me Silver Samurai is super well known cause he was in a few Marvel games and an X-Men episode.

But who cares you don't need to convince me. Just move on with your lives.

What is this? Shang-chi is like, D list. Ant-man is literally a founding member of the Avengers.... even if you could argue their comic appearances are similar (they aren't even close), there was tons of articles appearing beginning in 2012 being like "akshually some of the founding main avengers aren't even here! it's Ant-man and the Wasp!"

Lopen posted...

1. Ant-Man wasn't mainstream relevant before the MCU to any remotely notable degree.

Iron Man wasn't mainstream relevant outside of a Black Sabbath song before the MCU.

Lopen posted...

1. Ant-Man wasn't mainstream relevant before the MCU to any remotely notable degree.
2. Among comic book nerds, which are a huge minority in and of themselves, he isn't vastly better known than Shang Chi.

1 is fine. 2 is what everyone is giving you a hard time about.

Lopen posted...

The scarlet appreciation squad

Dude if someone was a prick to you for no reason then I'd react similarly. You were out of line for a simple disagreement on a subject you clearly didn't know anything about. Scarlet has always been a good dude though. I don't know what issue you'd have with him but this is just a weird reason to get on his case over.

Nobody was even saying Ant-Man was well-known. We were just explaining how comparing Ant-Man's mainstream notoriety to Shang-Chi's is bonkers.

Lopen posted...

2. Among comic book nerds, which are a huge minority in and of themselves, he isn't vastly better known than Shang Chi.

i'll give you that people in this topic are downplaying shang-chi's popularity a little bit. i wouldn't say "most comic book nerds have no idea who he is." i'm only a casual comic fan and i knew him before the movie, like i said. he had a pretty long-running solo title. he teamed up with spider-man in the '70s. he's obscure but he's not, like, fatman the human flying saucer level obscure.

that being said, there's really no question that ant-man is better known than shang-chi. ant-man is a founding member of the avengers (as was said) who's been around since 1962. shang-chi isn't.

i guess you could argue "well ant-man is better known but not vastly better known" but i'm not interested in splitting hairs like that.

(also i'm not a scarlet appreciation squad member)

MoogleKupo141 posted...

its kind of a stretch to cal the League popular characters like the Avengers unless youre posting from 1900 or something

the youth of post-9/11 America were not going crazy for Dorian Gray and Captain Nemo. come see all your favorite public domain characters from your local library team up wasnt an inherently compelling sales pitch

I more meant that League was probably the closest thing to The Avengers before The Avengers. That being said, the Avengers were B-list at best in terms of popularity before the MCU.

Heck look at how the MCU is basically the only shared universe still functioning all that well to see how hard it is to maintain something like it. The next most popular modular franchise of a similar fashion is probably Warner Bros.'s Monsterverse! Speaking of which and not entirely on topic, but how on earth did WB manage that better than the DCEU? They at least gave Godzilla two movies and Kong one movie before jumping into their crossover.

I'm someone who has never read a comic book, and didn't know that the Avengers were a group of superheroes prior to the MCU movies. I had previously heard of Ant-Man, and thought Shang Chi was a new original character.

HanOfTheNekos posted...

Iron Man wasn't mainstream relevant outside of a Black Sabbath song before the MCU.

See on the one hand I want to drop it on the other hand people making highly intelligent comments like this make me want to keep going.

But I'll drop it.

I mean, that wouldn't help your argument though. Iron Man and Ant-Man were about the same level of prominence before the MCU began. Shang-Chi was not. Why can Ulti admit when he was wrong and apologize when you can't?

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Heck look at how the MCU is basically the only shared universe still functioning all that well to see how hard it is to maintain something like it.

It shouldn't be that difficult to maintain, at least from my perspective. MCU has a smart person who's familiar with the source material (Fiege) to keep everything together and mostly coherent. This is something created by people with good minds and knowledge of the characters they're portraying.

Everyone else sees the success of the MCU and thinks "oh we can have a shared universe too!" and then they don't consider that it takes more than brand recognition and multiple characters to make something good. They consistently ignore creativity and imagination which renders their products bland and uninteresting, regardless of whether they use a popular character or not. Their policy is money first and only money, they couldn't care less about making movies that people would actually cherish. They're only interested in taking any shortcut they can find to make something that will at least perform well enough to justify the already low budget the film was provided.

Not to say Disney's main concern isn't money as well, but they at least care enough to hire creative people. They got in over their heads with Star Wars and they've been scrambling with what to do there, but the problem is they have nothing to really go on, as the MCU does with the century of comic stories that they can easily draw inspiration from. Which is why DC movies have no excuse to be as bad as they are, since there's just as many comics to pull from their history as well. But no one among WB apparently has ever even read a comic book before (I know this is exaggeration but not too far off from the truth).

Wow never expected I'd be responding to an LMS post in earnest but here we are

CassandraCain posted...

Iron Man and Ant-Man were about the same level of prominence before the MCU began

See I really think when you argue this we're not even close to the same wavelength or experiences on this when you say things like that.

What I need to determine is if I'm an outlier or if y'all are just being ridiculous to try and win an argument because I was mean.

I would not at any point in my life have called Iron Man remotely obscure, and to compare him to Ant-Man is ridiculous to me. He's not Spider-Man Batman or Superman but he's on the A-tier below them. People know who Iron Man is without any interest in comics whatsoever. He bleeds into enough toys, video games, cartoons, etc and was a big enough deal a long time ago that a lot of parents know him by name, which means their kids will know him by name.

B-tier would be... most superheroes that got movies that weren't in the core avengers films, the x-men, or the big names of the justice league. Guys like Black Panther, Elektra, Daredevil, Deadpool, etc.

Ant-Man on the other hand I'd put firmly in the C-Tier. Known but you kinda need to be into comics to have any idea of who he is. No crossover appeal to casuals at all, at best they've heard of the name in passing.

I am not going to say I've done an extensive case study on literally everyone I've known but I will say I had some trouble getting people to go see Ant-Man with when none of the MCU films to that point had I had that problem. And that led to a lot of discussion of "oh Marvel is overdoing it now who the heck is Ant-Man" and yeah the only people who knew who he was were actual comic readers. And those same people knew who Shang Chi was. Again, just my experiences, but very conclusive tale told that I can't just throw them out.

Okay, Iron Man was indeed more well known than Ant-Man, but neither were obscure. Shang-Chi was. Your experiences may have been different and that's great, but it doesn't change that in general Ant-Man still had more exposure than Shang-Chi ever did. Calling those two the same level of obscure is just as bad as saying Iron Man and Ant-Man were the same level of prominence, both are wrong.

If Iron Man was B-List, Ant-Man was C-List, and Shang-Chi was still nothing.

I'll fully admit that part of the reason I brought up the DCEU is because I wound up watching a good bit of the ending battles of Batman v. Superman while channel surfing. The action itself was pretty cool but I still got the vibe the movie was trying to accomplish in one film what it took the MCU a whole phase to do.

Comic readers really only got exposed to Shang-Chi for the most part because Marvel did a sudden push for him I want to say 5 years ago in anticipation of his film.

Iron Man was far more popular than Ant-Man prior to the films. It's clear through the sales of clothes and the cultural permeation of the name in the vernacular. He was a solid B-List hero. But Ant-Man, ironically enough, was at the other end of the bell curve of the B-List as well.

No one has at all been saying that even comic nerds didn't know Shang-Chi. Of course they did. Maybe not all of them - if you're, say, a diehard DC guy, maybe not. But Ant-Man is absolutely not C-Tier. Sales dictate that, use in other media dictates that. For comics, Ant-Man was well and truly in the realm of characters. Avengers sales reached 300,000 with reprints for single issues with Ant-Man in the title. Shang-Chi, as far as I've seen in analysis of old figures, never cracked 70k outside of maybe a first issue. That's apples to oranges.

Now, how does that translate to modern day? Well, it's like saying Walking Dead was popular before Walking Dead came out. Shang Chi was on that level. Walking Dead barely scraped by with 50k in sales and while it was known in the industry as a sleeper hit once the public market found it, that's what it was. What AMC did with Walking Dead is akin to what Marvel did to Shang Chi - but Marvel is far more impressive because Walking Dead was swept up in a popular fad of the time, while Shang Chi was summoning up a decades-dormant kung fu fad.

Don't get caught up in your friends or tiers of A, B and C. Look at the numbers. Look at the cultural permanence of being a star of one of the five most popular comic teams even at the nadir of the Avengers' success during the bankruptcy era. Look at the millions of eyeballs from cartoons, look at the millions of eyeballs from games. Shang Chi just has none of that to his name.

There's a reason why I don't point out personal anecdotes, and the reason is because while your fake friends are going around reinforcing your story, the internet narrative from film websites, Twitter, etc., were all asking where Ant-Man and the Wasp were in Avengers back in 2012 - it was a natural question, given that everyone was looking up the Avengers at the time and expecting the founding members.

I think Iron Man was A-List, a wealth of superheroes between the two were B-List, Ant-Man was C-List, and Shang-Chi was I guess D-List if you want to split hairs (I do think Shang Chi's prominence is being underplayed and Ant-Man's overplayed here, but whatever, agree to disagree)

But anything C-List the MCU brand is doing 95% of the heavy lifting anyway is my point. We're not breaking some sort of forbidden ground by having a Shang Chi movie. We've already explored that frontier with Ant-Man. Stretching the limits of the branding just a hair farther isn't some sort of madness.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

I'll fully admit that part of the reason I brought up the DCEU is because I wound up watching a good bit of the ending battles of Batman v. Superman while channel surfing. The action itself was pretty cool but I still got the vibe the movie was trying to accomplish in one film what it took the MCU a whole phase to do.

That's absolutely correct, and I think every single person who watched the film said the same thing five years ago when the film came out. This isn't a hidden story. DC thought it could reverse-engineer its Avengers. The thing is? It can. James Gunn is doing it right now with a Suicide Squad cottage industry. It won't have the returns of the Avengers, but it's smart thinking to some extent. Starting with Peacemaker, an unabashed success, and moving now to Bloodsport, I think it could create a loyal fanbase who enjoy the harder-edged darker humor.

scarletspeed7 posted...

and the reason is because while your fake friends are going around reinforcing your story

This is why I was a dick to you by the way

You often do this kind of crap to people you think you're smarter than when in reality your "increased knowledge" means mostly dick in this discussion.

But I'm the bad guy when I do this to you because you have a gang of people you ran a D&D campaign for to push your narrative

scarletspeed7 posted...

No one has at all been saying that even comic nerds didn't know Shang-Chi. Of course they did.

uh

CassandraCain posted...

Shang-Chi was completely unheard of by anyone, even comic book readers.

Lopen posted...

This is why I was a dick to you by the way

You often do this kind of crap to people you think you're smarter than when in reality your "increased knowledge" means mostly dick in this discussion.

But I'm the bad guy when I do this to you because you have a gang of people you ran a D&D campaign for to push your narrative

Lmao "You made a cheeky insult to me after I insulted you, which is exactly why I insulted you in the first place!" is quite a stretch.

Marvel in the public eye before 2008 was pretty much Spider-Man/X-Men >>> Hulk >>>> Fantastic Four >>> who tf cares. I mean, based on cinema at the time, Daredevil and Blade were both more in the public eye than Iron Man as characters.

Generally, people had still heard of him, but again, the property people were most familiar with that featured him, was a metal song.

Lopen posted...

Stretching the limits of the branding just a hair farther isn't some sort of madness.

But that's the point. It goes from the AVENGERS brand to the MARVEL brand. With Ant-Man, it's all adjacent to that key team component. With Shang-Chi, you've veered so far away from the foundational pillar that it's solely about Marvel name recognition and solid trailer work. And this is where the disconnect comes from. Marvel gambled big with Eternals and Shang-Chi, and both during the pandemic era. Quite honestly, that's far, far, far more impressive than reliance on founding Avengers. You'd actually have a better time making this argument with Captain Marvel than with Ant-Man, but again, even Captain Marvel had far more brand recognition thanks to being an almost lifelong Avenger herself.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Lmao "You made a cheeky insult to me after I insulted you, which is exactly why I insulted you in the first place!" is quite a stretch.

He didn't do it because I insulted him, he did it because he thinks because he reads a lot of comics that his opinion on mainstream appeal of comic book characters means more than other people.

Lopen posted...

He didn't do it because I insulted him, he did it because he thinks because he reads a lot of comics that his opinion on mainstream appeal of comic book characters means more than other people.

Sure. And not because you're being an obstinate dick.

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

uh

Missed that post, but I will disagree with it.

what is happening

MCU Topic: Civil War

scarletspeed7 posted...

Missed that post, but I will disagree with it.

yeah, posts like that are what i have a problem with. there's a lot of posts in this topic saying stuff like "ant-man is 1000x bigger than shang-chi," "shang-chi is nothing," etc. you can easily point out that lopen is wrong without being super hyperbolic like that.

i'd say shang-chi was bigger than the guardians of the galaxy before their respective movies came out tbqh. i personally was a lot more familiar with the former (though i was aware of the latter's existence).

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

yeah, posts like that are what i have a problem with. there's a lot of posts in this topic saying stuff like "ant-man is 1000x bigger than shang-chi," "shang-chi is nothing," etc. you can easily point out that lopen is wrong without being super hyperbolic like that.

i'd say shang-chi was bigger than the guardians of the galaxy before their respective movies came out tbqh. i personally was a lot more familiar with the former (though i was aware of the latter's existence)

I think the Guardians are a toss-up. They'd had more recent comics exposure, but what does that matter to the mainstream, right? What the Guardians had was easily marketable, in my estimation. But that's a really good point in terms of going all-out on a nothing brand.

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

i'd say shang-chi was bigger than the guardians of the galaxy before their respective movies came out tbqh. i personally was a lot more familiar with the former (though i was aware of the latter's existence).

I would actually agree with this, but much like Blade (who I don't think was a big enough name to get a film series either at the time) I feel like Guardians of the Galaxy as a title and how it was marketed doesn't immediately feel like a "Super-hero film" and sci-fi film with good effects and cool looking characters is marketable enough on its own-- it doesn't use MCU goodwill as a crutch because it doesn't have to.

I mean, our anecdotal experiences are all going to be different, but if you remove comics readers, then I don't think the 1000x figure is hyperbolic. We're talking about people who may have watched cartoons, played games, but didn't actually get into the actual reading themselves - even if Ant-Man is not as universally known as Spider-Man, he still would have plenty of people recognize the name. Shang Chi, very very little in comparison.

But if you loop in everybody then yeah, I think there are enough people familiar with Marvel as a whole that would knock that number down.

Either way, I don't have the data to back it up. But hey, it's also possible that 1000x is too low of a figure as well.

Lopen posted...

This is why I was a dick to you by the way

You often do this kind of crap to people you think you're smarter than when in reality your "increased knowledge" means mostly dick in this discussion.

But I'm the bad guy when I do this to you because you have a gang of people you ran a D&D campaign for to push your narrative

Actually most of the people who called you a dick aren't from his D&D group.
Further proof of definitive opinions being not so definitive

Go back into the gutter D&D goon

Them's fighting words

you did it now, now I have to give my own opinion

I did know Ant-Man before his movie, I STILL do not know who Shang Chi is despite them having a movie easily streamable right now

That's at least more reasonable than the people saying "Iron Man is just that Black Sabbath song bro!!!"