Now that The Avengers: Age of Ultron has topped the US box office – with takings of a modest $187.7m (£124m) – and Marvel’s much loved characters are stealing the show everywhere, it might be time to take a look at what our favourite superheroes get up to behind the movie scenes:
- Marvel thought children might be afraid of Spider-Man
People are afraid of spiders, right? Because of this there was debate over the famous character as the big wigs at Marvel thought that readers would be scared of the superhero. He has, of course, since gone on to spin a nice web of money for the company with comics, films, TV shows and themed merchandise selling well – on everything from sites such as www.lamaloli.com to high street stores.
- Captain America can use Thor’s hammer
Remember that scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer, when all the heroes are gathered together and having a go at picking up the Mjolnir? And Thor looked a little nervous because Cap managed to move the hammer?
Well, in the comic The Mighty Thor #390 he actually uses the weapon to fight back a whole team of enemies. However he’s not the only character who has wielded the hammer throughout the Marvel universe timeline.
- Wolverine could have been called The Badger
Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it? Apparently when writer Len Wein was creating the character he wanted to design them with Canada in mind and narrowed down well-known Canadian animals to the badger and the wolverine.
Wein’s editor quickly decided that a wolverine would be a much better animal for a superhero to be based upon. There was however a superhero, created by Capital Comics, called Badger who had multiple personalities, was a master of all martial art forms and could talk to animals. Maybe Marvel missed a trick there?
- Black Widow and Daredevil were an item
In the comics pretty much every superhero has crossed paths at some point (with DC and Marvel cross overs even taking place) and when Natasha Romanova and Matt Murdock fought together romance developed and they became a crime fighting couple.
- J.A.R.V.I.S is a real person in the comic
We all know the calming, disembodied voice of Paul Bettany as J.A.R.V.I.S, Tony Stark’s virtual assistant in the Iron Man and Avengers movies (and of course SPOILER when he is recreated as Vision in Age of Ultron) but in the comics he is actually a real person called Edwin Jarvis and personal butler to the Stark family.
- Pepper Potts gets her own suit
In an interesting (but kind of predictable) turn of events in later Iron Man comics, Pepper Potts is caught in an explosion and ends up with shrapnel in her chest. Tony creates a magnet, much like his arc reactor, which stops the shrapnel entering her heart and Pepper goes on to have more cybernetic upgrades done on her.
She also discovers a suit Tony created for her, and takes on the new name and alias Rescue when wearing it to fight crime and rescue Stark from any tough situations he might find himself in.
- The 2002 reboot of Nick Fury was made to look like Samuel L. Jackson
Ever thought just how good a casting Samuel L. Jackson is for Nick Fury? Well, that might be because the writers actually based the character on the actor, they just didn’t seek his permission beforehand. Luckily, Jackson didn’t mind and was more than happy take on the role in the movies.
So now you know it’s time to get out there and share your knowledge with fellow Marvel fans, while we cross our fingers for a Black Widow movie and eagerly await Ant-Man in July this year and the next instalment of Captain America in 2016.
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