Despite the fact that comic book superheroes are one of the biggest moneymakers on screens big and small lately, the creators who brought them to life in the first place rarely get more than a fraction of that financial success in their path. But like Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier a storm boils on Disney +, comics artist Ed Brubaker has opened up about how great that inequality really is.
Brubaker, alongside artist Steve Epting, colourist Frank D’Armata and letterer Randy Gentile, formed the team behind the Captain America strips run which saw Bucky Barnes return from seemingly behind the grave as the former Red Room hit man Winter Soldier in 2005, half a century ago that Barnes was an active regular character in Marvel comics. But since Sebastian Stan’s iteration of Barnes was transformed into the Winter Soldier for the second time Captain America movie in the Marvel C.inematic Universe – and is now co-starring in his own self-titled show with Anthony Mackie’s Falcon on Disney + —Brubaker and his fellow creatives have been treated … well, less than ideal as their character has shot to rock cultural stardom
“I remember sitting there in the third movie … and when I remembered this Jack Kirby ulcer growing in my stomach and saying, ‘This is what it felt like, boy, except a hundred times worse, so fuck you , ‘”recalled Brubaker Captain America: Civil War during a long, candid performance on Kevin Smith and Marc Bernardin’s podcast Fatman Beyond (his performance starts at around 56:45 in the video below) earlier this week.
Brubaker opened up about his strange relationship with the rise of the Winter Soldier in the MCU, from how it would last for weeks afterwards Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘s Comic-Con Announcement before Marvel Studios contacted him about the news, to turn down a check for a thank you note Civil war which he described as “an insult”, and how the writer makes more money with his brief cameo Winter soldier‘s flashback sequences then in remnants of bringing the Winter Soldier to life in the first place. “As the years passed, I just started to think ‘how come we don’t get anything for this?’,” Brubaker wondered. “We can get a ‘Thank You’ or a credit, but these movies are making billions of dollars, and it feels like we just got a bad deal.”
It has created animus for the writer that he now feels Bucky is getting even greater fame at this point, co-starring The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney +. “I think I might be the only person in America who is not excited about this show,said Brubaker, who hasn’t seen any of the series so far“Whenever I see advertisements for [The Falcon and the Winter Soldier], it makes me a little nauseous. “
He added: ‘Why would you do that as a company? [Marvel] do you want the makers to feel that way? When I work with people I try to offer them the best deal possible, and if something gets bigger I will try to actually adjust their deal … I want everyone I work with to feel like they have a really good deal, and they were treated well. “
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Beyond are recent, brief comments on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in his newsletter, Brubaker has commented relatively little on his feelings about the success of the Marvel movies and his relationship with them. But he went on to explain that after a near-death drowning experience led him to think about what would be left for his wife, he began to realize the massive disparity between what he sees for his Marvel work – beyond his iconic run on the Captain America comics, still in print as a definitive version of the modern character – and the worldwide success of the films inspired by his work.
“It’s ridiculous. That, as co-creator of the Winter Soldier … I don’t have to worry about taking care of my wife if I die now,” added the writer. “It started to feel like ‘ this kind of hurts “, kind of, to be overlooked in this way.”
It must be made a point that Brubaker and Epting did not create Bucky Barnes, the character – Bucky is much older than the Winter Soldier, as old as Captain America himself, who first appeared alongside Steve on the pages of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon’s Captain America Comics # 1. But it’s hard to deny that Brubaker and Epting’s transformation of Bucky by Brubaker and Epting isn’t fundamental to the version of the character we see Sebastian Stan play in the Marvel movies and now. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier– and that even if they aren’t direct creators, their vision of the character is arguably more based on Kirby and Simon’s earlier iteration.
“I am not unhappy with my life, or that I have written this,” noted Brubaker. “I’m super proud of all the work I’ve done Daredevil, on Cap, I don’t like mine X-Men run, but there are people who liked it. I loved working at Marvel, I had a great time there. But at the same time I also have the feeling, you know … be a little more generous? “
It makes the already messy comic rights deal compounded by the way major publishers like Marvel and DC have interacted with creatives for decades, even before you hit the superhero movie boom – even messier when you start thinking about it exactly who created these blockbuster heroes, but which ones version of them is the one who takes it off the page and ends up in multimedia empires. But as messy as it is, writing with superheroes Big in our pop culture landscape as they are, it’s a conversation that needs to be conducted more in public, and candid comments like Brubaker’s are just the beginning.
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