A MCU influences the publisher's comics universe. Superheroes are bigger than ever before, largely because of the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, as Marvel's film properties garner more and more attention and expand their reach, comic fans are often fearful that characters are being changed to make them more familiar to movie fans, or that comic stories are being used as proof of concept for translation to another medium.
In 2015, a corporate restructure pulled Marvel Studios out of the wider Marvel Entertainment group and placed the film studio under the leadership of Kevin Feige. The relationship between Marvel Studios and Marvel Comics remained distant until 2019, when Kate Bishop's Hawkeye alongside their movie canon introductions.
In an interview with AiPT, Marvel Comics X-Men Senior Editor Jordan D. White reflects on the dynamic between the comic book publisher and the studio. He explained Marvel Comics staff make presentations to the studio outlining their plans over the next year or so, and they do indeed spend time discussing the movies. According to White, though, the comics are free to blaze their own trail.
They always tell us, 'We’re not looking for you to change what you’re doing to fit with what we’re doing. We want you to stay 5-10 years ahead of us because we want you to be doing fun and interesting stuff that we can do down the line.' Which we’re more than happy to do. We absolutely want to tell new stories about our characters and yes, if we do a good enough job, like yeah, those can become the backbone of some future thing, fingers crossed.
This doesn't necessarily mean there won't be synergies between the movies and the comics, of course. Marvel Comics is well aware of the Marvel Comics streamline Shang-Chi's backstory ahead of his MCU debut, and release a Falcon & Winter Soldier series despite their relative lack of connection outside the movies. However, with a few exceptions, Marvel's comics have shown a tendency to do things their own way - Shang-Chi now has his own Ten Rings in the comics, but with a different approach and origin. Interestingly, the idea that the comics are "ahead" of the movies does suggest they are indeed being created with a sense of generating ideas which will later appear on film - a concept which may have its own knock-on effect on how creators envision comic stories.
It's pleasing to learn the comics are still allowed a great deal of latitude, even after Feige's appointment as CCO of Marvel Entertainment. In the case of the X-Men comics, the last few years have seen Marvel successfully revitalize them tell great Marvel Comics stories, not to better facilitate synergy between the two mediums.
Source: AiPT
