The Avengers & The Justice League

As I've mentioned before I'm not actually all that knowledgeable when it comes to the world of comics. In fact everything I know about them has been picked up from second hand sources. Mostly it comes from the eighties and nineties cartoon versions and from various "pop culture" references in other TV shows and films. I may have to turn in some of my geek credentials after this but when it was first announced that Joss Whedon was going to direct The Avengers my first reaction was "What's that then?". When I hear the name Avengers my first thoughts go to Patrick Macnee & Diana Rigg but in this case that made no sense. Of course I have since found out that they are Marvel's answer to DC's Justice League, a team of their various superheroes working together in the same story.

I already knew about the Justice League and of the two teams they seem to have the most famous members. They've got Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern & Aquaman to name a few. There's been talk of a Justice League film for years now but nothing ever seems to happen. There appears to be a lack of organization in the DC universe, I mean there's only Batman who has got a current franchise going at the moment although Green Lantern is on the way. Most of my Justice League knowledge now comes from Smallville. It occurred to me while writing this post that Smallville would be a much better place to use the Justice League. They've already touched on the subject a few times. If they could just sort out the legal problems allowing Clark Kent to don the red cloak and get a young Bruce Wayne in there as well they could spin off in to a new version of the show and probably keep going for another ten years.

Now compared to the Justice League the Avengers don't feel quite as impressive to me. There's Captain America, Hulk & Thor but they have never really interested me as characters. Iron Man I like, but my only experience of him is the Robert Downey Jr. version. My favorite Marvel character has always been Spiderman but it appears for the most part he's not one of the Avengers. However Marvel do seem to be doing a lot better at adapting comics in to films than anyone else and are slowly tying all their properties together in one universe. Tony Stark has a small appearance in Hulk, Nick Fury appears in Iron Man and apparently there's some Thor information in Iron Man 2. Then there's the Thor and Captain America films both of which will be out before Avengers and will probably contain more links. Marvel creating their own film division was definitely a good idea and the fact that they're now part of the Disney empire probably helps too.

As the saying goes, Joss Whedon is my master now so I'll be sure to see The Avengers when it comes out pretty much regardless, but it's still early days so I'm not really excited yet.