Five Marvel Superheroes Who Need A Marvel NOW! Title

The first step to getting your own major motion picture at Marvel Studios is to have a fan-favorite or critically-acclaimed run sometime in your recent past, if you look at most of the non-Avengers examples we're aware of so far. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning brought the Guardians of the Galaxy back from the brink of total irrelevance and  transformed it into a property that any Marvel writer worth their salt would like to have a crack at. The Inhumans got the same treatment from Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee, while Doctor Strange got a miniseries from Hollywood favorite Brian K. Vaughan and artist Marcos Martin. In Marvel NOW!, we're seeing some of those critically-acclaimed runs reflected (a restoration of the DnA Guardians lineup, for instance), while others (including The Inhumans) are seemingly being prepped for a film by being returned to the public attention via new #1 issues and event stories. So, a "who deserves a relaunch" list might as well be a "who deserves a movie" list...but one thing that's better about comics than movies is that we get more time with the characters and more development. A movie like Captain America: The Winter Soldier is great, but then there's two years before you see that character again. While that's fine for Cap, some others could benefit from the frequent exposure of an ongoing series (or, as in Deathlok's case, a role on Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). And even taking "developing a character for other media" out of the equation, let's think about characters from other media who haven't yet been successfully re-translated to comics. Some ideas...

Mockingbird We haven't seen her much since the Marvel NOW! relaunch, while her ex-husband has had one of the most critically-acclaimed books on the shelves. I've always had a soft spot for Mockingbird; the first time I saw her was in Hawkeye #1, and she manhandled the title character. As an impressionable young kid in the '80s, I was surprised to see somebody getting whupped by a girl in the first issue of his own comic, and so I became fascinated with her character. More recently, the Hawkeye & Mockingbird comics that Jim McCann did were some of the best Marvel material of the last few years. The fact that Fraction and Aja managed to turn the character into something even cooler can only be chalked up to a very versatile character and poor timing for McCann, because if his legacy with Clint had been given some time to ferment, those books would probably have been quite well-remembered for years to come.

Deathlok Okay, so there's rumors that this is already in the offing, but it just makes sense. Next month will see the release of Wolverine Weapon X: Tomorrow Dies Today, a direct-to-video Marvel Knights Animation release that sees Deathlok front and center on the cover of the DVD case, which (if past Marvel Knights releases are any indication) will be popping up at mainstream retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, which have a much wider reach than does the direct market. Add to that the fact that the 5 million or so regular viewers of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are now invested in the character on some level, and you've got a formula for success.

Doctor Strange Going back to characters who would be great to tie into, everyone knows there's a Doctor Strange movie on the horizon. Heck, the character even got name-checked by Jasper Sitwell in Captain America: The Winter Soldier when they were talking about high-value targets around the world. Strange is an odd character in that it's difficult to sell magic to the modern comics audience, but characters like him -- the smirking, arrogant type -- have become a kind of staple of popular culture since around the time Han Solo and Indiana Jones first came on the scene, and so on some level it seems like common sense that a good writer could make Doctor Strange a character the readers can enjoy in the same way it just took the right guy to come along and revitalize The Punisher or Luke Cage.

Black Panther At this point, I honestly have no idea whether this character has a movie coming or not. Certainly, either way, it's worth trying to explore one of Marvel's best-known and best-loved characters of color. Like Doctor Strange, we've seen him in team books since the Marvel NOW! launch, but he hasn't had his own comic since 2008. While it's often a topic of conversation with Wonder Woman, Black Panther is a character who seems to get the shaft because he's "difficult to write," with few writers ever really managing to nail a tone that was crowd-pleasing. Priest, who doesn't often work in comics anymore, was the last person to make a real hit with this title.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Granted, they appear in Secret Avengers and cameo in a number of other titles -- but let's be honest: not only is it a missed opportunity not having an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. comic on the stands right now, but further it reinforces Marcus Johnson as a kind of gimmick character, introduced only after the Ultimate Comics version gained popularity in the movies and not built to last in the 616 universe. Introducing Coulson's team in comics could also help some of the hardcore fans to become more invested in them -- since people are always complaining the Skye and the rest have no comic book countparts. Oh, and you'd get a S.H.I.E.L.D. comic where the agency takes focus instead of just backing up superheroes...at a time when everbody is talking about S.H.I.E.L.D. both inside and outside the comics industry.