Marvel Studios' Kissing Couple in Opening Crawl Revealed to Be Two Mutants

There are some questions that have plagued Marvel fans for years: When will all of the characters get to share one cinematic universe? What happened in Budapest? What comic panels were featured in Marvel Studios' original logo sequence? Thanks to some recent Internet sleuthing, one aspect of that latter question appears to be answered, and the truth is kind of surprising. In a recent thread on Quora, Deverick Jenkins did some detailed research and discovered the identities of the couple who can briefly be seen kissing at the 6-second mark of the older Marvel Studios sequence. As they discovered, the panel in question is actually two of Marvel's mutants - Angelica Jones/Firestar and Vance Astrovik/Justice - in a passionate embrace.

Throughout their decades of comic appearances, Firestar and Justice served as boyfriend and girlfriend and later fiancees, something that was put to the test as they served as members of the New Warriors and the Avengers. It also isn't actually the only noticeable allusion to the X-Men that's in the intro sequence, with Jean Grey's hands in her Dark Phoenix form being seen around the 4-second mark.

Given the fact that this logo was used quite a lot up until 2016, it technically marks one of the earliest instances of Marvel Studios using mutant characters, long before the landmark Disney/Fox deal allowed them to officially appear in future live-action films.

"The truth is, I'm excited for all of them. I'm excited, and it's not just the marquee names you know — there are hundreds of names on those documents, on those agreements," Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said in a previous interview. "And the fact that Marvel is as close as we may ever get now to having access to all of the characters, is something I've been dreaming about for my almost 20 years at Marvel. And it's very exciting."

"It'll be a while. It's all just beginning and the five-year plan that we've been working on, we were working on before any of that was set," Feige said in another interview. "So really it's much more, for us, less about specifics of when and where [the X-Men will appear] right now and more just the comfort factor and how nice it is that they're home. That they're all back. But it will be a very long time."

Upcoming Marvel Studios projects include Black Widow on May 1st, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier in August of 2020, The Eternals on November 6th, WandaVision in December of 2020, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings on February 12, 2021, Loki in Spring 2021, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness on May 7, 2021, Spider-Man 3 on July 16, 2021, What If…? in Summer 2021, Hawkeye in Fall 2021, Thor: Love and Thunder on November 5, 2021, and Black Panther 2 on May 6, 2022.