Panel Vision - Blockbusters According to Comics 2015

The end of one year and beginning of a new one is a time of serious duality, a time to look back and reminisce while also dream of the future yet to come.  In that respect I’ve got my own blend of year appraisal and prognostication/wishful thinking for the year to come in the form of “Blockbusters According to Comics.”  This is where I look over some of the biggest hit films, TV, and trends of the past year and try and find the comic book property that could be adapted to fit well into that particular cresting wave.  Currently I’m limiting my suggestions to DC and Marvel properties but we’ll see, in the years to come maybe Image and Darkhorse and friends will have enough properties and clout to consider an adaptation.  Till then, here are the blockbusters according to comics. 

Devil Dinosaur, Clone Saga, & Marvel's Future

So the numbers are officially in and Jurassic World has beaten Avengers as the third highest grossing film of all time, earning it a sequel that will go head-to-head with Avengers: Infinity War part 1.  This marks yet another major defeat for Marvel who’ve shaped up to have a pretty bad year all around.  Age of Ultron has been subsumed in the wake of hits like Furious 7 and Jurassic World with more competition coming this fall between Spectre and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  What’s more Ant-Man hasn’t shown a lot of audience interest and critically it’s only served to raise a lot of problematic issues with the Marvel universe as a whole.  The only Marvel projects that seem to really be gelling with audiences these days are episodic in nature, stuff like the major interest in Agent Carter, Agents of SHIELD finally finding a major audience, and Daredevil ending up a major cultural hit.  What does all this mean for Marvel going forward?  Could we be seeing the end of Marvel Studios?