COMICS MOVIE: Inside Marvel's secret editorial retreat for 'Civil War II' as Publisher Plans Death of Major Character

Cackling like a cabal of super villains, a group of 50 shady characters recently met in a Manhattan conference room to secretly plot the demise of a major Marvel superhero.

 Marvel's secret editorial

While Doctor Doom and the Green Goblin regularly fumble their evil plans, this group will actually succeed and kill off their intended victim. And it will surely shock fans of the Marvel comics and movies, since it comes at the hands of a fellow costumed hero in a storyline from the upcoming event series, “Civil War II.”

Welcome to Marvel Comics’ secret semi-annual editorial retreat, in which the next few years of the publisher’s comic book storylines are brainstormed.

It’s a top-secret affair, restricted to the writers and editors, but this year a Daily News reporter was invited to observe – with a stern warning against spoiling too much for readers more than six months before they can read the story for themselves. Past retreats yielded “Civil War,” “Age of Ultron” and “Winter Soldier,” all stories that were ultimately adapted for the big screen.

“If you want to really see a road map of where our movies will be (going) in the next five, 10 or 20 years, read the comics,” says Joe Quesada, Marvel’s chief creative officer. “Because they’re almost always a precursor to what’s on the horizon in our cinematic universe and our television universes.”

The top of the agenda: to plot out details for “Civil War II,” a sequel to the best-selling 2007 event series that pitted Iron Man against Captain America in an allegory about national security versus personal liberties. That original story is being turned into a movie, “Captain America: Civil War,” that hits theaters on May 6, a month before the first issue of the sequel will hit stores.

 

So the stakes are high not to disappoint.

“You want it to be ‘The Godfather, Part II,’ but for every ‘Godfather II,’ there’s a ‘Godfather III,’’’ Marvel publisher Dan Buckley tells The News, referring to the weakest link of the mob trilogy.

During the retreat, however, optimism abounds among a group that includes The Atlantic correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is making his comics debut writing the “Black Panther.”

“Civil War 2” writer Brian Michael Bendis and Marvel editor-in-chief Axel Alonso break down the premise.

“A mysterious new Marvel character comes to the attention of the world, one who has the power to calculate the outcome of future events with a high degree of accuracy,” according to the synopsis. “This predictive power divides the Marvel heroes on how best to capitalize on this aggregated information, with Captain Marvel leading the charge to profile future crimes and attacks before they occur, and Iron Man adopting the position that the punishment cannot come before the crime.”

Captain Marvel is a female super hero character that Marvel is looking to showcase more with her own movie slated for a March 2019 release.

“People’s personal accountability is the theme of this one,” Bendis explains to his peers of his project with artist David Marquez. “From the way cops are acting on camera, to the way people talk to each other online.”

As the story unfolds this new seer predicts the hero in question will be the cause of a major incident of destruction in three days, requiring the other good guys to make a tough call. The writer just hasn’t figured what or how bad that cataclysm will be.

“It has to fall somewhere between Hitler and self-defense,” Bendis says.

Though they also didn’t immediately settle on a big-name hero to turn into the culprit, Bendis kept referring to the doomed hero as Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man.

“Do you see me worried? I’m not worried,” whispers “Amazing Spider-Man” writer Dan Slott. “This is not my first rodeo. By the end of the afternoon, it won’t be Peter Parker.”

And sure enough, Parker is saved a grim fate by the afternoon as mass opinion shifts attention to other characters.

Another candidate is the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch, but Bendis extinguishes that idea quickly.

“He burns people and that’s so horrible (to illustrate),” the scribe says.

Other ideas are bounced around.

“What if the pressure causes (the hero) to commit suicide,” suggests James Robinson, another Marvel writer, adding that it could be a good way to draw attention to the scourge of cyber-bullying.

But editor Tom Brevoort’s Spidey-sense is immediately tingling.

“I don’t think you’d want a Marvel Super hero committing suicide,” he interjects.

After hours of occasionally heated debate, Bendis and Alonso reveal they had a eureka moment during a 10-minute break and came up with the perfect superhero to sacrifice and an even better candidate to murder him. The answer actually gets a loud ovation from the crowd.

“That’s like an epic,” says Robinson. “I’m genuinely shocked.”

Comic fans, though, are cynical about publishers killing off their heroes. Once-dead heroes like Captain America and Spider-Man have made miraculous recoveries. Rival DC made headlines in 1992 by killing off the mostly indestructible Superman – and then promptly brought him back in a single bound a year later.

“The death is the marketing hook,” admits Buckley. “The thing that’s really compelling is whether or not there’s a story afterwards that’s going to connect with readers and sustain it.”

Buckley, Quesada and Alonso are confident, however, that if the storyline made it through the gauntlet of writers and editors at the editorial retreat, then it will be good enough for fickle comic readers.

This crowdsourcing of ideas model has worked for the company before.

“It’s a black magic alchemy of putting the right people in the room,” says Quesada. “Those of us who work here are creative trust fund babies, because we have inherited an incredible chest full of toys that we get to play with. It does end up being like a bunch of kids in a room throwing s--- against the wall.”