Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett talks about Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier, super hero comics he likes, and Tinker Bell.

Well, like most of you I saw Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier last weekend, but don't worry I won't be reviewing it, much.  Except to say it definitely corrected one of the main problems with the original.  As I said back in 2011 (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Facing The Way Things Were") pressure for it to do well in international markets helped craft a WWII era Captain America movie that wasn't particularly pro-America.  Foreign markets were even given the option to keep the American-ness of the film on the down low by changing the title, though ultimately only Korea, Ukraine and Russia pulled that trigger.*  And the result of all this second guessing?  It only earned $194 million in all international markets combined.
 
Well things are a little different this time.  According to a BGR News story by Tero Kuittinen, Captain America 2 earned $207 million overseas in just ten days and $39 million of that was from China alone--and the first movie wasn't even released there.  The success justified the big Chinese premiere thrown for it which featured appearances by Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L Jackson and one enormous shield.  As someone born in 1959, let me tell you, seeing that symbol being celebrated on "Red" Chinese soil is one more thing I’d never thought I'd live to see.
 
The title of that piece was "New Captain America movie with clear anti-NSA message is a massive hit abroad" and the author's main point is that the reason the second film is doing so much better internationally than the first is its supposed "…formula; you can keep the central character strongly pro-American and turn the NSA and Washington bureaucrats into villains as grotesquely evil as any deformed Nazi monster.  That way, you cover all bases and have the franchise play well in both Saratoga and Shanghai."
 
I don't think Kuittinen is so much wrong, exactly; given recent US surveillance scandals I'm guessing having the villains be American fascists didn't exactly hurt sales at the box office overseas so much as he's severely underestimating how big the demand for Marvel movies is after The Avengers.  Although some movie reviews have superficially kicked around the whole "freedom vs. security" paradigm at the heart of it, so far this is the only online piece I've found that seriously tries to parse the politics of Winter Soldier.  But I don't think it'll be the last.
 
Last week I wrote about my lack of interest in contemporary Marvel/DC superheroes (see "Confessions of a Comic Book--Seek and You Shall Find"), but of course there's no shortage of other places to go if you want superheroes.  I myself am personally fond of both Invincible and Savage Dragon, two comics which are constantly taking risks no Marvel/DC comic would ever dare to.  To the point that both titles are even willing to alienate their readerships by periodically reinventing themselves completely.
 
For superheroes the way they used to make them, you can't go wrong with either Astro City or T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.  And if you like your heroes less super and extremely old school there’s pulp and pulp adjacent characters like The Spider, The Shadow, Doc Savage, The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet.  I'm also enjoying the heck out of Kings Watch and am really looking forward to Jeff Parker's version of Flash Gordon.
 
I don't care much for shared superhero universes these days; it's one of the reasons I've been actively avoiding the Valiant line.  But I have to admit that in a very short time Dark Horse has put together a very impressive shared universe of sort-of superheroes with titles like Captain Midnight, Skyman and Brain Boy among others.  They are all very well done but Captain Midnight in particular has proven itself a very pleasant surprise month after month.  And usually news of a company-wide crossover "event" would fill me with cold dread, but I'm actually hoping that this summer’s "Project Black Sky" will give the line the attention among readers and retailers it deserves.
 
And finally there was recently a piece in The Hollywood Reporter titled "How Tinker Bell Became Disney's Stealthy $300 Million Franchise" that caught my attention.  Tink doesn't get a lot of attention, but so far the four direct-to-DVD Tinker Bell movies have grossed over $224 million domestically, not to mention $7 million worth of merchandising, which naturally includes Papercutz graphic novels.  But the part of the piece that really intrigued me was these two quotes, which could provide some valuable insight for the entire comic book industry when it comes to girls, girls comics, and superheroes for girls:
 
"I think the success of Tinker Bell might have opened Disney's eyes to an underserved market, which are pre-tween girls," says Wade Holden, an analyst with SNL Kagan.  "Then came Tangled, Brave and Frozen.  There was a craving for this sort of content."
 
"What we've heard from our audiences is that they love the fairies because they have powers and talents," says Peggy Holmes, director of Secret of the Wings and Pirate Fairy.
 
* This year the only foreign country to eliminate "Captain America" from the title of his own movie was Russia, which is understandable, given the current state of US/Russian relations.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.