Speaking with the press at Montreal Comic-Con 2018, veteran comics scribe Gerry Conway expressed the pleasant surprise it’s been to see his creations endure for decades after their debut, suggesting he imagined (based on sales numbers of the day), superhero comics wouldn’t make it past the 1970s.
“It’s tremendous. It’s been a great couple of years for me, with a lot of my material coming into the pop culture and media in TV and film,” Conway told City Net Magazine.
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“Back in the ‘70s, when I originated characters like [Ms. Marvel] and the Punisher and Firestorm, none of those books were selling the kind of numbers that would indicate that we had a potential impact on the larger culture,” he said. “Comics, at the time, we felt that the business was dying under us, and we were just hoping to get through the next five or 10 years and have fun doing the books we enjoyed doing.”
Along with artist John Buscema, Conway and the legendary artist reimagined Roy Thomas-creation Carol Danvers to be the human-Kree hero Ms. Marvel, who of course would take on the mantle of Captain Marvel decades later, and next year, will star in her own solo film as portrayed by Brie Larson.
However, Conway insists — while the cinematic take is of course derived from a version of his Ms. Marvel — the film is primarily drawing from the comics of Kelly Sue DeConnick and Dexter Soy. “To be fair, I think it’s important to note that this is Captain Marvel, the version of the character that Kelly Sue DeConnick made iconic,” Conway said. “And while it’s based on the character that I originated — or the combination that I originated, Ms. Marvel — it’s more influenced, I think, by Kelly Sue’s interpretation.”
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Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck from a script they wrote with Liz Flahive, Carly Mensch, Meg LeFauve, Nicole Perlman and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Jude Law as Mar-Vell, Clark Gregg as Phil Coulson, Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Djimon Hounsou as Korath the Pursuer, Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva, and Ben Mendelsohn, Lashana Lynch, Algenis Perez Soto, McKenna Grace and Annette Bening in as-yet-undisclosed roles. The film arrives March 8, 2019.