[Iceman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by En Sabah Nerd

I guess I really can't say a great deal about what non-comic readers knew before 2007. Any of my friends who weren't comic readers wanted to know from me anyway, so anyone I knew was relatively aware of Marvel happenings, even the more out there characters. I would say though that the big 5 have always been known to a degree to the general public. Spider-Man, Iron Man, Captain America, Hulk, and Wolverine are the big five, and are in one way or another constantly a large part of Marvel's dealings. So I suppose having known that since I was a kid I always thought that people knew about the Avengers, even if they didn't know that was the team name. Hell, the big 5 get more toys than any other characters, even in the character spanning MU line you can point out the big 5 by who has the most toys.

From what I saw the public generally knew Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine (or the X-Men I general), and The Fantastic Four. Knew them in the sense that origin stories weren't really needed and far more people knew what you were talking about if you said Reed Richards, Peter Parker, etc.etc Cap people were aware because of the symbolism but I'm sure few knew anything other than him hitting Hitler or a vague concept of a team he led. Poor Iron Man was basically c-list to the masses.

I love what Marvel has managed to do and how they've believed in these characters but 10 years ago comic fans thought an Avengers movie was impossible and they weren't marketable. There is a reason Marvel still had the rights and that is because X-Men, FF, Spider-Man, etc were viewed as bigger draws. Marvel basically willed all this into being by making quality movies and making a good number of them.