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| Original Image Courtesy marvel.wikia.com Modified by author |
Wow. I completely missed something rather big in
the last episode of Agent Carter, “Better Angels” (2x03). Pretty early in the episode, Peggy and Jarvis
visited Howard on the set of his latest movie, a Western. While there, Peggy and Howard engage in a
witty, fourth-wall-breaking repartee which would make the Merc with a Mouth
himself proud. Howard offers Peggy the
part of the lead’s love interest, a hard-drinking barmaid (the actress was too
drunk to film that day), but Peggy says she’d rather be the one with the
gun. Howard comments that while he’d
love to see that, he doesn’t think the world is ready for a female-led movie
(*wink wink*). Peggy comes back in
disbelief that the world would really be interested in a movie based on a comic
book (*wink wink*), but Howard retorts that the subject, Kid Colt, was a real
person (making this a historical drama), and that if it fails he can write it
off in tax season!
In my review,
I noted the fourth-wall-breaking, but I neglected to comment on the fact that
Kid Colt is actually a character from the comics
whose stories are set in the Wild West of the 1870s and 1880s. Kid Colt is an outlaw, but not exactly a criminal;
he works outside the law to help people, even in situations where the law is in
the wrong. Though the character isn’t actually
based on a real person, Howard Stark certainly claims that Kid Colt really
exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe—which evidently means that he was
a real historical figure in the MCU!
This puts him in the same category as Captain America: a real hero whose exploits were also published
in comic books.
So what does this mean
for the MCU?
For one thing, this
expands the history of the MCU back much further, showing that there was at
least one vigilante cowboy active in the late-1800s. And potentially this opens the door for Kid
Colt—and other Wild West heroes—to appear/be referenced elsewhere in the MCU. This is certainly what ScreenRant suggests: Marvel should capitalize on this to make a
Western movie.
Personally, I think
that would be absolutely awesome! For now,
I want to go through a few of the Wild West heroes on Marvel’s roster who could
potentially appear in a Western Marvel movie.
However, at the end I will lay out my proposal for an MCU-set Western,
either a Netflix series or a future movie.
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| Kid Colt Image Courtesy marvel.wikia.com |
Kid Colt
Blaine Colt began his
career as Kid Colt when he was forced to flee his home a wanted fugitive after
the deaths of some of his family members.
Kid Colt would use his status as an outlaw to infiltrate outlaw gangs in
order to stop their criminal activities and bring them down from the
inside. He could also stop corrupt
sheriffs from hurting the people of the towns he passed through. Among other things, Kid Colt also joined
Two-Gun Kid and Rawhide Kid in fighting a T-Rex summoned by Kang the Conqueror
in 1873—because really, who doesn’t want to play “Cowboys and Dinosaurs”?
Two-Gun Kid
I discussed Matthew
Hawk, a.k.a. Two-Gun Kid, in a previous article. He is a time-traveler from the Wild West who
was brought forward in time and joined the Avengers after helping them defeat
Kang the Conqueror (including fighting that T-Rex). Though he attempted to become a lawyer at the
same firm where She-Hulk worked, he realized he was too out-of-touch with the
modern legal system and became a bounty hunter instead. Eventually it is revealed that Two-Gun Kid
was one of Hawkeye’s great inspirations for becoming a superhero. He also inspired the World War II hero Thomas
Halloway, a.k.a. the Angel, after returning to his own time period following
his modern-day superhero career.
Rawhide Kid
Jonathan Clay, a.k.a.
Rawhide Kid, has a story which shares a few beats with Spider-Man: He loses his family, is raised by a surrogate
father he calls “Uncle Ben,” and takes to crime-fighting to honor/avenge Uncle
Ben’s murder. However, Rawhide Kid is
much more dynamic than that, fighting outlaws and cattle rustlers all over the
Midwest. As mentioned above, Rawhide Kid
fought a dinosaur summoned by Kang the Conqueror in 1873 alongside Kid Colt and
Two-Gun Kid.
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| Carter Slade, a.k.a. Ghost/Phantom Rider Image Courtesy marvel.wikia.com |
Ghost Rider/Phantom
Rider
Johnny Blaze, a.k.a.
Ghost Rider, is rather well-known thanks to the (in)famous Nicholas Cage
movies. Slightly less well-known is
Carter Slade, the first Ghost Rider (who also went by the name Phantom Rider),
who received his abilities from an American Indian medicine man. Carter Slade created/received a costume that
made him glow luminescent and used other tricks to make himself appear to be an
actual spirit. After his death, he really
gained spectral powers which he bestowed on his great-great-great-nephew
Hamilton by overshadowing him, making him the modern Phantom Rider. As an interesting side note, this whole “inhabiting
his descendant’s body” thing started after Carter’s brother Lincoln kidnapped
Bobbi Morse, a.k.a. Mockingbird, while the West Coast Avengers were time-travelling
to the Wild West. Bobbi allowed Lincoln
to die by falling off a cliff, so Lincoln’s spirit took over Hamilton first to
gain revenge on Bobbi in the present, which was why Carter’s spirit got
involved in the first place. Isn’t time-travel-meets-ghosts
fun?
Gunhawk
There were several
characters who went by the name “Gunhawk,” but I’m going to focus on Reno
Jones, a former slave who fought alongside the first three characters in this
article and briefly assumed the mantle of the fourth. During the Civil War, Reno Jones’ love was
captured and taken away by Union soldiers, prompting Reno and his master’s son,
Kid Cassidy, to go after them (Reno for love, Cassidy for revenge). However, Cassidy turned on Reno, forcing him
to shoot Cassidy in self-defense. He
eventually became a hero and fought alongside a number of other Wild West
heroes. Among other weapons, he favored
the buffalo gun (which is a massive rifle!).
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| Apache Kid Image Courtesy marvel.wikia.com |
Apache Kid
The first Apache Kid was
the son of a white man and an Apache woman and went by the name Aloysius Kare. As someone who stood on both sides and
neither side between the white men and Indians, the Apache Kid worked toward
peace between the two sides. After Kare’s
death at the hands of a railroad owner’s son, his wife Rosa (the daughter of a
white woman and an Apache man) took up the Apache Kid alias to get revenge. After killing the murderer, she teamed up
with the Rawhide Kid to rescue a group of Apache children kidnapped to be “reeducated”
by the whites.
Red Wolf
I’ve also talked about
Red Wolf on a couple
of occasions already. The first recorded Red Wolf was
Johnny Wakely, an American Indian whose tribe was slaughtered by U.S.
Cavalry. Johnny was rescued, however,
and given to a white family to raise—and his adoptive family, the Wakely’s,
were murdered by renegade Indians. After
losing two families to opposite sides of the conflict, Johnny decided that he
had to promote peace between the whites and Indians. He was imbued with the powers of the Red Wolf
by the Indian god Owayodata at the tomb of his ancestor Wildrun, the first Red
Wolf. Eventually he became disillusioned
with the white men and fought against them alongside the Indians, though he did
help a group of heroes (including Rawhide Kid, Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt, and Reno
Jones) to defend the largely-African-American settlement of Wonderment, Montana.
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| Outlaw Kid Image Courtesy marvel.wikia.com |
Outlaw Kid
Lance Temple, a.k.a.
Outlaw Kid, was raised by his blind father, who made him promise not to resort
to violence, as violence had caused his blindness—a promise which made Temple
appear weak and cowardly to those around him.
However, Temple was unable to keep this promise and created the Outlaw
Kid persona to allow him to fight evil without his father’s knowledge. When his father discovered his dual identity,
the shock tragically killed him. This caused
Temple to suffer a mental breakdown, with the Outlaw Kid emerging as a split
personality whom Temple blamed for his father’s death. Temple would spend the rest of his life
hunting for the Outlaw Kid, not realizing the Outlaw Kid was his own split
personality.
Possible Movie
So how could these
characters fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe of today? I suppose the meta-answer is for them to
appear in Howard’s movie on Agent Carter!
As far as introducing
the characters themselves, the obvious answer is to go with time-travel: Kid Colt, Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid, and
Phantom Rider are all associated with time-travel-based stories (Two-Gun Kid
more than the others). And in the MCU
the obvious option for time-travel is the Time Stone, which still hasn’t made
its appearance yet—or “still won’t have been making its appearance”? Time travel is confusing…
However, I don’t think
that bringing any of these characters into the modern day is completely
necessary, or at least not at first. Instead,
I think it would be cool to see a movie with some or all of these characters
fighting against the villains of their day—both outlaws and crooked
lawmen. If they are well received and
people want to see more of them, time travel could become a possibility,
perhaps with Hawkeye traveling back to the Wild West to find out who the best
marksman in the MCU really is!
As far as an initial
appearance, I’m thinking of something along the lines of a Suicide Squad
or Guardians of the Galaxy movie, in which a group of disparate
characters, some with shady backgrounds, are forced to work together to fight a
common enemy. The one story I’ve found
which brings most of these characters together centers around the
previously-mentioned attack on Wonderment, Montana.
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| Doesn't this look like a Western movie poster? Image Courtesy marvel.wikia.com |
In this movie (I’m
giving it the title Blaze of Glory: The Last Ride, after the comic book
it’s taken from), Clay Riley (an enemy of the Carter Slade—I’m going to go with
“Phantom Rider” as his codename at first, though he will be connected to any
modern MCU incarnation of the Ghost Rider) hires Kid Cassidy (an enemy of Reno
Jones) and his gang of outlaws called the Nightriders to help him take over Wonderment
(a town settled by freed slaves that gives refuge to American Indians) to build
an ore refinery. Reno Jones convinces
the townspeople to fight back and puts out a call to all the heroes he knows to
join him in fighting off the outlaws.
Kid Colt, Two-Gun Kid, Rawhide Kid, and Outlaw Kid (let’s just call them
the Kid Brothers for grins) all answer the call, along with Ghost Rider, who
was drawn by news of his former enemy’s presence. Flaming Star (the same medicine man who gave
Ghost Rider his abilities) sends for Red Wolf to join them, along with the
Apache Kid (Rosa). These eight
cowboys/heroes must work together to defend the town from the outlaws. In the end they succeed, but several of the
heroes are killed in battle—Kid Colt, Outlaw Kid, Red Wolf, and Phantom Rider
(who in death transforms into the first Ghost Rider).
One definite benefit
of a movie set in the Wild West is the grittiness of it: you don’t expect it to be terribly flashy,
and what “flash” there is comes from fancy shooting, rather than a guy in a
suit of armor flying around. Even the
Ghost Rider of this time period isn’t as “flashy” as the later iterations of
the character, as Carter Slade’s “abilities” are mostly illusions meant to
scare criminals—though if he is going to be connected to the future Ghost
Riders they might want to tweak that and make him a little more powerful.
Another benefit is the
freedom to be liberal with the body count.
Given how unlikely it is that any of these characters will appear in
future movies, there’s no reason that half or more of the characters couldn’t
be killed in battle (as they are in the source comic). Considering the complaints about the lack of “permanent
deaths” by heroes in Marvel movies, this would be a rather welcomed change!
Following this movie,
Marvel could do any number of things with the surviving heroes, including
spinoff movies and time-travel adventures set in modern day. Alternatively, Marvel could take pretty much
this exact premise and turn it into a Netflix series, which would actually let
them explore the characters in far more depth.
Who says the Western
is dead? Perhaps all it needs is a comic
book movie to breathe new life into it!
Do you want to see
Marvel tackle a modern Western? Which is
your favorite Wild West comic book character?
Let me know in the comments!
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