You don't have a comic book guy at the head of it. You have Kevin Feiggy who's like he would watch

Star Trek 5 and then go home and think about what he would want Star Trek 6 to be to fix the

Star Trek 5. So he wants you to have a good movie at the end of the day.

All the armchair quarterback solution seems to be just make good movies.

And if there's one person that I feel like could just use that advice and be like, yeah, okay, I'll just make good movies. It's Kevin Feigy.

I'm Mary Long and that's Dave Gonzales, a podcaster, culture reporter, and a co-author of MCU, The Reign of Marvel Studios.

We caught up in person at our Denver Podcast Studio for a conversation about the origins of the

Marvel Cinematic Universe and what foreshadowed its current challenges, why superhero movies

originally weren't an obvious play, and the one thing that can't scale, even with

an unlimited budget.

So I want to talk about how Marvel lost its sheen, but I think maybe the best way to get there

is to start at the beginning.

Absolutely.

And before we start at the beginning, let's talk about like the characters that are going to come into play because I found through

reading your book there are these real people that are behind the Marvel movies

and that drive it our understanding who they are and what makes them tick is like really

essential to understanding what drives Marvel. So there's a ton of people that you talk about in your book.

But if you had to kind of hone in on three to five, who are like the big characters that are essential to understanding the story of Marvel?

So I like to really start with Isaac Pearl Mudder, who I will be calling Ike from here on out.

We don't know each other, but that's just how I'd like to refer to him.

And Avi Arad, who I have had the chance to meet

and hang out with on several occasions covering Marvel movies.

...