COMIC EFFECT

ONWARD AND UPWARD WITH THE ARTS | How the Marvel Cinematic Universe swallowed Hollywood. 

- MICHAEL SCHULMAN

Robert Redford and Glenn Close now star in films whose plots can come down to “Keep glowy thing away from bad guy.”

Growing up in Missouri, Christopher Yost had boxes of Marvel comic books, which his mother bought at the grocery store. None of his friends read Marvel; it was his own private world, a “sprawling story where all these characters lived in this universe together,” he recalled. Wolverine could team up with Captain America; Doctor Doom could fight the Red Skull. Unlike the DC comics, whose heroes (Superman, Batman) towered like gods, Marvel’s were relatably human, especially Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man. “He’s got money problems and girl problems, and his aunt May is always sick,” Yost said. “Every time you think he’s going to live this big, glamorous superhero life, it’s not that way. He’s a grounded, down-to-earth dude. The Marvel characters always seem to have personal problems.”

By 2001, Yost, then twenty-seven, was getting an M.F.A. in film business in Los Angeles, but he wanted to be a writer; he had written an unproduced screenplay about an alien invasion. He heard that Marvel had a new West Coast outpost and cold-called for an interview. The studio shared a small office with a company that made kites. There were six employees. One of them, a guy in a ball cap who was also in his late twenties, sat Yost down for what turned into a “comic-book trivia-off.” The interviewer, whose name was Kevin Feige, asked, “What issue does Spider-Man get his black costume in?”

“Oh, that’s a trick question,” Yost said. (The black suit first appeared in