Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett talks about Big Hero 6, Disney Animation's new Marvel movie.
 
I am not exactly what you'd call a social media butterfly.  Oh, I got on the Facebook a couple of years ago under the erroneous assumption it would help me stay in touch with my adult goddaughters.  This was before I learned Facebook wasn't really about "communication" as much as for posting brief, declarative updates of your recent activities and thoughts (essentially, digital postcards) not to mention articles, drawings and snapshots.  Facebook, I discovered, is the magnet we use to post things on America's refrigerator door.
 
Admittedly I joined LinkedIn and Google+ but (so far) my activity on either hasn't been extensive, and I’ve passed on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. At this point I'm pretty much Social Media Platform-resistant, partially because of a lack of interest (I'm honestly just not all that social) but mostly due to a lack of time.  I can't keep in regular contact with the people I actually know.  So I honestly can't explain exactly how I found myself on Tumblr but I am and while this may not be news to a lot of you I've quickly found that it can be a remarkably useful resource.
 
For one thing it was there I learned the term "headcanon," which according to the Urban Dictionary is "An idea, belief, or aspect of a story that is not mentioned in the media itself, but is accepted by either the reader themselves or the fandom in general.  If it is confirmed by the author of the story, it becomes canon."  Of course the first half dozen times I saw the term I mentally read it as "headcannon," which sounds like a strong contender for worst mutant X-Men name ever.
 
But it also more practical uses; for instance, it's a good place to take the temperature of fan communities' feelings about their franchise of choice.  Me, I'm increasingly looking forward to Big Hero 6, so I placed its title in the Tumbler search engine and whoa, was there ever an avalanche of stuff.  Fan art, mashups, gifs, jpegs, photos of people who have already started cosplaying as their favorite character and frame by frame dissections of the trailer.  As well as a serious debate as to whether changing the composition of the cast from Asian (as they were in the Marvel comics) to multi-racial constitutes "whitewashing."  All this enthusiasm for a movie they haven’t even seen, a movie that won’t be out for months.
 
Tumblr was also where I first got a heads up about the movie's publishing plans.  Amazon had released the covers of the movie's juvenile print tie-ins: Big Golden Book, Chapter Book, Little Golden Book, Picturebook with Tattoos, Junior Novelization and a Deluxe Step into Reading as well as a regular Step Into Reading.  I checked, and while there's a Big Hero 6: The Essential Guide and The Art of Big Hero 6 books in the pipeline, so far there hasn't been any announcement concerning a comic book adaptation or even a collection of the Marvel comics.


So luckily there's a Big Hero 6 manga in the works.  According to a piece in Variety by Mark Schilling titled "Disney Takes Unusual Promo Route With Japanese 'Big Hero 6' Animation," an adaptation of Baymax (the title of the movie in Japan)* by Haruki Ueno will appear in the monthly Magazine Special starting on August 20th.  Disney films like Tangled, Pirates of the Caribbean and Wall-E have been adapted in the past, but this is the first time a Disney project will be adapted before its theatrical debut.
 
Of course it would be nice if Marvel and/or Disney would make an English version of the Baymax manga available by way of weekly digital download, you know, the way DC has been releasing Batman: The Jiro Kuwata Batmanga.  Speaking of which, I've been celebrating Batman's 75th Anniversary by reading Batmanga and I've been celebrating more than I probably should but I went into full squee mode when I came to page 4 of Chapter Three and saw this color image and read this heady copy:  "A Nuclear Powered Car!  A Ray Gun!  He's Awesome!  He's Strong!  The Champion of Justice!"   Boy, did that make me happy.
 
* Tumblr is also where I first saw the Japanese version of the trailer for Big Hero 6 which is really, really dark--it opens with the funeral of the main character’s brother, not something you generally see in a Disney trailer.
 
But then it hit me; Atomic powered car, sure, awesome, ok, champion of justice, that's a gimme, but ray gun?  Given his strong feelings about firearms I couldn’t imagine Batman (at least the modern version of the character) using a gun of any kind.  Sure, there were plenty of examples online of Batman toy ray guns, but that was just merchandising.  I was about to conclude that Batman had never touched a ray gun, until I came across this title card from Chapter 9 of the 1943 Batman serial.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.