Get Ready for Avengers - What Do You Need to Know?

Alright, so you’re a huge Disney fan, you’ve read this blog for a while or wandered over because you’re interested in Disney films, and now you are ready to take the plunge and check out Marvel’s Avengers, opening on Friday.  But hey, you’re a Disney fan, not a comic book fan.  Why did Disney buy this property?  What’s the story with these super heroes?  Fear not, dear reader, I’m going to tell you everything you need to know to enjoy the movie.  Ready?  Here it is:

That’s right, you don’t need to know anything about the Avengers or to have seen the other Marvel films to enjoy this movie.  Just buy your ticket, go to the theatre, and enjoy.  However, if you want to go a little deeper, let me give you five things to check out so you can get ready for the big day tomorrow.

1. The Marvel films – Surely most of you have seen Iron Man by now, but what about Thor?  Or Captain America?  If you haven’t seen the films,  the next best thing is to listen to our podcasts about them.  Disney Film Project did spoiler-filled podcasts about Iron Man 1 & 2, Captain America and Thor.  Check them out to get ready.  Also, if you want to go uber geek, check out Newsarama’s annotations for the films, which detail all the comic book connections from each film.
2. What are these comic books of which you speak?  So you’re not a comic book fan, but you are considering trying to figure out what it’s all about so you can have a better enjoyment of the film.  Go check out Marvel.com, but for the Avengers specifically, you should try a trade paperback or collection.  Some key issues to check out would be Avengers #1 (available for FREE digitally), the Kree-Skrull War, or Avengers Assemble Volume 1.  All are great introductions to the characters and feature Captain America, Iron Man and Thor.
3. Where else can I see the Avengers?  Well, if you like what you’ve seen so far in the films, give Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes the cartoon a try.  It’s on Disney XD, so it’s still in the family.  This serialized cartoon gets to the heart of the Avengers in a hurry, and has great introductions to all the characters.  If you don’t catch it on Disney XD, it’s streaming on Netflix for the entire first season.
4. How do I catch up quickly?  You plan to see the movie tomorrow, but you just want to know the basics without having to go through all of our podcasts or reading tons of articles.  I’ll give you two options:  buy the digital comic prelude to Avengers – Fury’s Big Week and read that.  It should take less than an hour, and summarizes everything to this point.  Or, here is the summary – there’s an all powerful device called the Tesseract that a bad guy, Loki, wants to get his hands on to rule the Earth.  Stopping him will take a collection of heroes, not just one.  
5. Remember what you need to know.  Nothing.  Even if you ignore all the stuff I just mentioned, you can go to the movie and have a fantastic time.  

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!