Deadpool Director Tim Miller’s Iron Man and Spider-Man Team-up

Tim Miller’s feature-length debut as director has just made Fox an obscene amount of money. It’s not his first Marvel  comics related work. He was a creative director for Thor: The Dark World. And in 2007, he made some animated videos to introduce Iron Man to a larger audience. These videos also included Spider-Man, showing Iron Man as the type of superhero Spidey calls for help.

Those videos are now available online.

https://www.tumblr.com/video/joequesada/139315551573/700/

https://www.tumblr.com/video/joequesada/139315612783/700/

https://www.tumblr.com/video/joequesada/139315791663/700/

Joe Quesada told the story on his tumblr.

Most people may not know or even remember but close to 10 years ago Tim and I worked on a Marvel project together.

As we at Marvel began plans on the first Iron Man movie our focus group research showed that we had some serious awareness issues with the character, especially amongst kids. One of the major takeaways was that kids who had zero knowledge of the character had no interest in him because they thought he was a robot. But when they found out that there was someone in the suit suddenly interest went off the charts and they wanted to know all about him and who could build no less kick ass in such awesome armor. Information like that helped us sculpt a plan to build awareness way in advance of the movie.

In early 2007 Marvel assigned a small group of us to create what would eventually be called Iron Man Advertorials: Three animated shorts with a simple clean story that would introduce Iron Man to younger viewers using our two most recognizable characters at the time as bait. Our marching orders were to…

1- Clearly demonstrate that there was a man inside the armor.

2- Show off his wide range of cool powers.

3- Position him clearly as a hero on the same level as Spidey and Hulk by having those characters show how cool they perceive him to be and valued him as a peer.

We also felt that if we really wanted to grab kids attention we needed to go high level CGI and Marvel gave us the budget to do it. This was a huge vote of confidence at that time because things were still tight in those days. That’s where Tim and the incredible team at Blur came in and knocked this assignment out of the park. Working with Tim was a joy (you’d have trouble finding a nicer more creative guy) and immediately his love of all things Marvel and comics was evident. He took the scripts and created beautifully visceral action scenes while never forgetting to keep things lighthearted with the classic Marvel sense of humor running throughout.

h/t Comic Book Resources.