Denver Author Explores the Marvel Cinematic Universe in New Book

The Marvel Cinematic Universe — or the MCU, as it's known to fans — was more discovered than made. The idea of an interconnected, galaxies-spanning series of stories was certainly purposeful, but much like its cultural film-juggernaut predecessor Star Wars, it began as a relatively humble exercise in filmmaking and growing organically from there. The phenomenon is really the result of sincere passion for a story, communicated to a fanbase that didn't even know it was hungry for it.

Such is the story of the new book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios, a work produced by three co-authors including Denver's own Dave Gonzales. With his partners, Joanna Robinson and Gavin Edwards, Gonzales has produced something of an opus on the MCU, an unauthorized and behind-the-scenes look at the rise — and the uncertain future — of the era we're still living in: when Marvel Comics became even more of a cultural powerhouse than it already was.

Gonzales grew up in Louisville, where he attended Monarch High School and thrived on a steady fan-diet of Star Wars and the comic books he fondly recalls buying at Time Warp Comics in Boulder. He went to NYU for film school, where he also got into the world of podcasting. It was in New York City where he got involved with the film and pop-culture podcast Fighting in the War Room, and began work for MTV as an animation producer for the bumpers on that network's Teen Mom programs. "But I missed Denver, and so I came home," he says.

He thought would be the end of his work for MTV, but executive producer Dia Sokol Savage — who is also from Denver, and attended East High — offered to let him try working remotely. "It worked so well that she moved back to Denver, too," he laughs. "So now we have a whole Teen Mom satellite office we work out of in Boulder."

At the same time, Gonzales was doing a Game of Thrones podcast with Robinson. "She wrote an MCU tenth anniversary cover story for Vanity Fair," Gonzales says, "and a publisher approached her and asked if she wanted to write a Game of Thrones book. She told them it was far too early for that, but what did they think about a book about Marvel?" She brought Gonzales on and the deal was made; the duo started working on the book in 2019.

They worked through the pandemic, with Gonzales mainly handling the research side of things while Robinson would do well over 100 interviews with different people involved in the MCU and its development, from stars such as Robert Downey Jr. to the myriad of artistic professionals responsible for making the movies look as good as they do. "We basically combed through the credits to look for people we could talk with," Gonzales recalls.

By 2021, they had a rough draft of the book it would become, which was when they brought on the third in their authorial team-up, Gavin Edwards, who had more than a dozen pop-culture books under his belt and helped to bring what Robinson and Gonzales had put together into more streamlined form. The project hit a snag when Disney — which came to own Marvel during this time — decided that it, too, wanted to put out a similar book. "They never really told us to stop doing what we were doing," says Gonzales, "but they stopped cooperating. We had to end-around some stuff going forward from there."

One of the things the book communicates is the scope and reach of the Marvel phenomenon. MCU goes all the way back to the 1990s and brings us to the current day, showing how the epic film series grew in fits and starts into the unprecedented 23-film series that makes up the Infinity Saga. "What's amazing to me is how much comics  —especially Marvel comics—have become part of the American conversation," Gonzales says. "The fact that I could go up to anyone on the street, and they'd have a decent chance of knowing what the powers of the Infinity Stones are? That's incredible."

Ultimately, Gonzales says MCU is "about a moment in Hollywood that I don't think will ever happen again." He explains that along the way, so many chances were taken that can't be replicated; the MCU that developed did so in a manner that was both closely monitored but also organic in many ways. It's a combination of elements much like Captain America's super-soldier serum: tough, if not impossible, to recreate.

Some have decried the superhero-movie era; others have pronounced that it's dying now; others still are saying it's been dead since Avengers: Endgame. Gonzales says he still has a Hulk-sized faith in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to keep on keepin' on. "They taught us all to love the interconnected story and the team-ups. Audiences still want that. I won't be worried about the future of Marvel in movies until the first film with 'Avengers' in the title flops," he concludes. "That's the flagship. Comics readers know that Marvel has a lot more stories to tell."

MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios is on shelves in hardcover now, and will release in paperback with additional content in October. For more information, see the publisher's website, or ask for it from your local bookseller.