If there's one things fans love to do, it's to plunge virtually any comment thread on the Internet into a depressing morass of insults and ad hominem attacks against people who don't enjoy the same comic books and comic book movies or TV shows as they do.
The most recent staging ground for these geek battles was when Sir Ian McKellen insulted Superman in favor of propping up the X-Men franchise, of which he's a part, but frankly it's rare that a week goes by when at least one story doesn't pop up that gets people going.
But it doesn't particularly affect the talent most of the time; there are actors who have moved back and forth between the movie universes and yet more who work on both shows -- writers for Arrow who head over to Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and producers and directors from S.H.I.E.L.D. who end up working on episodes of The CW's DC shows.
Still, almost everyone seemed to appreciate the irony of Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim taking over an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. reboot as an ongoing comic book for Marvel. During a recent interview with Guggenheim timed to coincide with Comic-Con International: San Diego, we asked: Did he hesitate at all to take on a comic tied to a competing TV series?
"I guess, yes, in the sense that whenever a comic book project of mine gets announced these days, it tends to say 'Arrowshowrunner' or 'Arrow executive producer' in the headline," Guggenheim said. Stll, it was only a momentary consideration. "I think if we were still back in like Season Two of Arrow when there were fewer comic book-based shows on the air and more was made of the quote-unquote rivalry between the two shows, I would have probably stopped to think about it more.
But here we are:Arrow's going into its fourth season, S.H.I.E.L.D. is going into its third season, it kind of feels like we're past that. There's a lot more comic book shows on the landscape, so it doesn't feel quite as egregious and truth be told, I've been writing for Marvel now for probably over ten years. So anyone who knows my work, probably is not surprised to see my name on a Marvel comic despite the fact that I'm probably more well-known at this point becuase of my connection to Arrow. But nobody at DC has mentioned it to me, nobody's blinked an eye."
Of course, it's not as though Guggenheim has ever particularly engaged in competitive squabbling with the Marvel shows -- and if he were so inclined, he would likely be even more prone to keep a lid on it now that his wife Tara Butters is one of the showrunners on Marvel's Agent Carter.
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