Back in 2014, people were shocked that Disney was going to use their acquisition of Marvel
to produce an animated feature length movie, but Big Hero 6?
That's a team that like nobody had heard of.
And look, I’m a big comic book fan but I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I knew
all about Big Hero 6 before the Disney movie, but it was really good so I wanted to look
into the Marvel universe and find every little bit of information that I could find on the
team and what I found was…
Well it was weird.
And this rabbit hole led to a lot of information and a really odd situation regarding the ownership
of the Big Hero 6 license itself which affects how Marvel can use it going forward.
So without any further adieu, let’s take a look back at Big Hero 6.
So in the 90s, anime started to get popular, like really REALLY popular.
Because of this, all things Japan were on the rise and Marvel wanted to get in on it.
Although it got overshadowed by bigger pushes like the Marvel Mangaverse and the Marvel
Tsunami imprint, one of their first attempts to make Japan-centric comics was a mini-series
called “Sunfire & Big Hero 6” in 1998.
However, we’re getting a little bit ahead of ourselves… sort of.
See, although the Sunfire & Big Hero 6 mini-series WAS the first appearance of the team, they
were actually created to first be used in the Alpha Flight series, but a scheduling
conflict caused the mini-series to be released first.
At the time, Alpha Flight was being handled by tag team duo of Steven T. Seagle and Duncan
Rouleau.
These two would later go on to help create “Man of Action Entertainment” and developed
the group’s first project, a little show called Ben 10.
In the comic continuity, Big Hero 6 was founded and directly funded by the Giri Industrial
Corporation, a secret group of Japanese politicians and business entries.
This team was meant to be the premiere super group of Japan kind of like The Avengers and
was even officially sanctioned by the country itself!
The group was originally led by Keniuchio Harada, better known as the Silver Samurai,
an on and off again villain who’s frequently at odds with Wolverine and the X-Men.
He has the mutant ability to create tachyon fields which he usually puts around his sword,
which allows it to cut through pretty much anything.
Other early recruits include Leiko Tanaka, a former Yakuza member that was released from
prison in order to test the experimental Go-Go Tomago exosuit which allows her to absorb,
amplify, and channel kinetic energy which usually amounts to her turning into a big
fireball and smacking into things.
She was basically forced to join Big Hero 6 as a part of her “get out of jail” deal.
There’s also Hiro Takachiho, a kid genius who’s almost always accompanied by his robot
butler/bodyguard/best friend, Baymax.
This robo-dude runs on water and has a very old-school mobster vibe to him.
He also turns into a dragon.
Because comics.
If that wasn’t already enough then Baymax was also built using brain engrams of Hiro’s
departed father which means that his robot servant literally has the memory, personality,
and thoughts of his dead dad.
Oh yeah, and Hiro’s mom doesn’t know about this… at all.
Let’s also not forget Aiko Miyazaki A.K.A. secret agent Honey Lemon, a codename that
she pulled from her favorite TV show.
Honey Lemon is a brilliant scientist who worked in the R&D division of a Japanese spy agency.
She’s so smart that on this official power chart, she’s only a tick below Hiro in terms
of intelligence.
However, her greatest creation might just justify this.
While in the science department, Honey Lemon created the Power Purse, sometimes also referred
to as the Nano-Purse.
This normal looking bag is probably one of the most powerful objects in the entire Marvel
universe.
It uses a-I’m sorry.
What is that face?!
Sorry.
It uses a combination of miniature wormholes, Pym Particles, and nanotechnology for her
to shrink and store a limitless amount of objects that she can then pull out to fit
literally any situation.
Sure, it might just seem like a Hermione-style bag of holding, but the stuff contained within
is all over the place ‘Ya need a radioactive dampening blanket?
Power Purse.
Refreshing glass of water?
Power Purse.
V...volcano cover?
Power Purse.
It later turns out that the Power Purse isn’t just limited to items that Honey Lemon puts
into it though.
Like the team needed a Hypothetical Energy Conversion Blaster during a fight so she reaches
in to find it.
Turns out that in this instance, she actually took the gun from Mr. Fantastic who was all
the way in the Andromeda Galaxy!
Kind of makes me wonder why she doesn’t just try to assemble the Infinity Gauntlet
or something.
Finally, there’s Shiro Yoshida A.K.A.
Sunfire... which makes sense since his name is literally in the title of the series.
He’s Silver Samurai’s cousin and a former member of the X-Men with the ability to super-heat
matter into plasma.
Because we’re only dealing with three issues, the plot to this series doesn’t have a lot
going on.
It mostly just gets the team assembled with a bit of awkward writing.
I think my favorite bit is how the use of Japanese honorifics such as san, chan, and
sama are almost never used, but when they are, you get “It was a gift.
From your mama-san.”
That’s a weird choice.
So the original three members of the team are Silver Samurai, Go-Go, and Honey Lemon
and they hoped to recruit Hiro and Baymax, but they declined since Hiro was still in
school.
That all changed when Hiro’s mom was kidnapped by a villain named the Everwraith, the astral
embodiment of those lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
...Well that’s a heavy subject for literally the first adventure.
But hey, they don’t do much more with that premise than like a villainous monologue or
two.
The team needed help and who better than Japan’s premiere superhero, Sunfire?
Turns out though that he’s dying from radiation poisoning brought on by his own powers which
are also now going a bit out of control.
He just wants to be left alone so he can die in peace, but Big Hero 6 is determined to
cure him.
This culminated during the big final fight with Everwraith when Sunfire comes out to
help and more or less defeats him single handedly by creating a big energy blast to save the
day and also faking his death.
Like I said, this was only three issues so there's really not a lot that this book could
do.
Despite it being all over the place and overall pretty lackluster, I really do need to give
it credit for managing to establish a brand new super team made up of mostly all new characters
AND having a complete villain fight in such a short amount of time.
This rocky foundation though didn't give Big Hero 6 much to work with leading to…
Okay so here’s where things get a little bit tricky.
From here on out, Big Hero 6 only made very small appearances and cameos with some pretty
big and ludicrously weird events in the group’s history not even being shown in ANY comics
with it instead, being relegated to being explained in the official Marvel handbooks
which like nobody ever reads.
Regardless, let’s get you filled in!
Silver Samurai ended up leaving the team which got Hiro promoted to team leader.
Yet when making a new appearance in the Alpha Flight series where they were being brainwashed,
the group needed new members.
This led to the creation of two new original characters that were made to help mirror the
original line up, the Ebon Samurai and Sunpyre.
These characters each had one very small line in the issue and were literally never seen
again save for a quick picture in another Marvel handbook, the Civil War Battle Damage
Report, that again next to nobody read.
But hey, we DO have their history so let me break it down because WOW, it’s a doozy.
Ebon Samurai was apparently a member of the Japanese Imperial Guard that was killed by
the Silver Samurai and was brought back to life so that he could get revenge.
He encountered Big Hero 6, knowing that Harada was once their leader, but when he confronted
the team he learned that the Silver Samurai had not only left, but he was presumed dead
while he was venturing off by his lonesome.
Feeling like he no longer had a purpose, Ebon Samurai joined alongside Big Hero 6 since
it would be SOMETHING to occupy his time.
Sunpyre is a lot crazier so just try to follow me here.
This is Princess Lumina from a planet called Coronar located within the Microverse, the
sub-atomic world that you might remember from the Ant-Man movies.
Well in a fight with the villain, Deadline, a one-off adversary of Sunfire in 1989 that
was literally never seen or mentioned again until this handbook, Honey Lemon needed to
protect herself so she went inside of her Power Purse.
This transported her to Coronar where she helped rescue the princess.
As a result, Honey was worshipped as a goddess, but she had to leave in order to defeat Deadline.
Lumia felt indebted to Honey Lemon so she came along with her to the main universe,
helped defeat Deadline with her natural plasma abilities, and joined Big Hero 6.
In an attempt to better fit in and please Honey Lemon, Lumina took up the codename and
costume of Sunpyre who was Sunfire’s dead sister.
Again, these characters were literally only seen in an actual comic one time with no explanation
of who they were and how they got there with each having only having one line of dialogue.
They left the team off-panel just as quickly as they came and again, there was no explanation
until it was later filled in by the aforementioned handbook entries.
Now on the bright side, new Sunpyre and Ebon Samurai content did end up getting made in
the form of a short story that was published in the back of the Big Hero 6 relaunch that
we’ll soon be getting into, but this reads more like an apology for handling these characters
so poorly rather than anything else.
But now that it’s been brought up, let’s get to the series relaunch which is the entire
reason why I made this video in the first place.
WHAT EVEN IS THIS BOOK?!
The new Big Hero 6 mini-series was written by comic book legend, Chris Claremont, a man
most well known for his massively influential work on the Uncanny X-Men series.
This seemed like a pretty awesome set up, one that makes me totally willing to overlook
just how weird it is that a team called Big Hero SIX only had a five issue series.
Feels like a missed opportunity.
The gang got a complete modern redesign that I actually really like such as Baymax’s
battle form changing from a dragon to this new mech-like design which sketches call “Baymax
2.0”.
Honestly, for as much as I’m about to crap on this book, I actually really like the art
so massive props to artist, David Nakayama, for doing it!
With the Ebon Samurai and Sunpyre out of the picture, the team needed new recruits.
The first new character came in the form of Wasabi No-Ginger, a chef/swordsman with the
ability to create knives out of qi.
Because of this, his knives don’t kill, but instead render foes unconscious even when
they’re lodged deep within a bad guy’s skull.
Although not a full member of the team, Big Hero 6 was also joined by a woman named Furi
Wamu who is the head of the Exotic Assets division of the department of homeland security
for Japan.
She acts as the official liaison to the Japanese government and is the one who directly gives
the team their missions.
Under Furi, the first mission of Big Hero 6 took them to New York in order to investigate
the theft of a bunch of macguffins and prevent others from being stolen.
It’s there that they meet up with the other newest member that was assigned to Big Hero
6.
His name is Fred.
Just Fred.
He wears a t-shirt featuring Marvel’s Devil Dinosaur which is fitting since he’s sort
of a monster himself.
So Fred doesn’t actually turn into a monster, but rather he has this monstrous kaiju aura
that can deal massive damage.
It’s invisible to the naked eye, but some people and scanners can pick it up.
The entire team is staying with Dr. Iosama, a researcher at a lab which has the macguffins
that are being targeted, and his daughter, Marys.
Basically, she’s another child genius like Hiro that mostly exists just to set up a painfully
forced romance between them.
I also have nowhere to elegantly work this into the pacing, but for this whole book,
characters spout “So sorry.”
as a catchphrase.
Now despite the fact that literally half of the super team are adults, Big Hero Six has
to go undercover at a local high school… for literally no reason.
They’re not trying to uncover any information or achieve any goal.
They’re just there.
Why not go protect the scientists at his lab?
That’s a great question!
I wish we got an answer.
I mean I guess they’re protecting Marys, but does that really require the entire team?
The entire team who I might add doesn't seem to be opposed to talking freely about being
a superheros in front of the other students thus defeating the entire purpose of being
undercover?
You’d think that that alone would be enough to blow their cover, right?
Well Go-Go and Wasabi also decide to help the high school football team win a big game
by using their superpowers to easily defeat the competition.
But super powers aside, don’t forget that these two are literally adults that are playing
high school football.
Honey Lemon of course becomes a cheerleader since she’s the book’s main source of
fanservice that you absolutely know that I’m going to use in the thumbnail in order to
get clicks from horny nerds.
If you’re one of those that made it this far, hi.
Don’t worry, you’re about to get what you came for.
During halftime, Honey Lemon takes a break where she’s promptly attacked and put into
a bondage situation which turns her into a bad guy.
I think my favorite part of this whole scene is when Honey fully turns and the bad dude
that did it to her says quote “Perfect, my dear.
Now let’s go be villains.”
Evil Honey Lemon leaves to go steal the macguffin from the lab which required Big Hero 6 to
intervene, but oh no!
Furi and Dr. Iosama have also been turned into bad guys now!
Of course, this leads to a fight, during which the possession went from Honey Lemon to Go-Go.
The mastermind behind all this villainy turns out to be this woman named (I kid you not)
“BadGal” and she drops the possession of Dr. Iosama in order to transfer it to Marys.
Thankfully, Furi was able to break free from her own possession and took BadGal out, saving
the day.
You’d think that’d be the end of the issue, but nope.
It ends with the random revelation that this lab also has aliens.
Would you like an explanation of why?
SO WOULD I!
Yeah, the aliens aren’t addressed at all and instead, the next issue opens up with
the whole group explaining things to the authorities.
Despite the fact that Big Hero 6 is a publicly known about superteam that is officially and
publicly backed by the Japanese government, Furi takes full credit and responsibility
for defeating BadGal, having everyone else pretend like they were just concerned high
school kids so they wouldn’t get hassled by the police.
Despite the successful rouse though, the team was still being watched by the cops so…
the football kids organize a big diversion so Big Hero 6 could sneak away from the authorities.
The team decided to investigate the aliens who it turns out were just a bunch of alien
children and their ship was broken, which was why they were stranded on Earth.
Also, the need Honey Lemon to do their homework.
I… what?
Anyway, the ship gets like instantly fixed and the aliens go home.
Go-Go wants someone to explain what just happened WHICH I AGREE, BUT NOPE!
JUST A WHOOPS SO SORRY!
Hero shot.
End book.
What the hell was the point of the alien sub-plot?!
I re-read this whole mini-series three times to make sure that I was being fair in this
video and I still have no idea what I read.
Like the book sort of made sense up until the aliens, but I…
I don’t know.
Like did they relate the the macguffins?
If so, that wasn’t made clear at all.
This book’s bad.
This book is really bad, but it’s pretty.
After the 2008 mini-series, Big Hero 6 completely vanished from the Marvel universe save for
a very brief appearance in a Spider-Man one-shot in 2012 and I’m sure that it’s this lack
of presence over at Marvel that made Big Hero 6 a prime candidate to get the Disney treatment.
Yet one would expect that with a new and popular movie, there would be plenty of comics coming
out to better capitalize on it.
I mean that’s the entire reason that the Guardians of the Galaxy came back to comic
shelves!
In 2014 however, Newsarama asked Marvel if there were plans to use Big Hero 6 anytime
soon with Marvel saying that there were no plans to feature them in ANY projects.
They would not get their own series again, they would not be guest stars in other books,
and there were no plans to even reprint their earlier books.
That being said, the animated version of Big Hero 6 got plenty of new content including
a manga adaptation, a Disney comic, a comic series over at IDW Comics, an animated series,
Kingdom Hearts 3 representation, and so much more!
Also an interesting note is that the Big Hero 6 figurines in the game Disney Infinity are
labeled as “Disney Originals” and not the “Marvel Super Heroes” branding.
I also sat through the Kingdom Hearts III credits a few times trying to see if there
was any mention of Marvel.
Nope.
Speaking of credits, the Big Hero 6 movie itself DOES mention Man of Action for creating
the characters and team even though they didn’t create Fred or Wasabi.
However, their creators did get special thanks in the credits along with the only acknowledgement
of Marvel that I’ve been able to dig up anywhere.
This gives a lot of context to this statement from Cort Lane, Marvel’s Vice President
of Animation Development & Production that he gave in an interview with Newsarama, making
it really look like Big Hero 6 is just no longer a Marvel property.
I know that Marvel not owning Big Hero 6 sounds weird.
I mean it’s owned by Disney so the rights are still at the same parent company.
However, it looks like this is a property that’s officially out of Marvel’s hands
and instead are exclusively handled by a different division of the Walt Disney Company entirely.
So if you were hoping to see Big Hero 6 make a return to Marvel Comics in either their
original OR movie forms, Whoops!
So sorry!
That’s probably not going to happen.
I actually had a lot of fun making this video so if this is something you enjoyed then you
might want to watch the rest of this show.
It’s called “Because Comics”, where I take a look at all of the crazy, strange,
and straight up bizzare things that make comic books… well… comic books.
So yeah, maybe like and subscribe.
I’d like to have you.
We’re going to look at some other weird things in comic book history moving forward.
In fact, I highly recommend watching the last episode of the show where we take a look at
the time traveling shenanigans of Batman where he was a caveman, a pirate, a cowboy.
It was odd.
But anyway, I hope you learned at least a little something new and hopefully I’ll
see you next time!