Everybody Loves Leonardo

Leonardo Da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever is the upcoming Warner Bros. action movie written by frequent comics scribe Marc Guggenheim and starring artist/inventor/genius Leonardo Da Vinci as a prototypical action hero in the Indiana Jones/James Bond/Batman mode. Perhaps you noticed Jeffrey Renaud’s interview with Guggenheim on the topic for our sister blog Spinoff Online … and perhaps you noticed the similarity of the idea (cooked up by Hitman producer Adrian Askarieh) to that of Jonathan Hickman’s new Marvel comic S.H.I.E.L.D., which features Leonardo and several other real-world and Marvel-Universe geniuses as members of a secret society dedicated to saving the world.

Well, you’re not alone: Jonathan Hickman noticed it, too. In a tweet directed at fellow Marvel writer Brian Michael Bendis, Hickman linked to the Guggenheim interview and wrote “This … is going to be AWESOME! ” Bendis replied, “i know, right? where do they come up with ideas like that?”

Now, there are enough winky emoticons and tongue-in-cheek phrases in there to mitigate against any perceived outrage over the similarity between the projects on the part of Hickman or Bendis. Meanwhile, Leonardo’s the guy who gave rise to the term “Renaissance man,” for pete’s sake — it’s hardly as though his astonishing, evocative talents have gone unnoticed by the world’s writers of fantastic fiction prior to the release of S.H.I.E.L.D., as anyone who’s read The Da Vinci Code can tell you. Still, it’s funny how, for the moment at least, everything’s coming up Vitruvian.