The MCU Tie In Comics Are Pretty Cool

Some of the backstory in the tie in comics an preludes is pretty awesome.  Most of them provide some insight to what one of the characters was doing, or to a particular event that you heard about but didn't get much info on.

For instance,

- You get to see how Kaicilius's wife and child died, how it devastated him, and how his desire for power was directed at finding a way to bring them back.  That's why he said things like "death is an insult" and why he general sought the book of time, because he thought the Ancient one was sincerely keeping him from the only being that could get him what he wanted, his family.  Good stuff to see play out.

- In Cap's prelude you get some backstory on him and bucky but the really cool part to me was seeing Red Skull (pre-red skull), first meet Erskine as he was trying to flee Germany during the Nazi takeover.  He forced him to complete the Super Soldier formula under threat of killing his family and Erskine worked for him another 5 years, never knowing that Red Skull had his family killed 3 years before that.  Really creepy and dark, and a fun backstory to hear about after you've seen the film.  You also get to see the comradery between the Howling Commandos.

- Black Widow had a mission just before Avengers which involved tracking down a cell who had stolen Stark's Jericho missile plans and was planning on attaching it to an ICBM, but meanwhile she's challenged by a woman who idolizes her.  A fun story to consider her being on, and really helps put into perspective that all of these characters aren't sitting around doing nothing between films.  Perhaps Tony has dealt with Stilt Man or Crimson Dynamo off camera.  Maybe the answer to where The Leader has been is that Bruce has already confronted him after Avengers, or before it.  It's not as though we've seen everything that's happened to these people.

- In The Ant Man prelude we see a little bit more of a young Hank Pym, but to me the more interesting bit is getting Scott's wife Maggie's Point of View on his decision to rob VistaCorp and why he did it.  It's cool to see her try to talk him out of doing anything about it, but the idea that they were "overcharging" never made complete sense to me.  Sometimes people use that term to mean they don't like how much they are being charged, which is not criminal or unethical of a company to charge anything they want to, but this story reveals that Scott actually found a code in their software that he thought was a mistake because it was charging more than what they were claiming to charge.  Now that is criminal, and I feel better knowing they were actually in the wrong and it wasn't just hate "hate rich people because they have money/ wealth envy" thing.

And I've got quite a few more to run through including Fury's Big Week.  It's low key, kinda relaxing, interesting stuff.  Gives you a big of a new take on some characters and feels more expansive overall.