Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier guide looks behind the scenes of the Disney+ series

The series could have been called Captain America: Aftermath and shored up into a theatrical movie. Instead The Falcon and the Winter Soldier became another one of those six-episode Disney+ streaming series that didn’t really have much to say about its characters–another story that pulls together the odd supporting characters from other films and wedges them into a new story intended to connect Phase III of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Marvel’s future. Better production values than their network TV counterparts but not as riveting as the layered storytelling and worldbuilding in Marvel’s Netflix series, the Disney+ series pull together the movie actors in “bridge” stories to try to keep viewers coming back for more. Why didn’t Kevin Feige give the Falcon his own movie to show how he became Captain America? Who knows. But fans of the Marvel characters will get a chance to look back at how the filmmakers conceived their story for the series and its dozens of fight scenes in the forthcoming hardcover book, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Official Marvel Studios Collector Special. It’s available for pre-order now here at Amazon, or order it from Elite Comics or your local comic shop.

The book is a great souvenir guide for the series that will introduce fans to the crew that made it happen. Check out a preview below.

To its credit, one of the characters The Falcon and the Winter Soldier brought back was Daniel Brühl’s Zemo, revisited in a way that actually improved upon the character introduced in 2016’s Captain America: Civil War. Brühl’s performance in the series elevates the character to become one of Marvel’s most interesting antagonists. Along with Zemo is Erin Kellyman’s terrorist/revolutionary Karli–unlike the average Marvel Comics villain (think Red Skull and Green Goblin) these characters aren’t clear-cut villains, operating in a gray world of good and bad. Brühl and Kellyman join Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan in interviews for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Official Marvel Studios Collector Special.

Another worthy addition was Wyatt Russell’s John Walker. It’s possible that the series didn’t have the appeal that the Captain America movies possessed–not only because it lacked the charismatic Chris Evans–but because it took the risk of including issues of international conflict, politics, and economics that the movies stepped around with their more comic book-esque plots. Russell’s John Walker was an intriguing look into what it takes to be a superhero in way some of the best 21st century comics have captured Captain America stories, and Russell has the range to make the character into something interesting in future series and films.

The series also flipped Marvel viewers’ perception of Emily VanCamp’s beloved character Sharon Carter, and introduced a strange choice as cross-series puppetmaster: Julia Louis-Dreyfus basically playing… Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Other characters plucked from Marvel’s past were Florence Kasumba’s Ayo from Black Panther and Captain America: Civil War, and Georges St-Pierre’s Batroc from Captain America: Winter Soldier.

All these characters, as well as those behind the production, can be found in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: The Official Marvel Studios Collector Special. Take a look inside in this preview from Titan:

As with previous Collector’s Specials from Titan, look for three covers available, one for direct sales, one from newsstands, and one from comic shops.