Marvel Studios puts Echo in the Spotlight - and draws a connection to a classic comic

gamesradar.com:

Marvel Studios released the first trailer for the upcoming Echo streaming series on Friday - a bone-crunching clip that went big on the violence, setting out the show's stall as the MCU's first TV-MA rated show.

That's not the only thing that's a little bit different about Echo. It was announced shortly afterwards that the series will be the first release under the newly-formed Marvel Spotlight banner.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. From a TV point of view it marks the show out as something new. Marvel Studios' head of streaming, Brad Winderbaum described Spotlight as, "A platform to bring more grounded, character-driven stories to the screen, and in the case of Echo, focusing on street-level stakes over larger MCU continuity." 

That's a smart move and one that may appeal to an audience looking for something a little different to the usual superhero fare. As a side note, it also sounds intriguingly close to what Netflix were doing with their plethora of Marvel shows like Daredevil and Jessica Jones a few years back. 

But Marvel Showcase is also a name with comics history, and one that may have implications for what the studio is hoping to achieve with Echo...

If the name Marvel Spotlight sounds familiar, that's because it was also the title of an anthology comic which ran for 33 issues from 1971 to 1977. 

Each issue of Spotlight focused on a new or lesser-known character, giving them the chance to shine. Some big name heroes made either their first ever or very early appearances in the comic, including Werewolf By Night (who debuted in Marvel Showcase #2), Ghost Rider (#5), and Moon Knight who had one of his earliest stories in #28-#29.

Spotlight also had a pragmatic function for the publisher. Like the