WTFF: Disney to buy Marvel for $4bil

[jbhelfrich]

money.cnn.com/2009/08/31/news/companies/disney_marvel/index.htm

Just saw it on CNN. Had anybody heard anything about this?

[jensaltmann]

Reading about it on Bleeding Cool right now. You're right about the WFT.

[jarddavis]

On one hand...

Hopefully I'll now get to see a Pixar animated Avengers movie.

On the other...

Maybe this will signal a good bye to Bendis and co for infringing on their woman raping artistic license.

Hey.. Win win either way.

[Anders]

Worst/best case scenario for comics: Disney neuters the Marvel characters to keep them in line with their "family friendly"/ass-jerk conservative morals, plunging superhero comics into a death spiral far out of the mainstream, making room for a new wave of innovation.

More likely scenario: Disney pretty much ignores the comics side of things and focuses on making big money from the movies.

Best case scenario for movies: We get lots of awesome Marvel movies. In a few years the tech is cheap enough that Pixar can crank out a dozen totally cool computer animated TV shows. Everything is great and full of win and rainbow unicorns forever.

Worst case scenario for movies: We get typical Disney movies featuring Marvel characters. Animated, with song numbers featuring dancing furniture.

(No, this is not a serious post.)

[michaelpaciocco]

OK, here goes:

My first thoughts on this whole thing actually bring me back to a decade-old George Carlin interview on the Dennis Miller show (back before he descended into outright neocon hackville - so when he was in regular hackville). Carlin, ever observant, remarked on the consolidation of corporate entities while creating the appearance of variety and the illusion of choice. The line that is still stuck in my head - but not perfectly, so I'm paraphrasing - "The supermarkets have over 200 brands of cereal, but there are only what? 5? 6? Oil companies in the world. Some choice."

We currently live in a society where the primary media companies are Disney, Newscorp, GE, Viacom and Time-Warner - think about how MUCH is controlled by those hands, and you start getting the idea.

So no, on a strictly human level, continuining consolidation is not good.

Now, I'm going to avoid the obvious jokes, because, well, there's no point really - the internet is already flooding with them - see here for a sample -

mightygodking.com/index.php/2009/08/31/the-fallout/

Now, in reality, here are some thoughts and possiblities:
-it makes the FF mistake I mentioned Friday a little more ominous. I'm not saying deliberate, but oddly symbolic.
-if someone in Marketing at DC isn't handing Didio a deck of index cards with "Mickey Mouse comics" jokes, than someone isn't doing their goddamn job. Time for some payback for the "AOL comics" jokes.

Now, the realistic case is that Disney will not touch the comics themselves in any direct manner barring a massive protest - Disney releases lots of questionable content via other branches of its media empire, so I doubt you'll see Marvel being 'Kidified" or repressed to meet conservative family principles unless Disney wants to try and solve the Gordian knot that is the Direct market and publication system. Disney after all, wants to make money. They will likely focus on the other media - movies, TV, animation, etc.

Now, what will be interesting here is how much of the comics talent gets sucked up into the alternate branches of the Disney machine, and it'll be interesting for a couple of reasons. The primary reason it'll be interesting is that Disney (and I'm not talking Pixar, but Disney-prime) is NOTORIOUS for burning out their talent fast and then cutting them off at the knees. So it'll be fun to see how some of Marvel's "Talent" reacts to that kind of abuse if they are brave enough to try and cross the threshold the way so many of them desperately want to. The second facet of this will involve who will be left standing, and how they'll break down into the two camps - the people who only want to make good comics, and the complete washouts, and which factions will end up making the creative decisions - at least, whatever can be 'created' by Marvel in this new arrangement.


Of course, this means that any kind of protracted legal/creator's rights battles with Marvel are going to get that much tougher with Disney's ability to throw lawyers at people. So yeah, good luck there.

That's about it.


Michael

[paulpogue]

I have a strong instinct that Disney will be keeping its hands off the Marvel comics themselves unless they seriously infringe on the whole Disney theme. Having a Hood miniseries or something where people's heads get eaten is probably still going to be perfectly okay, and the non-marquee characters will be for all intents and purposes left alone.

But the top-tier guys? Disney-prime hates bad publicity, particularly when it comes to character morality, and the Pixar guys who are effectively running the show at Disney hate lazy storytelling. And the most significant character change of the decade at Marvel is a horrific example of both.

Sooo ...

Updated odds:
Spider-Man's deal with the devil doesn't last through 2010: 80 percent and rising.

[michaelpaciocco]

Aug 31, 2009 10:17:39 GMT -8 paulpogue said:

I have a strong instinct that Disney will be keeping its hands off the Marvel comics themselves unless they seriously infringe on the whole Disney theme. Having a Hood miniseries or something where people's heads get eaten is probably still going to be perfectly okay, and the non-marquee characters will be for all intents and purposes left alone.

But the top-tier guys? Disney-prime hates bad publicity, particularly when it comes to character morality, and the Pixar guys who are effectively running the show at Disney hate lazy storytelling. And the most significant character change of the decade at Marvel is a horrific example of both.

Sooo ...

Updated odds:
Spider-Man's deal with the devil doesn't last through 2010: 80 percent and rising.

See, I'm more pessimistic because there's been almost two years of stories since OMD, and again, I doubt Disney will want to rock the boat. Plus, after all, we don't know whether or not the Disney head-haunchos, whom have never really married Mickey and Minnie, might feel that the "timelessness" of single Spidey works for them.

[Anders]

If the image doesn't work: www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/9/2/rightsizing/

[K-Box]

The best op-ed I've seen on Disney buying Marvel so far:

Tom Spurgeon of The Comics Reporter solicited the thoughts of Ben Schwartz on Disney's impending purchase of Marvel. I've linked the entire column for you all to read for yourselves, but I still felt like posting my favorite quotes from the article below:

The Comics Reporter - Ben Schwartz On Marvel/Disney Deal

[...] One aspect of their problems with Disney, and vice versa, is that Disney is very sensitive to putting out material that draws boycott action from advocacy groups. That is, when someone wants something from Disney, they will look at Marvel material (let's say, a violent Wolverine comic with some gore) to paste on the news and say, "Disney sells this to kids." Pixar doesn't create a problem that way, but the pregnant Mrs. Hobgoblin in a recent Spider-Man arc might.

[...] Disney is a creative company, and superhero books in general could use a shake up. No loss, in my opinion, if they did get involved. Marvel's line has been a angry version of Weisinger-era Jimmy Olsen concepts lately (suddenly, everyone's a zombie; suddenly, everyone that was bad is good and was good is bad ...). After all these-post Miller/Moore years of "dark" and "edgy," ie, angry and adolescent, maybe Marvel moving towards pop light isn't a bad idea. The pop-culture Kirby/Lee/Ditko-era was Marvel's creative peak, while 2009 is its financial peak from movies, TV, etc, (but not in comics). They need something.

[...] The Spectacular Spider-Man animated show is better than the comics. The X-Men and Spider-Man movies are, too. As I mentioned above, the guys running the comics division live in the past and their sales are mediocre. The people making the comics into movies are the ones connecting to the public in a big way, that's actually made Marvel fun for me again. Does anyone still buy the idea that the comics are where new concepts are generated that get turned into movie and television? The newest idea in comics-to-movies is the Claremont/Byrne X-Men vibe of the early '80s in the X-Men movies.

Over the years, many, many people have complained about Disney for lots of reasons. I know a number of parents who don't want their kids exposed to the Disney version of favorite fairy tales and books. I get that, and understand why. On the other hand, I can't think of a company that would benefit right now from that more than Marvel.

I pretty much agree with every single word written above.

[paulpogue]

Also consider that Disney is considered by the right to be an enormously liberal company, and emblematic of all that is wrong with the Librul Elites.

Read this next paragraph, and tell me if you can't envision it being said, this very moment, on the Glenn Beck show or something similar:

"And next up, ladies and gentlemen, we have the latest shocker from the company that recognizes gay marriage and brought you Gay Day at Disney World. Turns out the main character from Disney's latest acquisition made a DEAL WITH THE DEVIL to divorce his wife and retroactively abort his child -- and everyone's okay with it! If you think I'm kidding, just stay with us 'til after this commercial break."

Remember, these are the same kinds of lunatics who convinced half the world that the Teletubbies were a secret gay menace -- and that was 15 years ago. They've gotten much, much crazier since then.

And if you don't think Glenn Beck is capable of running that exact segment, you just haven't been paying much attention to Beck this year. The man's gone completely insane and is now cracking jokes about assassinating the Speaker of the House, in between cooking up wild conspiracy theories about how 30 Rockefeller Center is the secret symbolic HQ of a worldwide Communist plot. The only thing keeping him from going after Disney for this is that nobody's mentioned it to him yet. But just wait for a slow news week.

[michaelpaciocco]

Oh, I can easily see that, no question. However, a slow news week? With the current healthcare thing? And all the other crazy crap going on? I think it'll be a while.

[jessebaker]

I'd personally call Glenn Beck and tell him on his radio show all about OMD, but that would mean interacting with the man on the phone and God knows that I probably couldn't fight the temptation of asking him, point blank, if he's relapsed into drinking as the cause of his current madness.

[K-Box]

SHIT JUST GOT REAL

DC Entertainment is born.

In other words, Warner Bros. looked at Disney's acquisition of Marvel and said to themselves, "Hey, WE should get us a comics company too!"

Five minutes later, after they were informed that they already own DC ...

What's sad is, as much as I cringe reflexively at corporations taking hold of the steering wheel of creativity, 90 percent of the current crop of "creative" personnel at DC and Marvel both have already sold so much of their souls to be hack-tastic corporate shills that having Warner Bros. and Disney come in and lay The Hand Of God Shooter upon them would not only force them to behave with some of the RESPONSIBILITY of a business run by fucking grown-ups, but it would also actually IMPROVE their creativity at this point.

And if heads roll as a result, from the two companies' most favored creators on up to DiDio and Quesada? Then I will say ...

[paulpogue]

There's a tale going around that your scenario is precisely what happened around 1987: Warner Brothers execs wanted to give a shot at reviving the superhero genre, asked around about getting the rights to Spider-Man, and some lower exec had to meekly point out that WB already owned Batman, and hence the BurtonBat was born.

That's the kind of urban legend that if it's not true, it damn well SHOULD be.

I would be very happy to see an across-the-board creative shakeup, although at this point, I'm not sure WHO among the major creators and editors would make a good Marvel EIC. Brevoort became the ultimate company man years ago; Wacker is pretty much Brevoort lite; and there's no real rising star who could bring Marvel together. Greg Pak, maybe, but there's no evidence that he'd make a good editor as opposed to his considerable writing talents.

Though to be honest, I'd take a monkey with a typewriter at Marvel at this point.

[michaelpaciocco]

For Marvel - Jeff Parker could do it, maybe Fred Van Lente

For DC - Geoff Johns is basically running the table anyway, but he's too busy on the writing end, so...ah fuck it - Busiek.