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The 5 Genuine Pros and Cons From the Disney-Marvel Buyout


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?By Matt Wilson of The ISS

If you’ve crawled out a cave where you’ve been trapped and hobbled into a library, encountering a computer for the first time in days, it may be news to you that Disney announced Monday that it’s buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. It might also be news to you, though it probably isn’t, that the internet collectively shat a brick. Literally half of the commenters in comics-site comments sections and comics-enthusiast Twitterers saw the announcement as the end of Marvel itself. The other half saw it as the saving grace of a troubled print industry. Either way, everyone freaked out way too hard. The Marvel deal is going to be less awful than half the people think, and probably more intrusive than the other half believe. Let’s face it, folks, there’s going to be good and bad in this whole Disney sale thing. Here’s the five pros and five cons that seem almost inevitable.




THE PROS:


5) A Brighter Future for Marvel Cartoons

If you think those straight-to-DVD Marvel animated movies of recent years were worth one singular damn, or for that matter, any Marvel cartoon in the past 15 years, you’re wrong. They’ve been bad. Like, uniformly bad. Even the X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons of the ’90s were terrible. Dude, they were. Get over it. Part of the problem is they came from various and sundry animation studios. So Marvel aligning itself with the animation studios most associated with quality over the last 80 years or so (or, at least, the best ones not owned by Disney’s biggest animation competitor, Warner Bros.) seems to mean nothing but good news for upcoming animated projects.


4) An Actual Chance to Get Kids Into Comics

Hey, remember when kids used to read comics? I don’t either. No one does. But the clarion call of the company that created High School Musical and Hannah Montana seems to be the best way to get the smelly little freaks back into the comics shops. Yeah, nerds, you might have to deal with some Disney Channel licensed comics, but a Suite Life of Zack and Cody comic might just be the first taste the little assholes need to work up to that monthly Hulk jones (Rick Jones?). Their spent disposable income will mean your continued extended adolescence.


3) Guaranteed Solvency

It wasn’t that long ago that the company Disney’s now buying for $4 billion was straight-up bankrupt. It was about to go right down the toilet, too, until a toy company Marvel themselves used to own (Toy Biz) bailed them out. Since then, Marvel has been on pretty decent financial ground, but who knows what the future held for them? Popular interest in comics (and comics characters) comes and goes. So who knows? Marvel could have ended up in the poorhouse again. But Mickey and friends won’t let that happen now.


2) Disney Won’t Screw with the Comics (For the Most Part)

Let’s be honest, though. For the most part, DC has moved along just fine without much interference from Warner Bros. They’ve killed Batman, Superman, the Flash, and about a billion other characters, and brought many of them back to life as zombies. The idea that Disney is going to be upset about Peter Parker’s recent Devil-dealing is absurd; the comics are nothing to Disney, it’s the characters (and the movies) they want. Plus, DC has had an incredibly great mature reader’s line for more than two decades now that they probably wouldn’t have been able to get out there and keep on the shelves without WB’s backing. So maybe, just maybe, Marvel can finally put out that new mature-themed Dazzler mini-series I’ve been hoping for that shows the seedy underbelly of roller disco.


1) Synergy

Just imagine what it would have been like if Disney had owned Marvel when The Incredibles came out. Marvel could have slapped “The family that inspired the hit movie!” on every issue of Fantastic Four, and man, the millions of people who loved the movie would have eaten that right up. At the very least, people would have been more aware of the Marvel characters fans love so much, and it would mean more cultural cache for comics in general. And think about this — a Marvel movie made by Pixar. It could happen. Quite easily, in fact.


THE CONS:


5) Boom Comics Is Probably Going Bye-Bye

Disney’s been in the comics business for decades (a fact Kurt Cobain’s daughter was apparently not aware of when she wrote on Twitter “we won’t let you taint comic books ASSHOLES! I THINK A PETITION IS IN ORDER, HOW ABOUT YOU!”). Hell, their license pretty much guaranteed the ongoing success of Gold Key back in the day. And BOOM! Studios seemed to be doing pretty well with licensed properties like The Incredibles. Now that Marvel’s more or less going to be Disney’s in-house comics publisher, that won’t be the case anymore. Plus, Marvel, which was more-or-less independent, is no longer its own entity, and BOOM!, an up-and-coming outfit, takes a big hit. So, much like your movie choices, your comics choices are destined to come from the big six media companies, it looks like.


4) Universal’s Marvel Islands of Adventure Is Certainly Going Bye-Bye

There is no way Disney’s going to allow a competing theme park to use its characters. If you want to see it — or see it again — you’d best make your plans now. Or you can wait for the inevitable Marvel section of Disneyland to open in 2012 or something.


3) The Movies Are a Legal Nightmare

It took like a hundred years for the Spider-Man movie to get made. Remember? Sony and MGM had a 10-year-long legal pissing match over who owned the rights and meanwhile there was no movie. Now, you’ve got even more studios involved — Fox released the X-Men movies, Sony has Spider-Man, Iron Man‘s a Paramount thing, and Blade is New Line. Fox has already announced its going to make a new Fantastic Four movie (if only to keep its rights from lapsing) and it’ll likely do the same X-Men. None of this guarantees decent Marvel movies. Here’s hoping Disney’s Terminator-like lawyers can keep the legal gymnastics at a minimum.


2) Disney Won’t Be Leaving Marvel Totally Alone

Warner Bros. owns DC, and for a long time comics nerds have seen that as a bad thing. On the one hand, that discomfort comes from the simple problem nerds have with big corporations like Microsoft and Google and, well, Disney (over on Newsarama.com, a poll of fans showed that only 27 percent had a positive view of the Disney/Marvel sale). But the bigger aspect is the fact that, on a few occasions, WB has forced some things on DC, like the timing of Superman and Lois Lane’s wedding because of the Lois and Clark TV show. The worry is that Disney might make Marvel put certain things in the comics for purposes other than the purity of the story, and that’s a valid concern.


1) Synergy

Now think about what would have probably really happened if Disney had owned Marvel when The Incredibles came out. It probably wouldn’t have been The Incredibles. It would have been The Fantastic Four. Not to say that Pixar wouldn’t have made a bang-up Fantastic Four movie, because they almost definitely would, but The Incredibles was its own thing, something new, and something great. Now, there may be more reliance on leaning on the crutch of already-existing characters rather than using some real creativity to create new things inspired by the old things — not that Disney has a habit of relying on such things. 

Also, Hannah Montana is totally going to play X-23 in the next X-Men flick. Just sayin’.