Tuesday, September 08, 2009

And Now the News: Gooflactus Edition



The Minnesota State Fair got in the way of my posting a news summary on Saturday, so I'm gonna catch up today and tomorrow. You may have heard that there was some really big news in the comics world last week. I figure that gets a post on its own, then tomorrow I'll mention the rest of what went on in adventure news.

If you keep up with comics blogs, this is going to be old news to you, but if you don't and are curious about what Disney's buying Marvel really means, then I'll try to sum it up. The short answer is that no one really knows. There's been a lot of speculation, but little in the way of actual information.

My own initial reaction was that this is going to be very interesting to watch. On the one hand, Marvel's been very successful lately and I'm sure that's what attracted Disney to them. I don't know why Disney would want to mess with that success very much (though there are certainly some things I'd love to see changed).

On the other hand, every time a company buys another company there are always changes and shake-ups. How will this affect Marvel's movie plans? How will it affect Joe Quesada as EiC? How will it effect Marvel MAX? How will it affect Marvel's dark storytelling style in general? (They say it won't.) Will we see some fun, Mickey vs. the Punisher specials or one-shots? How - for that matter - will it affect Boom!'s line of Disney/Pixar/Muppets comics? So many questions!

Jess and I shot some emails back and forth on the day of the announcement, wondering how this could affect the theme parks, especially Marvel's Islands of Adventure at Universal Orlando. I don't know much about Disneyland, but I can't imagine Spider-Man's walking around Disney World's Magic Kingdom. I'm guessing that if the Marvel characters do end up at Disney World it'll be in the Hollywood Studios park with other acquisitions like the Muppets. The Disney Blog has another idea: a whole new theme park, perhaps with more thrill rides.

That was about as far as I thought about it. Tom Spurgeon of course had more thoughtful reactions. As the week went on, most of the speculation would surround the movie aspect.

Of course, the Disney/Marvel mash-up jokes started immediately. I'll spare you the first ones that came to my mind because they're nowhere near as funny as the ones that other people came up with, including Adam Koford's awesome drawing above.

As far as real analysis goes, the best of it was done by Ben Schwartz and Nikki Finke. Schwartz points out that Disney's track record as a creative company can only mean good things for Marvel's comics if Disney chooses to get more involved with them. Finke keeps up with what the deal means for existing Marvel movie deals and the Universal theme park.

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