angelophile | I, for one, welcome our new overlords

Since everyone else has talked about it...

Honestly, the Disney owning Marvel thing? I don't honestly think it's likely to make a huge difference. And almost certainly not a negative one.

The internet's already abuzz with the idea that Marvel is going to get Disneyfied and all its comics will suddenly become places where GLBT characters are no longer welcome (because Marvel were doing so well at that before?), the only books will be child friendly and cutsey (don't people love Marvel Adventures and hate 90s gorefests like X-Force? Where's the bad?) and so on.

Most of which ignores the idea that Disney already own a number of companies (Miramax, Touchstone Pictures) which haven't exactly been sanitized or interfered with. It's useful to remember that the Disney owned Miramax made Clerks, The Piano, Pulp Fiction, Il Postino, From Dusk Till Dawn, Trainspotting, The Talented Mr. Ripley, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, The Crow and many others. Hardly Disneyfied output.

Hey, there was the same worry about Pixar and it seems business as usual with them, still. And, honestly, if Disney decide to stick Hannah Montana in an issue of Spider-man Family, would that be so bad? Worse than the fellating of Obama in recent Marvel comics?

Quotes like "I hope I'm wrong, but this seems like the worst news in comics' history"? Ridiculous.

It seems to me like Disney got a bargain in marketing alone and, in terms of the comics, are now in a position to push comic book characters, and by extension comics, meaning wider exposure. This can only be a good thing.

There's also the buzz in the hugely optimistic direction. I had a discussion with someone last night who insisted that a statement saying that Pixar and Marvel had a meeting and they were "excited" by it meant that Pixar were going to start producing movies based on Marvel properties. Despite the fact that Pixar have had access to all of Disney's characters over the past few years and have continued to create new and fresh worlds regardless and the statement about the Pixar/Marvel meeting being for shareholders (you know, the kind of statements where hyperbole runs rife) they insisted it was going to be Pixar making Spider-man movies or something. They claimed that the tone made it clear that it was going to be Pixar doing Marvel movies and not, as I take it, Marvel doing Pixar comics based on the idea that there was nothing exciting about it that way round. Oy.

While, undoubtedly, Disney will be seeking to unite all the various Marvel film franchises under one roof when existing contracts run out, in the meantime they have massively successful films that seem unlikely to be replaced by CGI. Pixar doing a Power Pack movie? Nnnnoooo.

Another good thing, the big business support now puts them in the same position as DC, who are supported by Warner Brothers and don't have to worry about their bottom line so much. Paul Cornell puts it best:

"It gives Marvel Comics the same financial security as DC has, the latter being part of TimeWarner, while previously Marvel had to survive purely on the strength of its comics...
That's why, in the past, a marginal Marvel title would be cancelled long before a marginal DC title would. Now, when the immediate success of every single title isn't make or break, I expect we'll be seeing more experiments and more creative risks from people whose love of the medium meant they couldn't help themselves but to publish comics they knew would find only a small audience, even when finances were tight."

So, titles like Runaways, Spider-girl, Captain Britain and MI13, the Marvel Adventures line, Squadron Supreme, Exiles, Agents of Atlas, Guardians of the Galaxy, Immortal Iron Fist, Nova, Incredible Hercules, X-Factor and so on could be on firmer ground.

Then there's the question of widening the range of Marvel's output. Again, a good thing. From Marc Bernardin, comic writer and Senior Editor at Entertainment Weekly:

"The biggest question this acquisition poses to me, from a purely comics standpoint, is ‘How will this change what Marvel chooses to publish?’ Not that I think that suddenly, Disney will step in and set some sort of mandate, but if you draw an analogy to the Warner/DC relationship, it’s important that DC publish non-superhero titles for Warner to funnel into production. Because not every superhero demands his or her own movie," said Bernardin. "You also need to have your 'Preachers', your 'Y: The Last Mans', your 'Losers'. But right now, Marvel doesn’t do much of that outside their Epic line. They are, by and large, a publisher of superhero comics, and to this point, it’s worked incredibly well for them. But I think that’ll probably change.”

So, I'm really struggling to see the bad here. (And, admittedly, the hopelessly optimistic Pixar making Marvel movies failing to see the good too). Disney starting to intervene, maybe even putting one of their guys in charge? Well, when did everyone decide Joey Q was someone they didn't want replaced? Everyone seems to be reacting like Marvel has a flawless track record recently that can't be messed with instead of glorifying villains and murderers, Spider-man selling his soul to Satan and coming back as a sad man-child, Sins Past, Civil War, depowered mutants, rampant misogyny and the "boys only!" mindset, sex obsessed BDSM X-men, etc etc etc

Undoubtedly there will be changes, but huge and immediate? I think that's highly unlikely. The changes I do foresee are only good ones.

Well, all will become clear in time.