The 500 lb Gorilla Gets Eaten By a Mouse

[Terotrous]

The first thing Disney did was put the 90's X-Men Cartoon on DVD, so I approve of their leadership so far.

Except the money will be going straight to Disney's pockets, supporting Hannah Montana and The Jonases instead of going right to the makers of a cartoon we know and love. Thats my main issue with Disney buying fucking everything. When I buy a Marvel comic, its because I like the character. Its because I want to support artists that I respect and love. There is an actual glee in my 3 dollar comic purchase helping keep a company I love afloat. I can download any comic or movie I want off the net. I go out and actually PAY for my comics because I believe they are truly deserving of the money. Same goes for Pixar, I LOVE their movies. And I STILL do. The Disney purchase didn't destroy that. My issue is something else.

I DON'T want my money supporting the kind of company that forcefully runs animals off cliffs because the lemmings in their documentary weren't committing suicide.

I don't hate Disney because of sexual things in their movies, or because they use sweat shops, or because Walt was an antisemite. Hell I grew up on their movies, and things like The Lion King are cherished parts of my childhood. I just don't like them because, in general, I find the way they conduct business to be unethical in a degree that does not gel with me, and I want to be able to have the choice of saying "no, I will not support your company because I do not agree with the way it conducts business". As far as I'm concerned, all these takeovers are holding companies I genuinely respect hostage, and I'm FORCED to give Disney my money.

I think this may be slightly overblown. Sure, Disney does some unethical things, but I'd put them way behind, say, Microsoft in terms of ethics violations. It hasn't really stopped many people from using Microsoft products.

I'm sure Disney's not just going to funnel all their money to Hannah Montana, they're not stupid, if the Marvel properties are making money (and they are, the Marvel movies have been raking in the cash lately) they're going to continue putting money into them. They're still putting money into Pixar (and by the looks of it, more money than Pixar had originally).

And even if they take a bath on some of it (possibly comic books or DVDs), it's entirely possible they'll keep doing it. They did put out every Studio Ghibli movie despite the fact that a lot of them weren't commercial successes, and they put quite a lot of effort into the dubs. They're also putting a lot of their classic cartoons on DVD and they're probably not raking in the cash.

Sure, I'd take issue with Disney for a few things, like the fact that they're incredibly stingy about licensing their properties these days, but really, I don't get the impression that they're the devil. A lot of good things have come out of Disney over the years, if someone was buying out Marvel I'd pick Disney before a lot of other companies.

[Laemkral]

I will ruin someone's life because they ruined Spider-Man.

Aren't you a little late for that? Joe Quesadilla has been fucking him over for years now.

You're confusing "fucking him over" with "pushing the character to develop rather than stagnate". When you love a character that's supposed to have a tortured past, you keep torturing the shit out of him. Look at what the writers do to Daredevil. They're metaphorically beating him with a metal pipe in every story line and its done amazing stuff for driving Daredevil's story to grow. Same with Spidey. The more they fuck with his life, the more you get character growth. The trick is knowing when to yield up every now and then.

I'm concerned we'll see this type of innovation disappear in an attempt to preserve "character identity" or some bullshit. For corporate, change is bad. Change means old things that did work, don't. If the characters don't change, they can keep marketing them in the same way. The only good change is one they can predict and thats what has yielded such WONDERFUL exploitations as Extreme Looney Tunes (we all remember that fiasco?) when they try to go off what analysts say is "hip and new".

This is a major property begging to be exploited. Disney is the company that exploits its characters and corporate identity to the max. They sell eggs with Disney characters stamped in ink on the shell. That's all there is to them, just a little ink stamp on the egg. But it's DISNEY eggs. Now tell me you aren't suddenly very afraid.

[Spaceprincess]

there are lots of good reasons to hate Disney, but the most important one is that the Little Mermaid ruined my life( Ariel be my name) i still catch flack for that stupid movie. GRRR! now they're out to ruin marvel, the comic books of my youth? Man if i see Jubilee wearing mickey Mouse ears I'm going to find a suicide booth.

DC and Warner Bros merged in 1969. people then were too busy getting high, laid, or in indochina. and the internet back than was only being used by the military to send and receive porn.

Is there going to be a She Hulk or Spider Woman line at Club Libby Lu's?

[BrownEyedCat]

Disney and Marvel? Weird. I'll bet this has something to do with Marvel's ambitious movie plans stretching or breaking their budget.

Anyway I'm not worried. Disney is a mega-corporation. They'll probably just send vague memos to Marvel and let the oldbies run things rather than risk ruining the brand. They're big enough to absorb any teething troubles.

[Bustertheclown]

I've given myself the day to think about this, and I've decided that this is a lateral move. Anyone who fears a Disney takeover of Marvel based on ethics or quality issues has seriously not been paying attention to how Marvel has conducted its own business. Gimme a break, we're talking about Marvel Comics, the King Cock of Comics here, run by carnies and robber barons. This is all about making money for both sides, as much as possible, as fast as possible, plain and simple. Standard Marvel operating procedure, if you ask me, and frankly, I'm surprised something like this hasn't happened sooner.

I'll bet this has something to do with Marvel's ambitious movie plans stretching or breaking their budget.

There's no question about that. Ambitions like that can't be supported independently.

[Jim North]

You're confusing "fucking him over" with "pushing the character to develop rather than stagnate".

How does hitting the reset button and taking Spidey back to the way he was around twenty-five years ago development rather than stagnation? Queseda's entire reason behind doing what he did was specifically because he didn't like it that Spider-Man was developing. He's been directly quoted as saying he didn't like that Pete got married because it made the character seem old.

Well, dammit, Quesadilla, some of us liked older Spidey! Some of us wanted to see which way his character would have continued developing if Aunt May had died and if his dual identity had remained public instead of Mephisto pressing the big ol' Status Quo button!

Maybe Disney'll be the ones to put their foot down and say "Aunt May is dead now, and NO BRINGING HER BACK!" They seem pretty good at the whole killing-a-parental-figure thing.

[IVstudios]

And on the Daredevil note, destroying his whole life was pretty interesting when they did it last year. Then they did it again. With no real breathing room in between. It was not very interesting the second time around. "Oh no, he lost the love of his life again. Yawn"

[Kevin R Brown]

but I'd put them way behind, say, Microsoft in terms of ethics violations.

lolwut.

...How much money have you personally donated to charity/relief funds thus far? My guess would be less than 28 billion dollars.

Mr. Gates and his brainchild get a lot more flak than they deserve, and a lot less credit too.


I think the Disney purchase will be a 'meh' issue. Marvel has had all kinds of bad runs, so even if this is cause for another one, it won't be anything new. I hope it'll give them access to much better screenwriters, actually - 'cuz that's something that they're really in dire need of.

[Rkolter]

I DON'T want my money supporting the kind of company that forcefully runs animals off cliffs because the lemmings in their documentary weren't committing suicide.

Are you kidding me? DISNEY did that?

... I think I'm in love.

[Jim North]

Are you kidding me? DISNEY did that?

Indeed they did.

Fifty years ago.

[Bustertheclown]

but I'd put them way behind, say, Microsoft in terms of ethics violations.

lolwut.

...How much money have you personally donated to charity/relief funds thus far? My guess would be less than 28 billion dollars.

Mr. Gates and his brainchild get a lot more flak than they deserve, and a lot less credit too.

Personal convictions and business ethics have recently re-proven to be much different animals. I respect the hell out of Mr. Gates for what he has resolved to do with his money, but Microsoft is still, and behaves like, a monolithic god-king which takes glee in destroying all that opposes it.

[Ahaugen]

Are you kidding me? DISNEY did that?

Indeed they did.

Fifty years ago.

not only did they toss lemming off a cliff, they tossed lemmings off a cliff into a river outside of Calgary and called it the arctic

[Grabmygoblin]

I just hope this doesn't tie up the movie rights to characters AGAIN.

[Phact0rri]

...How much money have you personally donated to charity/relief funds thus far? My guess would be less than 28 billion dollars.

when you have a large capital its best to donate, setting up a non-profit helps even more. Non-profits these days are just another realm of industry, and for the most part are ran like a buisness. Don't get me wrong I think some of the orgs do good things, but I don't support them due to the nature of how they opperate.

More people should donate to grass root orgs if you want to donate. that way all the money is going to the cause, and its not beng pigeoned between four or five different initiatives.

[McDuffies]

I find it fascinating that when people hear Disney is getting their hands on something, the automatic reaction seems to be that they're going to toonify everything, turning it into watered down pap in which no violence, nudity, sex, drug use, profanity, or any of those other nice things will ever, ever be allowed.

I always wonder if this is because people either forget or don't know that Disney owns companies like Miramax Films, the movie makin' people that brought us such gems as Kevin Smith's films Chasing Amy and Dogma and Quentin Tarantino's films Pulp Fiction and Resevoir Dogs.

Gonna mark the day in my calendar when Jim reffered to Pulp Fiction as gem.

Anyways, I assume that most of characters in Miramax films are at least partly owned by authors. Disney does many awful things to company-owned characters, and aren't all Marvel characters owned by the company? I reckon if Disney tried to do something with characters from Miramax films, authors would be able to put a veto - although I don't think that Kevin Smith would. I recall that Disney couldn't go through with Roger Rabbit cartoon series because the film has only half-owned by them.
Now this opens some interesting possibilities, reminds us how Disney got their hands on many popular characters and then turned them into something that leaves a lot to be desired. I can see how this may remind people of appropriation of, say, Tarzan, who is now being thoroughly exploited.

Though of course, outrage at this is mostly because Disney is primarily associated with, well, Disney's base company, and not it's various outlets. I still don't think that it's so baseless, I mean they probably wouldn't interfere in Marvel's internal affairs, like they didn't with Miramax, but we assume that the whole point of the deal is to use Disney's resources to make Marvel movies. Whether this is gonna be Disney-fied or not, I can see it happening both ways.
Incidentally that would mean that money from Marvel would not go into Hannah Montana, money from Disney would finance Marvel's movies.

I would generally like to see Disneyfied Spiderman, it'd probably be so bad it's good. I don't really understand the sentiment of "aaah, they'll ruin our childhood", I mean even the most avid Marvel fans will agree that many incarnations of these characters were already godawful and ruined what better incarnations built up. Marvel itself ruined and then fixed those characters times and times again.
On the other hand I'd like to see Disney'd "Pulp Fiction" cartoon too. That'd be fun.

there are lots of good reasons to hate Disney, but the most important one is that the Little Mermaid ruined my life( Ariel be my name) i still catch flack for that stupid movie.

Yo Ariel whazup?

Mr. Gates and his brainchild get a lot more flak than they deserve, and a lot less credit too.

Nope. They get exactly as much flak and credit as they deserve. They pure and plain suck.

Disney on the other hand gets much criticism for things they haven't done and there's a dozen of urban legends about them that get taken for granted (not the lemming one tho). I guess with company that tries to be that clean and wholesome, it's just inviting for people to think the oposite, see sexual images in squeeky clean movies and all.
Of course there's many things to be pissed about too, I personally hate appropriation of well known characters I mentioned above and treating them as cash cowd; dude, if you made it up, you can do whatever you want - but disney didn't just made up Cinderella or Pocahontas.
But then of course they also made or distributed some pretty great movies.

[Terotrous]

but I'd put them way behind, say, Microsoft in terms of ethics violations.

lolwut.

...How much money have you personally donated to charity/relief funds thus far? My guess would be less than 28 billion dollars.

Mr. Gates and his brainchild get a lot more flak than they deserve, and a lot less credit too.

This seems kind of analogous to paying the Church to absolve you of your sins.

I mean, it's great that they donate a lot to charity, but it doesn't really change the fact that Microsoft engages in a lot of predatory market practices.

I'm sure Disney gives to charity too, anyway. Most companies do.

[Killbert-Robby]

but I'd put them way behind, say, Microsoft in terms of ethics violations.

At least we've gotten the painful assume-ethics-are-universal thing out of the way early

[Jim North]

Gonna mark the day in my calendar when Jim reffered to Pulp Fiction as gem.

When you look at the part that says Pulp Fiction, huge sarcasm quotes appear around the word gem. But only when you're looking at Pulp Fiction! Don't bother trying to look back real quick, you're not fast enough to catch it in action!

Disney does many awful things to company-owned characters, and aren't all Marvel characters owned by the company?

That's a tricky situation with everything of that sort, really, and comics characters are little exception. The movie rights of Marvel characters, for example, are a bit of a cock up. The folks that did Spider-Man wanted to have a brief cameo of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in one of the movies, but because Spidey is a Columbia film and X-Men was done up by Fox, they weren't able to get all the clearances they needed to do it. It's one of the big reasons Marvel Studios was created. Marvel wanted to clear up all that copyright malarky so they could actually do not only cameos but full fledged crossovers and team ups like they're doing with Iron Man, Hulk, and the rest of the Avengers.

As far as in the comics themselves, I believe the creators do have some hold on the copyright still. It's probably less of a problem with Marvel than it is with DC (the rights to Superman have long been a messy debacle, almost since his inception) since most of Marvel's big cash cows were either co-created or are the wholesale creation of Stan Lee. And since Stan Lee is both still with Marvel in an almost Queen Victoria length reign and apparently totally on board with the Disney buyout . . . well, we'll just have to wait and see what they do, I suppose. A lot of dust has to settle before anything other than general speculation can take place.

I would generally like to see Disneyfied Spiderman, it'd probably be so bad it's good. I don't really understand the sentiment of "aaah, they'll ruin our childhood", I mean even the most avid Marvel fans will agree that many incarnations of these characters were already godawful and ruined what better incarnations built up. Marvel itself ruined and then fixed those characters times and times again.

Just leave it to Dr. Spider-Man!

[Terotrous]

but I'd put them way behind, say, Microsoft in terms of ethics violations.

At least we've gotten the painful assume-ethics-are-universal thing out of the way early

At least no one has compared Disney to Hitler yet.

[Bobadventures]

Actually, the first thought I had when I learned this (other than, "Who bought what?!") was that I would be pleased if Disney were sufficiently appalled by the Spider-Man deal-with-the-devil retcon and the resultant reader backlash that they forced Marvel to fix it, no matter what Queseda wants. Unfortunately, that would involve Disney being reasonably literate in the material they've purchased, and I wouldn't bet on that being the case.

Frankly, between the Spider-Man retcon, and all the endless dark crossovers trying to return the company stylistically to the dark gritty 1990's, I've been seriously unhappy with Marvel for over a year now. I'm mostly following DC and the independents these days because I just don't care about the Amazingly Single Spider-Faust, or everybody in the world being a Skrull, or Reed and Tony waking up fascists one morning for no apparent reason, or Wanda Maximoff waking up omnipotent one morning for no reason, or the Hulk having his own title stolen from him by a fanfic Mary Sue... It's just become a mess.

Not that it's been all bad. The art's been wonderful. The space opera stories have mostly rocked. And there have been lots of reappearances by minor characters I like, like Machine Man and Groot and Howard the Duck. But the Marvel Universe as a whole has become a mess of late.

So I am curious to see what changes may happen as a result of this merger. Even if the changes are bad, if they're at least bad in a different way than they have been recently, I may be pleased.

Please don't think I'm playing apologist for Disney. They're famous for being paranoid and wildly litigious, and for terrible employee contracts that prevent people from working on any outside projects of any sort while in the company's employ. So we'll have to see how this goes.

At any event, a Marvel Gargoyles comic would rock.