BottleneX

Holy Goofy vs Wolverine!  The biggest name in the comic’s game was just acquired by the Mouse Ears.  I guess Tinker Bell spread a little fairy dust out for the Marvel execs…and by fairy dust I mean ‘blow’ & by out I mean ‘cut up on a mirror’, and those bastards sold out!  The acquisition took place for a measly $4 Billion dollars.  Recession??  What Recession?  And I thought I was feeling guilty for spending $20 bucks a month on comic books, boy did Disney make me feel like a douche bag now.

So why this is big news and has spurred some crazy ‘back and forth’ \ ‘pros and cons’ flame wars in just about all geek forums, it’s not like this is a new trend though.  A while back Time Warner bought up DC comics and nothing too negative has really come from that.  DC still operates as its own company for pretty much all of its comic assets.  Aside from the Warner movie distributing that you see with the Batman movies and stuff.

You’ll never get me to say “it’s a great move for Marvel” as some people have.  A great move for Marvel would be continuing a business model to produce top level products and treat its fans & employees with the upmost respect which in turn would give them the deep pockets they desire.  Or <sarcasm> just sell the company to a bigger company and take the easy way out to ensure that your top level execs get tons of extra cash in their pockets before they retire </end sarcasm>.

Sure this won’t really hurt us the fans of comic books & comic book inspired movies any.  We’re not going to see some crazy drastic move by the big ‘children’s entertainment father’ to say, stop printing the MAX series or anything.  I suspect business will continue as normal in the publishing side of Marvel.  It will be the movies, the cartoons, the toys, and the video games that will get new facelifts and new distribution.  Which won’t be a bad thing for the fans.

I really like what the founder of Dark Horse Comics had to say though.  And btw, Dark Horse now becomes the world’s number 1 Independent comic book distributor…

“I guess what it means is that Marvel becomes more corporate and, if it isn’t there already, a company that creates comics for reasons that have nothing to do with the joy of creating comics,” said Mike Richardson, Dark Horse publisher. “Nothing wrong with that, but certainly a far cry from the Merry Marvel Marching Society. As far as Dark Horse goes, I happen to have an inside track as to what goes on in the owner’s head (yeah, he’s a guy, not a company) and he’s still in it for the love of comics.”

So all in all, it’s a great move for Disney, it’s a weird move for Marvel, and it’s fairly lateral move for the fans…you know, the people who handed our money over to Marvel for decades now.  I don’t really fault anyone here, but I know it’s left me feeling really really ‘icky’.  It’s like my best friend of 20 years up and moved to a different state to go be friends with a more rich guy who could do all the fun expensive stuff that I can’t.  I want him to be happy and all…but I feel kinda betrayed.  L