This was posted elsewhere by an internet acquaintance, so I thought I would share it here:
Today an announcement came out of left field that no one on earth seemed to be aware was even going on. Disney is acquiring Marvel Entertainment. Wolverine will now be teamed up with Mickey Mouse. People are immediately crying foul and how this will signal the end for Marvel Comics. Personally I think all of these people are wrong. I'll be polite and not call all of you brain dead hicks, since this will be a public post. Worst case scenario, I say nothing changes at all. And frankly, I think the only places you'll really see any big change will be in regards to Marvel videogames and their movies. But first, let me try to set the record straight on both companies and possibly correct some misconceptions you may have about the two of them.
Regarding Disney:
First off forget everything you know about Disney. Most of it's probably wrong. Most of the negative "overly family friendly world domination" images are responsible by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. The guy saved Disney from falling apart in the early 80's but like so many CEOs didn't know when it was time to let go, and hurt it quite a bit towards the end of the 90's and early part of 2000. He's gone though. The new CEO, Bob Iger is much less of an asshole. His first job was to mend those broken fences that Eisner created, and take a few steps back from the "Conquest of Cheap Disney Crap" that Eisner put into motion towards the end of his reign. For instance, have you noticed you're not seeing Jungle Book 3, Cinderella 5, and more poorly animated direct to DVD Disney sequels? He's the reason. He put a stop on any new ones being made. Additionally he's the guy that gave Pixar more or less the Keys to the Kingdom and put them in charge of all of Disney animation.
Additionally Disney has historically been pretty good about keeping the "Disney Brand" off of things that are not explicitly theirs. You know what Clerks, Pulp Fiction, Kids, Resevoir Dogs, and more have in common? They were all made at Miramax. Do you know who owned a big chunk of Miramax? Disney. Today they're in fact the sole owners of it and still use it to put out movies like There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men.... Yes, all of that screams of Mickey Mouse doesn't it?
People tend to confuse Mickey with corporation Disney. While the company, on the whole, does lean to the conservative side they're no different than most large companies in that regard. And in fact they probably a little more liberal. Just look at Gay Days at the Disney theme parks, a weeklong event at the Orlando theme parks that started with Disney. While it's not officially embraced or scantioned, Disney takes steps closer to doing so each year and now are even schedule in-park events for the occasion.
Regarding Marvel:
Let's remember something very important that is constantly overlooked by the masses who don't know Paste Pot Pete from the Trapster (that was a trick they're the same person - you automatically lose because I just proved I'm smarter than you). Marvel Comics has a long and glorious history of being run by assclowns.
The worst of it was in the early 90's when Marvel had run itself into bankruptcy. Miraculously it even did this during the "collectors era" when comic book sales were at their best. In desperation they sold the movie rights to some of their books which lead to god awful Captain America, Fantastic Four (that never was released except on bootleg), and Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. starring David Hasslehoff. They did manage to get back on track after a while, but never really flourished. At leat not until their current editor-in-chief Joe Quesada came along.
Quesada did a lot of good things for the company. He brought it some high profile writers and artists which lead to the resurrecting interest in characters like Daredevil and Captain America. Essentially, he got everyone interested in characters other than the X-men. As editor-in-chief he also had a hand in many of the Marvel comics movies like the X-men films, and Spider-Man which essentially gave rise to the entire popularization of actually GOOD comic book movies.
Joe is also responsible for some of the worst ideas of all time in the company. His love for big-name "Hollywood" writers has created some of the worst delays in history. The final chapter of Ultimates 2, issue 12 came out over a year after issue 11 did. The Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk mini-series had a gap over a year and a half during the middle of it. The Civil War cross-over for last year got dragged out months longer than it was supposed to be once again because of inabilities to reach deadlines. Missing deadlines has never been unusual for the industry, but it wasn't until he took over that they became so commonplace in major books of interest.
Also, as more of a side note, Joe is also respoonsible for eliminating smoking in all Marvel books (poor Wolverine and Nick Fury must be having major nic-fits). So if you think the concept of "WHO WILL THINK OF THE CHILDREN" hasn't already existed, you're quite wrong.
Worst of all may be the recent Spider-Man reset that came out of Civil War. Spider-Man made a deal with the Devil (so to speak) to save Aunt May's life. The result was his life was reset and he was never married to Mary Jane. Why??? Because Joe never liked the idea of the two of them being married because it "hurt the character and made him harder to relate to." Those are his words, not mine. Essentially he destroyed the integrity of a book simply because he did not like it. The book has still not really recovered from this ludicrious reset.
Joe is essentially Marvel's own Michael Eisner. He came to power during a bad time for the company, but had some good idea, made some smart choices, and made the company flourish. . . for a while. And just maybe it's time for him to let go of the reigns, or at least have someone over his head to report to.
The Acquisition:
Now that we've gone over some of what's gone on in the companies' histories. Here's the likely scenarios of what may happen.
1. The Comics
Honestly, nothing will happen here. Disney does not have their own comic publishing group in place, so there's not a group that will decsend on Marvel's HQ and start demanding changes. Disney has especially learned from Pixar that "hands off" is a great management practice. As far as the standards and practices, I don't foresee much changing. As I said earlier, Marvel already has some stringent one in place so there's no reason to add to it. So rest assured Wolverine will drink beer, the Max Line will continue, and Northstar will still love the cockadoodledoo.
In fact, the only change is that Marvel will now be in charge of the comic books that Disney has recently started putting out. For those not in the know, Disney had been putting out comics for Toy Story and the Incredibles through a small publisher called Boom! These comics supposedly are pretty good at least for the audience. They're aiming for the the Archie crowd as opposed to the comic geek crowd. So really, the only loser here is Boom! as they're eventually going to lose their Disney money.
2. The Movies
Any changes here will be for the better. If nothing else, this means more money for the movie budget. Marvel was never a cash rich company for the movies they try and finance themselves, and no more monentary negotiations between Universal and Marvel between the movies they tried to do together. As far as quality goes, that remains to be seen, but I don't see anything bad happening. Truth be told Marvel is only about 50-50 when it comes to their good movies, vs. their bad or not so good ones. The most recent 4 movies are: Wolverine, The Punisher, The Hulk, and Iron-Man. They're not really batting it out of the park here now that they're trying movies about the B-level characters, you know?
3. Theme Parks
Universal is the big loser here as they have an entire section of Islands of Adventure all about Marvel Characters. If they're smart they'll swipe the DC Comics contract from 6-Flags which is already in bankruptcy and then they'll just have to repaint their roller coasters (paint the Hulk coast black and suddenly it's BATMAN).
If Disney scores a real big win anywhere though it's here. There's long been talk of a new more adult theme park on Disney property and this could certainly provide them with the characters to focus it around. If nothing else I suspect you'll see some major rebranding in Disney Studios and a Marvel section will be added.
4. Videogames
This is actually a much bigger piece of the puzzle than a lot of people realize. Videogames based off of comic books are huge money. The recent Batman: Arkham Asylum has gotten rave reviews and has been a huge seller. Marvel's recent history with videogames isn't quite as impressive, but they've still got some classics out there like the Marvel vs. Street Fighter games, and the Ultimate Alliance series.
Ever since Kingdom Hearts became huge, and particularly over the last year Disney has been making huge strides in bringing in their own videogame projects in-house as opposed to licensing them out to 3rd parties. In fact, since Disney actually owns the Kingdom Hearts name (not Square-Enix), I wouldn't be surprised to see a KH style game with Disney and Marvel characters. I'd buy it.
5. Misc.
Disney Channel (and the expanded cable counter-parts) will eventually be the place to go watch old X-Men and Spider-Man cartoons. Probably going to see a little more Marvel comic merchendise out there. A lot of the toy deals will change, but that will essentially effect no one but the businesses involved.
The only negative aspect I suspect is that since Disney owns the brand you won't see many vendors at DragonCon and other conventions selling t-shirts with your favorite superhero logo on it. Not sure how hard Disney will thrown down the hammer on this one though. Doubtful that it's worth the effort, but I wouldn't be surprised all the same.
So there you go. On the Marvel side things will not change too much. Marvel will finally have some genuine stability, deadlines might be a little more consistant, and Marvel merchendise will be under tighter control with fewer bootleggers offering it up at con. Disney may offer up some new theme park features and will make a lot of money off of games, comics, and movies. But as a consumer I doubt we'll actually be able to tell much difference when the day is over.
Personally I don't know how much of this is true but I found it pretty interesting.
