Mickey Mouse in the Mighty Marvel Manor

Posted by Spider on August 31, 2009 in Comics | ∞

The Walt Disney Co. is buying Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion cash and stock.

Disney acquires ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters, including Spider-Man, Captain American, Iron Man, and the X-Men.

Boards of both companies have approved the transaction, and now awaits an antitrust review and approval of Marvel shareholders.

If there was ever a call to the F.O.O.M for Avengers to Assemble, now would be the time. Yeah, the money is great, but do you know about Disney’s rules on properties?

Disney, in their main branch (not counting subsidiaries) does not allow smoking, cussing, nudity, or just about anything that is deemed “fun” in society. I am not saying that you need those things to make anything fun, but Marvel already took away the cigars from Wolverine in the comics. I am wondering what Disney will take away. Will we see nicer, more calm mutants?

What about the films? Marvel Entertainment Group Inc. president Avi Arad just recently at E3 stated that Marvel is developing all future movie projects (except properties like Spider-Man and X-Men, where rights belong to Sony and 20th Century Fox respectively) in house. Will these projects like Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers now be family fair instead of the grand movies they could have been?

Captain America is a soldier of World War II. Many were hoping that, since this is an origin story and most likely coming from the Ultimates universe, we would get to see the gritty, grungy Steve Rogers going through World War II in his film reboot. I have a feeling that now we will see short flashbacks, him hitting the water and being frozen, then right into modern times being the Boy Scout that Superman is.

I can’t help think that this might be the fault of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc., is the largest shareholder of The Walt Disney Co. after Disney purchased Pixar.

Steve Jobs still keeps up with his day-to-day duties at Apple Inc., and one of those duties was to help in securing rights to digitally publish Marvel comics through the iTunes store.

Marvel’s Motion Comics initiative, which has come to the Sony PSP as announced at Gamescom, is already on the iTunes store and is set for major expansion. One can’t help but wonder if part of the deal for this was a buyout of Marvel Entertainment.

I am sure more information will come as time of acquisition comes, and a lot of the information in this piece is speculation (to set the record straight), and we will report it as it comes down the pipe.

Until then, I am wary of this acquisition due to the possible mouse droppings that could stain the pages of the greatest comics ever written.

Disney to acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in cash and stock | StarTribune.com.