Does Disney’s Mouse Have a Monopoly on Marvel?

Um wow, I did not see this coming. Today the Hollywood Reporter mentioned that Disney bought Marvel for $4 Billion Dollars. My first thought was “oh great, Mickey Mouse is going to becomes Captain America’s sidekick,” (but right after, I realized that the Namor vs. Little Mermaid fanfic I wrote some time back now has a real possibility of being published!)

In all seriousness though, I’ve read a lot of comments from fans worrying that their favourite titles will become more sanitized and safe. To those fans, I ask you not to worry, Disney is a smart company, they won’t mess with what works. Disney has also bought branching studios such as Miramax Films, Touchstone Pictures, and Hollywood Pictures Home Entertainment, so it does target adults and teens as well as families. This means that Marvel isn’t all of a sudden going to make a G-Rated Spider-man film. Plus Disney will have to honour Marvels contracts with other distributers. Paramount will still release the Avengers movie; Sam Raimi’s Spider-man will stay with its current distributer.

What I am concerned about is that in the past, Disney has shown itself to be a ruthless company. If the deal follows through, Disney will have gained the rights to about 5000 characters. Anyone who has read my concerns of copyright laws and Disney’s involvement knows that these characters could stay under the mouse’s thumb for a long time. So if any similar characters appear elsewhere in fiction, prepare to have lawyers rip them off the market. (And so, my plans for releasing the Incredible Spider-Guy have just been crushed.)

Another thing that I liked about Marvel was that out of all the big comic publishers, it was the one that most frequently put its older books on sale. I’ve seen stores sell them for over 80% off the (Canadian) cover price. When was the last time that you saw anything from Disney on sale for even 50% off? Granted, there is no Disney store in my town, but they tend to leave the prices high and let demand outweigh supply. (I fear the days of buying the Dark Phoenix Saga for $5 may have just ended.)

This is not the first time a movie studio has bought out a large comics studio. Warner Brothers currently owns DC Comics and all their major characters. Over the past few years, they’ve really got their act together and have started to make high quality (if a bit tame) Superhero films.

This isn’t the first big purchase Disney has made this decade. In 2004, they bought the rights to the Muppets from the Jim Henson Co. and besides making the frog and pigs relationship tamer, we haven’t seen any major changes since then...of course we haven’t really seen the Muppets since then either. Come to think of it, when was the last time the Muppets were in theaters?

Oh Crap,
it looks like I might have to start looking for a new hobby.

Well, I’m curious to know what some of the readers on this site think about this. Will Disney’s involvement help or hinder Marvel? If you don’t read comic books, would the fact Disney is now involved help you too? Or do those large rodent ears hint that it’s too tame to try out? Let me know!