I just heard that Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment. Now, superficially, the biggest blow falls on Universal theme parks, Disney's biggest
competitor in the "Pay $100 to stand in line in the sweltering sun" business, who have a quarter park full of attractions that are all Marvel
themed. (Six Flags is in dire financial straits, so maybe they can pick up the theme park licenses for DC characters and do some creative re-theming.)
But more interesting to me is that, up until now, Marvel has been more in the trenches with the rest of us who have to actually do our jobs if we want to get
paid, and do them better than the next guy if we want to keep them. If the comic books, action figures, and movie cuts don't bring in enough to keep the
lights on, the lights go out. DC, on the other hand, had Time Warner keeping them in an upper west side apartment with charge accounts at all the big stores.
They could fuck up every title, drive away every reader, lose every advertiser, and set their building on fire just to be contrary, and they still couldn't
lose enough to make a blip on the TW annual report. Didio & Company have operated in a consequences-free zone, while Marvel could, theoretically, mess up
badly enough to go bankrupt. Now, they can't. They could make Mickey very angry (and beware Mr. Quesada, Disney is a lot faster with the hatchet than
TW), but the company is now on equal footing with DC in that it is mathematically impossible to screw up so bad for so long that your paychecks bounce and you
can't buy food.
Based on an admittedly small sample, history tells us this is not good news for Marvel readers.
