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GreetFire

Eating the Fugu: Impossible wishes upon a star

Hey, did you hear that Disney is buying out Marvel? Huh? Did ya? No, didn't think so. They're keeping it pretty hush-hush, and no one on the Internet is freaking out in the slightest.

Ho, ho.

I've long since given up on getting worried about this sort of thing. Instead, I'm intrigued. I'm fascinated not only by where this is going, but what it has already affected. If the sale's been in the offing, behind the scenes, for most of the year, that explains a lot of the Marvel-related news of the past few weeks....

- Sony rushing the new Spider-Man films into production
- Marvel's movie house ramping up the Avengers slate as quickly as it can
- Quesada promising an imminent end to Dark Reign followed by "a year without cross-overs"
- Fox screaming "LOOK HUGH JACKMAN IS GROWING HIS SIDEBURNS AGAIN UNDER OUR CONTRACT THAT COUNTS AS GREEN-LIGHTING A NEW WOLVERINE MOVIE LEAVE OUR RIGHTS ALONE ARRGH!"

It could well be a clearing of the slate for the new bosses. Disney keeps saying it's "business as usual", with the caveat that business will change once existing licences expire. Any editorial shift, within Marvel's various departments, will likely occur once established plans - such as Dark Reign - have concluded.

And what will the Marvel Universe look like once the Mouse takes the control? Scarcely different, I'd wager. I can't see Disney caring enough to meddle - it's more interested in the movie, TV and merchandising dollars than what appears on the comic pages. Some commentators fear Disney will force Marvel to sacrifice its character development and continuity in order to preserve the iconic marketability of its stable. Seriously guys: it’s not like Marvel isn’t already prepared to shat on its own canon, continuity and character development for the sake of mass-market appeal (see: One More Day).

I'd love to see someone do a webcomic or cartoon on the fanboy reaction. Maybe have all the Marvel characters wearing Mouse Ears and screaming "BUSINESS AS USUAL!!!" whenever the DC characters point incongruities out to them.

"Hey, Punisher, why are you carrying Super-Soakers instead of cannons and machine guns?"
"I've always carried Super-Soakers. What are you talking about?"
"But didn't you used to kill..."
"BUSINESS AS USUAL!!!"

There are, as my five-year-old daughter pointed out this morning, plenty of upsides to this. Marvel cartoons on the Disney Channel, Marvel attractions at Disney World, Spidey toys in Disney shops, crossover merchandise... maybe even Donald Duck as the Hulk. My wife's looking forward to the Disney Princess Storm doll. I'm thinking Spider-Girl might get another lease on life, given the Mouse's love of the female fan dollar. raisedbymoogles mentioned the possibility of Marvel characters in Kingdom Hearts III, and I just about passed out from joy.

That's the way I wish people would look on this news: as a corporate, financial, business decision that could be fun, not as the death knell for anything "mature" in Marvel comics. I'd love for every geek in the world to calm down, wait and watch, and find the positives in this merging of two of the biggest icons of our childhood.

And while I'm making impossible wishes upon a star, I'd also like a pony.

Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF
GreetFire

Eating the Fugu: "I did it 35 minutes ago"

Having finally seen the film version of Watchmen, I feel any opinion I could express can be far better, and more eloquently, summed up by quoting two other people.

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"I don't think it is filmable. I didn't design it to show off the similarities between cinema and comics, which are there, but in my opinion are fairly unremarkable. It was designed to show off the things that comics could do that cinema and literature couldn't."

--> Alan Moore, The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, 2002.


"While Watchmen is still as rich, daring, and intelligent an action film as there's ever been, it also proves Moore absolutely right [to distrust adaptations]. As a comic book, Watchmen is an extraordinary thing. As a movie, it's just another movie, awash with sound and fury."

--> Nick Dent, Time Out Sydney, February 25, 2009.

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Which leads me to the following uncomfortable question. Apologies, in advance, for my heresy - please keep in mind I love Watchmen, while at the same time am interested in dissecting it. Therefore, in the spirit of English lit class, I ask the wednesdaycomics readers:

If Watchmen, the graphic novel, is a thing of power and majesty because of the way it's told - the stylistic tricks, the use of imagery, the breaking with the conventions of the time - does that mean its central plot and story line, once stripped of those "tricks", is ordinary?

Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF

dragontail is a professional journalist and published true-crime author, who has won awards for writings both journalistic and science-fiction. He is the creator of Otaku Journalism and his opinion column, Eating the Fugu, appears semi-regularly at wednesdaycomics.
GreetFire

Eating the Fugu: How Final is my Crisis?

NEWSARAMA: But still - the larger picture here - sun gods, heroes with weapons of light, angels, supercool teens and funny animals joining together to kill a creature of darkness that was sucking the life out of the world. Metaphorically speaking...well, I'd guess that's a pretty big metaphor for what you're wanting to do with Final Crisis?

GRANT MORRISON: Your first sentence is a description of everything I love about comics. I just wanted to do the kind of comic I, and others like me, want to read. Apart from one or two things, I’m not getting much of what I’m into from mainstream hero books these days. They’re all well crafted and I enjoy the work of all my old favourites as usual but even with hundreds of books a month, I still can’t find many comics that deliver exactly what I, as a reader and a fan, am looking for from superheroes in these changing times. That’s why I wrote one.

--> from Newsarama

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Is "Final Crisis" DC's "One Last Day?" Just as a third of Marvel's Spider-Man readers stopped buying Spidey comics after Peter Parker sold his marriage to the devil, so to DC appear to be dealing with a mini-rebellion. While not apparent as much online, retailers have told me about longtime readers so incensed by "Final Crisis" that they have stopped their DCU books. The complaints usually involve an abscence of comprehension, a sense of condescension and a huge lack of cohesion.

--> from Rich Johnston's Lying in the Gutters

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Even the most cursory glance at the Internet can tell you Final Crisis is one of those books that has utterly divided fans.

Personally, I really enjoyed it. Though I had a few advantages over most: I don't read a lot of DC any more, and so have no real connection to continuity. I tend to like Morrison's work. I didn't buy the issues as they were released, but instead picked them up as a bundle when issue #7 came out and read the tale in a single sitting. And I have a thing for metatextuality in comic books.

What's the opinion of the wednesdaycomics readership? Yay or nay?

Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF

dragontail is a professional journalist and published true-crime author, who has won awards for writings both journalistic and science-fiction. He is the creator of Otaku Journalism and his opinion column, Eating the Fugu, appears semi-regularly at wednesdaycomics.