Everyone is so worried that now that Disney owns Marvel, that it's automatically going to become some silly, childish near parody of itself. That Mickey Mouse ears will be in vogue among the Marvel characters. Donald the Duck will depose Howard the Duck (Bwaa?!). Although let's be honest... Marvel has had its share of comedic characters. Like this charming lass down here. Oh hello miss... what's you're name? Squirrel Girl? And your little partner... Tippy Toe? (Who replaced her old squirrelly partner, Monkey Joe - I kid you not. The Squirrel was named Monkey Joe.) So where do you come from Miss Squirrel Girl? Milwaukee you say?
Now so what does this mean for the mutants like Wolverine and the X-Men. Yes I phrased it that way for a reason. Wolverine has become the unofficial "head" of the X-Men in the movies. So, will our merry mutant become a chimney sweep in Marvel Musical? I hardly doubt it. Chim chim churrie... SNIKT!! Fox will be hanging onto his rights for a while, as long as they pump out crappy Marvel movies, they'll keep making them. Now this could mean that Fox's Marvel movies may suck even more because now Marvel has an incentive for them to fail. But I doubt it. I think Fox Execs think they can do comic book movies so well, they don't need to talk to the people who write him on a monthly basis.
Now, the one Marvel movie coming up that I AM hoping will not suffer from this new merger, Captain America: The First Avenger. This has the potential to be an amazing movie and will finally give Cap the movie he deserves. That POS that was released in the early 90s... doesn't... doesn't count. That was lame in ways defy lameness.
Now, no one at Marvel or Disney has said that they will start changing things. And no one is forcing you to watch some should have been scrapped abortion of a movie or tv show that they may come up.
"But... but we have to watch... so we can complain about it on our blogs... now PLEASE TURN MY MOVIE OFF!" Thanks Elektra. Yeah, I think that image above was made around the time of the Elektra movie came out and the artist, Greg Horn, was doing a sort of Clockwork Orange thing. And yes, Elektra was a FOX Movie. And that was horrible.
Which brings up a few of the concerns that fans have with Disney, will we have characters who aren't exactly family friendly? Will we have movies that don't fit into the Disney Channel movie of the week mold? I can say, for now, yes. Disney owns a number of "adult" properties. What many don't know is they own Miramax, which has been Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith's supplier for years. They do movies that are COMPLETELY against the Disney mold. Disney even owns porn companies. Yes. That's right. They own Vivid Entertainment, the same company that was selling the Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson sex tapes.
So, let's keep in mind the company that is now holding the purse strings for the Mighty Marvel. I'm sure they'll probably want to have Spidey and Cap and maybe Iron Man walking around at Disney Theme parks in the not too distant future. I'm sure they'll even want to have the Spider-Man cartoon series on Disney as well. BUT I don't think they're going to neuter some of the other characters. Ghost Rider would not really fit Disney Channel, but I could easily see a Ghost Rider series on ABC as a sort of "response" to the CW's Supernatural. I could see a well done Spider-Man live action series or even an X-Men series to counter Smallville. Heck, they could even do a Millie the Model show to sort of take steam away from Gossip Girl. So really... there's so much they can do now. Look, Disney owns ABC, they can put a prime time Marvel show on and it won't get screwed with by Fox execs - like Generation X was, or just bad like the Nick Fury telemovie from the mid 90s. Although I have to admit, I did enjoy both of them at the time, they're just bad in the 90s movie badness.
I could even see them doing a SHIELD series with Nick Fury (either the white "classic Marvel" Nick Fury or the black "Ultimate" and "movie" Nick Fury would work) to be a sort of new Alias type show.
Disney probably won't give two shakes of the rat's tail about the comics as long as they can publish Disney Comics through Marvel now. So I doubt the comics will change. Although I really really hope that the editorial staff shakes up. I am so sick of all these "deconstruction" storylines. First Avengers: Disassembled, then House of M, then Civil War, then Secret Invasion, then Dark Reign. ENOUGH ALREADY! Its like who needs Disney to destroy Marvel, Joe Quesada is doing a fine job of it already.
So to all those ready to commit hari kari... put down the wolverine claws and let's take a deep breath and relax. I'm sure Marvel will still listen to the fans... pfft! Yeah right! But I'm sure that when they see sales tanking on some Disney produced thing, they may reconsider this deal and/or Disney may realize that maybe they should leave well enough alone.
Although I will say this, the old Marvel is no longer with us. Its new Marvel now. And we just have to accept it. Or create something better. Which doesn't really work. New Marvel may be the best thing that ever happened. Maybe now we'll finally get some proper TV shows and Movies and other things that we've been crying for. I would love to see so many Marvel shows that they could create the Marvel Channel just to hold it all!
So let's just relax, crack open a comic book and wait to see what happens next!
So let's just relax, crack open a comic book and wait to see what happens next!
Until Galactus decides to stop eating planets and just ride the teacups all day... Make Mine Marvel!
