WTD?! Disney bought Marvel Comics for 4 billion US Dollars?!

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Okay so here's the deal. I know that many Marvel Comic fans, including probably most of you here including me, might know this by now but just to tell it out for sake of it, and for those who don't know already, I'll just say it: the Walt Disney Company (the guys who make children cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck, Pluto and many more) has bought Marvel Publishing (the guys behind Marvel Comics and various popular superheroes like Captain America, Spider-Man, the X-Men, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk and many more) for US$4,000,000,000. I know for a fact that probably most of you are very upset and angry over this and are saying to yourselves "WTF?!". So anyway, my question here is what are your thoughts about this? Share you rants over this here. As for me, here are my thoughts:-

Hearing this makes me wanna kill Disney for destroying the very franchise that spawned some the many superheroes I grew up enjoying with, one of my favorites being Deadpool and my favorite Marvel superhero team being the Avengers and their various incarnations (and yes, this includes the Dark Avengers as well). And for Disney, a franchise that makes cartoons and movie aiming for a family audience and kids, to buy a franchise like Marvel that aims mostly at Teens and especially Adults makes me worried about whether they'll do the same to Marvel like what they did to Power Rangers (Yes, I'm one of the many Adult fans of Power Rangers all over the world, so I admit that I'm VERY VERY childish. And if you don't what's the deal with Power Rangers, they're at their final season this year, which means NO MORE POWER RANGERS. And wanna know why this? Because Power Ranger was a franchise that had many fans supporting it for many years and Disney, basically, threw it away just like that without any respect for ANY fan out there, NOT because of budget problems or lack of a studio to produce the various shows and seasons). Disney is, basically, now out there to make money only and when they feel like it, they'll throw away any franchise, no matter how big it is, away and only keep those that are making BIG money like the s**t they call Hannah Montana as long as they're making money. So to put it simple terms, I'm pissed and furious over this. I mean, if Marvel needed financial backing, they could just go elsewhere that makes BIG money and still respect Marvel fans. I'm really wondering why would Marvel go to Disney for help.

Another thing I'm worried about is a crossover between someone like Mickey Mouse and someone like Spider-Man. Somehow, it just doesn't feel right.

P.S.: If you're wondering what the "WTD" on the topic title stands for, it means "What The Disney".

Disney sucks, IMO. Look what they did to the movie version of "The Princess Diaries". The books are great, the film is terrible.

Disney sure seems like a 600lb corporate gorilla these days. (The Microsoft of animation?) It still amazes me how they ripped off "Kimba the White Lion," and totally got away with it.

Umm.....can anyone please reply?

I'm not really a comic book fan. I collected them as a kid and every few years will get the urge and go buy some graphic novels and read just for fun and to reminisce.

So maybe my opinion doesnt matter much, but just cause disney bought them doesnt mean that all of a sudden Xmen will be replaced by the 7 dwarfs. Disney wants to make money and I would imagine they know they will lose money if they change stuff. They just bought them, meaning they want to make money off their profits.

Marvel's gone through a lot of trouble in the last 15-20 years, I think it's pretty awesome that they went from having one foot in the bankruptcy door in the late 90s to now being worth 4 billion.

What I'm interested to see is how this will effect the Marvel movies. Some of the brands like Punisher and Deadpool which should be R rated may likely get the disney treatment. But we'll see, again, I can garauntee you the one thing that matters to those Disney execs more than keeping Disney a kid friendly name is making money, and putting to many fingers in the Marvel brand will not make them money.

Disney used to own a film-production company called Miramax, back in the '90s. One of the movies that came out during Disney's ownership of the firm was a little flick called Pulp Fiction. You might have heard of it...

Disney also owns a cable channel called ABC Family - once known as the Family Channel, back when it was owned by right-wing "Christian" fundamentalist and televangelist Pat Robertson. (One of the stipulations of the sale was that they had to continue carrying Robertson's show, The 700 Club - each airing is now preceded by a disclaimer to the effect that all opinions expressed are those of Mr. Robertson, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of ABC, Disney, or any employee thereof.) One of the more common movies to air on that channel is the Sarah Michelle Gellar version of Cruel Intentions - you know, the movie that features incest, lesbianism, betrayal, and murder.

I'm not terribly worried about Disney screwing with Marvel, especially considering that Marvel's sales have upticked since the end of the Crossover Special-Event Mania of the '90s, while Disney can't even keep one title on the stands on anything resembling a regular basis (the very reason why they have to publish a monthly digest magazine just to protect some of their trademarks). It would be rather more foolish than dear old Fuhrer Walt's descendants have been shown to be so far.

On the other hand, those who thought Marvel's legal department was aggressive before may be in for a shock...

It's gonna be weird now, thinking that Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men etc. are now owned by Disney. What I found even weirder is that in UK, one of the Spiderman Cartoons airs on one of Disney's rivals, Nickelodeon/Nicktoons.

<faints from shock>

As my handle suggests, I'm a comics fan (Mr Sinister is an X-Men villain )... but you know, I'm really not that concerned about this buy-out by Disney. If they follow the example set by Time Warner (who own DC), then they'll leave Marvel well alone so that they can do their own thing. Marvel is, after all, a comics company that makes a profit on its comics, rather than its licensed properties - which frankly a rarity in this day and age - so to mess with that success would be utterly stupid. Disney wouldn't have made the kind of money they have done by being stupid.

In addition, with the muscle of Disney's vast bank balance behind it, Marvel's threshold for cancelling low-selling comics will be a LOT lower, so smaller, lower-profile series featuring B-list heroes like Nova will be able to continue for a heck of a lot longer than they would pre-buyout (which for me is really annoying, actually, because Captain Britain & MI:13 - one of the most awesome comics of the past five years, at least - JUST got cancelled. Grrr).

So yeah, I'm going to wait and see how Disney plays this before I start grinding my teeth in rage. The worst thing for people like the guy who runs my local comic shop would be if Disney decides it doesn't want to distribute new stuff overseas, and instead places a publishing house in Britain which would do nothing but produce reprints, so I hope that doesn't happen...

okay, before we get any deeper into this.... try googling "Paperinik New Adventures".... . it was an attempt to play Marvel and is widely considered one of the best ,and strangest, things Disney ever did..... Ever. In fact, one of the it's many original characters, Xadhoom, would fit in quite well with the Cosmic Marvel characters. "cosmic meaning outer space, like the Shi'ar, the Kree/Skrull and so on". So, it is NOT an entirely bad thing for Disney to buy Marvel.

The warning signs for Disney's domination were all there. It started when they bought Times Square from the sex industry.