Marvel and Disney Living Together: The End Times! UPDATED
Much rejoicing in my family. Everyone owns Marvel stock. Except me.
Marvel just bought Disney. I am still on deadline so I don’t have much to add, but after this experience, I am laughing my fool head off. Lots of news at The Beat. And more here. Arlene Harris shared her thoughts. The COMICS REPORTER has the conference call.
My buddy the writer extraordinaire Rus Wornom emailed to mention the contract with Marvel and Universal Studios theme parks, so here’s a link to the Orlando Sentinel with more on that.
“Marvel Super Hero Island at Universal’s Islands of Adventure and the Marvel characters are a beloved and important part of the Universal Orlando experience. They will remain so,” said Tom Schroder, a Universal spokesman. “Our guests are going to get to meet Spider-Man and all our other Marvel characters. We believe our agreement with Marvel stands and that the Disney/Marvel deal will have no impact on our guest experience.”
Sure.
As a freelancer, I do wonder how this will affect my agreements, past and future. The Book of Lost Souls was at Icon. Wassup with that? While I loved working for Disney, their contracts and pay kinda sucked. One also wonders if more jobs will go in house? Hm. Will Marvel stay in New York? Hm.
I did get the ubiquitous phone call from Kingdom Comics at some point over the last few months. For those not in the know, Kingdom Comics is Disney’s new GN publishing wing. Don’t have a clue how that is coming along for them.
Wonder if this move on Disney’s part is just a way of throwing in the towel and saying “Screw that. Why reinvent it when we can buy it?”
c
BTW, I have a few ebay auctions ending today. Pictures make your wall look pretty.
August 31st, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Hello, Colleen. Someone sent me a link to a goofy story about how one of the “stars” of the show “Real Housewives of New Jersey” (ugh, stuff like that has helped me read more) is trying to get photographers to take the cover photo for her book for free. She had the gall to state “the book will be a big hit and once people see it, they’ll be clamoring for the photographer’s work”.
I immediately thought that it was a story from your “bad publishers” days, but it looks like nimrods are still trying to pull this nonsense.
August 31st, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Typical.
The voice of experience here: I can GUARANTEE that whoever takes the free cover photo for a book about “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” will not get artist reputation points. No one is going to clamor for you.
They may even avoid you.
Something just occurred to me: California has different work for hire laws than most other states. I should imagine this would be taken into account were Disney to decide to move the Marvel offices.
August 31st, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Ah, knew it was around here someplace. This might put a damper on an attempt to move the offices to California:
Note: Under California law, a party transferring rights a work made for hire agreement is an employee for purposes of workers compensation and unemployment insurance and thus there are a wide variety of issues related to those said matters including but not limited to the need on the part of the engaging party to have workers compensation insurance covering that party. Failure to have such workers compensation insurance is a crime under California law as well as exposing the engaging party to unlimited liability and substantial fines and penalties. And this is irrespective of whether or not there is any injury. There also may be other situations in which a party transferring rights under a work made for hire agreement is an employee including but not limited to matters related to taxes and other liabilities and whether presented by California laws, federal laws or the laws of other states…It is not clear what the extent of the said California laws are and you may be subject to such laws even if you are not located in California.”
http://www.ivanhoffman.com/work.html
August 31st, 2009 at 4:11 pm
My first reaction to the news of The House of the Mouse eating The House of Ideas was to laugh.
It’s a shame that Marvel makes more money off of licensing their already existing characters to toys, games, movies, and apparel then the comic book line. They could shut down the comic book division and still have a very healthy profit statement, I hope they don’t but when entities merge, anything is possible.
Also $4 Billion seems kind of low of a price, in my opinion.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:33 pm
It’s amusing reading other blogs and boards with reams of posts from fans telling us What This Will Mean. I’d bet there are executives at Marvel and Disney who don’t know the full implications, because the uppermost executives are playing it close to the vest.
For me, it’s all a big question mark. Of course, I have the luxury of just being a fan. If they muck with the status quo of Spider-Man, I may not like it but it won’t hurt me in any material way. Having been the casualty of a corporate reorganization last year, though, I feel for those people who actually make some or all of their living from one or both corporations and are now wondering, “What’s next?”
August 31st, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Seven Dwarves plus Fantastic Four equals four billion.
I kill me.
I had to stop reading the message boards about this, because if my eyes keep rolling into the back of my head, they may get stuck there.
I don’t think anyone not at the top of the food change knows what this means. It may even mean that Disney will choose to use less expensive overseas art talent.
Hm? Dunno. Didn’t seem to have done much for Virgin Comics.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:56 pm
BTW, Marvel has always been very mellow about allowing artists to do sketches of their works at shows and for private commissions.
Disney is not mellow about this practice.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:33 am
Colleen, I don’t know about that Disney sketch business. Maybe they look the other way because he’s done so much great work for them, but it’s incredibly easy to get a sketch of a duck from Don Rosa.
I just keep singing the Spider-Mouse Club theme song in my head.
The curse of interesting times….
September 1st, 2009 at 3:25 am
I can’t say that Disney makes much use of the catelogues and properties they already own. Have we seen a really good Muppet movie since they acquired the Muppets? Nope. Have they made any moves on CrossGen properties other than to put out collected editions of titles that didn’t have one? Nope.
But it wouldn’t surprise me if part of the move was not just getting their hands on the Marvel licenses, but also to have an already running publishing house, instead of having to farm things out to other publishers.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:11 am
Bode, I was warned under pain of severe disapproval of the mouse never to do any Disney sketches.
So, when I appeared at the Disney booth, the folks there had me sit down and do free Disney sketches for hours at a time.
Go figure. Maybe they don’t mind if you do free ones or something, or at least stay under the radar.
Beauty and the Beast sketches, anyone?
Scribbler: Yeah, Disney hasn’t done much with the Henson stuff.
Here’s the latest at PW:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6686994.html?nid=2286&rid=##CustomerId##&source=link
September 1st, 2009 at 11:49 am
@scribblerworks: I agree. After the thing with Pixar, where they went from “we don’t need you we can do this ourselves” to “wow, it’s not working out so well” to “how much if we just buy you?” it’s not surprising that they would want to be able to keep everything as much in-house and in the family as possible. Disney is nothing if not control-freaky.