One other key point to keep in mind in this Disney-Marvel deal…
A lot of fans are wondering what this means about publishing plans…will the Marvel Masterworks reprint series continue? Will Marvel add a new Sub-Mariner comic? Will Aunt May either die or get resurrected? (I'm not sure if she's currently dead or not but if she isn't, she will be, and if she is, she'll come back.) Well, this deal is not about any of this. Take a look at the opening line in the L.A. Times coverage, and it's pretty much the same in all the reporting everywhere…
The estimated $4-billion deal would give Disney access to a library of more than 5,000 characters and help it strengthen its appeal to the young male audience. Ike Perlmutter, Marvel's CEO, will work directly with Disney to build and integrate Marvel's properties.
This isn't about publishing. Disney didn't say, "Gee, it would be great to own a comic book company!" They could have started fifty comic book companies for four billion clams. This is about characters and properties which can be exploited in many forms. The publishing of comic books may or may not always be one of them. But Disney's interest here is in two closely-related areas. One is to be able to market all these great characters and the history that rounds them out and makes many of them beloved. And the other reason is to make sure nobody else gets 'em.
The best news for the comic book division of Marvel in all this is how unlikely it is that anyone at Disney will care much what they do as long as the department shows a profit. If it generates new properties that can be turned into movies and video games and iPhone applications, so much the better. But the future of Spider-Man has very little to do with the Spider-Man comic book. That hasn't mattered for a long time.