What-If: Marvel Was Never Bought By Disney?

[Geraldofrivia]

It would have been brought by Amazon. Apple or even Some Chinese or Saudi conglomerate. Whether it is good or bad, we will never know.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The MCU really helped the comics.

I really don't think that's true. Or at the very least it's debatable. It's certainly not been good at bringing wealth and freedom to the creators.

At present the reality is that Marvel is an IP farm for movies. That means you get to work at Marvel for peanuts and get to see Feige and others make bank out of IP and stories and concepts you developed. Matt Fraction's and David Aja's Hawkeye series in the early 2010s is being made into a Disney Plus show this fall, but they're not gonna make much or anything compared to what Feige, the writers, and others might take home [Course, as with the Scarlett Johanssen situation, with streaming even their take is gonna be lighter than others because Disney absolutely hates paying its employees...that's in company DNA right down from Walt]. Would Jonathan Hickman need to listen to the siren calls of Substack if they had paid him enough for prominently using characters like the Black Order that he created and introduced during his run on Avengers?

Superhero comics in terms of readership and sales has seen no rise since the MCU. Iron Man is the central MCU character but his comics aren't top of the charts. So I don't think the MCU has done much or anything for increasing comics readership. For the most parts comics are still sold on LCHS and still done the way it always has.

It would have been brought by Amazon. Apple or even Some Chinese or Saudi conglomerate. Whether it is good or bad, we will never know.

That raises something I've been thinking of for sometime now.

The Chinese state as of now are among Disney's shareholders. It's possible in theory, that someday the Chinese government buys enough of a stake to become the majority shareholder. If not China, then maybe Russian oligarchs or Saudi oligarchs. That means that a totalitarian state, currently conducting what seems to be genocide in Xinjiang, gets access to IP like Captain America and Spider-Man.

At what point does the US government realize that such products of American culture ought to be nationalized, if only for US State and Economic interests? Disney is absolutely not any kind of "champion" and considering the way they knifed Scorsese's film about Tibet, Kundun, how long before they get bribed by foreign investors into essentially betraying USA, by aligning their cultural products with totalitarian state propaganda?

I mean granted Walt Disney was a totalitarian himself, and he planned EPCOT to essentially function as a full-time totalitarian dystopia so the company's DNA has never cared about democracy but presumably there are more people in the world who do then about whether they can see the next MCU post-credits scene or whatever.

[Geraldofrivia]

I really don't think that's true. Or at the very least it's debatable. It's certainly not been good at bringing wealth and freedom to the creators.

At present the reality is that Marvel is an IP farm for movies. That means you get to work at Marvel for peanuts and get to see Feige and others make bank out of IP and stories and concepts you developed. Matt Fraction's and David Aja's Hawkeye series in the early 2010s is being made into a Disney Plus show this fall, but they're not gonna make much or anything compared to what Feige, the writers, and others might take home [Course, as with the Scarlett Johanssen situation, with streaming even their take is gonna be lighter than others because Disney absolutely hates paying its employees...that's in company DNA right down from Walt]. Would Jonathan Hickman need to listen to the siren calls of Substack if they had paid him enough for prominently using characters like the Black Order that he created and introduced during his run on Avengers?

Superhero comics in terms of readership and sales has seen no rise since the MCU. Iron Man is the central MCU character but his comics aren't top of the charts. So I don't think the MCU has done much or anything for increasing comics readership. For the most parts comics are still sold on LCHS and still done the way it always has.



That raises something I've been thinking of for sometime now.

The Chinese state as of now are among Disney's shareholders. It's possible in theory, that someday the Chinese government buys enough of a stake to become the majority shareholder. If not China, then maybe Russian oligarchs or Saudi oligarchs. That means that a totalitarian state, currently conducting what seems to be genocide in Xinjiang, gets access to IP like Captain America and Spider-Man.

At what point does the US government realize that such products of American culture ought to be nationalized, if only for US State and Economic interests? Disney is absolutely not any kind of "champion" and considering the way they knifed Scorsese's film about Tibet, Kundun, how long before they get bribed by foreign investors into essentially betraying USA, by aligning their cultural products with totalitarian state propaganda?

I mean granted Walt Disney was a totalitarian himself, and he planned EPCOT to essentially function as a full-time totalitarian dystopia so the company's DNA has never cared about democracy but presumably there are more people in the world who do then about whether they can see the next MCU post-credits scene or whatever.

Already hollywood including Disney are heavily investing in China and Saudi Arabia and they wont do anything to hurt the feelings of these countries intentionally as we saw in Dr Strange, Mulan, John Cena in Fast 9. LGBT romance. Marvel will still be an American company and US government can take it back anytime they want.

[jwatson]

Already hollywood including Disney are heavily investing in China and Saudi Arabia and they wont do anything to hurt the feelings of these countries intentionally as we saw in Dr Strange, Mulan, John Cena in Fast 9. LGBT romance. Marvel will still be an American company and US government can take it back anytime they want.

I wish they cared about their black custimers as much. I will never get over fisney first black princess being in the damn frog princess and rhen acting like black people should ve excited over that though given what EstaveZ said about mighty ducks and disney wanting it to be a feel good program i cant be too surprised. Also why i dont velieve the bp casting stuff. They need to make a storm fully animated in beauty in the beast artwork to get me to even think disney reallty cares bitbthen honestly that would be more of a peraonal bribe. Lol

Edit' typos. Big fingers small keyboard

[From The Shadows]

Without Disney Marvel would be able to do stuff like @#$! But then I heard that Disney was not going to effect the comics in any way.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Without Disney Marvel would be able to do stuff like @#$! But then I heard that Disney was not going to effect the comics in any way.

Disney would like you to believe that it wouldn't affect the comics, but the reality is that they have power over the comics and nobody working at Marvel can ever forget who owns them and from where their paychecks ultimately come from.

Disney is very good at keeping secrets so we don't hear much or anything from the inside but it would be impossible to deny that Disney's purchase hasn't affected Marvel Comics and the direction of the company.

As a corporate overlord, Disney fundamentally doesn't need Marvel Comics to earn money.

Disney's income and money comes from its theme parks and resorts first and foremost, in second place from Disney merchandise. The actual entertainment side of the company (the movies, the animation, the TV stuff, Disney Plus) is only a small part of their empire. The Marvel IP generates bulk of the money for Disney from the merchandise and from adding Marvel-themed rides and attractions to the theme parks and resorts. That's what builds value for them.

The actual comics is really really low on the company's priorities. The reality is that Disney allows the comics to function as a boutique industry where all Marvel have to do is sustain the comics status-quo, avoid big losses and dives, but don't report any substantial growth. Likewise, Feige and others will sell Disney on how comics generate stories and ideas for free for the movies and that they don't have to pay anything since there are these things called "fans" who love these characters and will work on it for little to no pay. So they get the rights of the stories without needing to pay royalty checks to a writer so it's a sweet swindle.

[daredevil1]

Seeing as how the 2010s were absolutely the worst, most creatively bankrupt decade for the comics ever, and that the MCU is all well and good if you love 70s cosmic Marvel and Avengers but not so great if you like X-Men, Fantastic Four or anything from the 90s, I probably would've rather seen the version where this scenario happened. The MCU has led to a stagnancy amongst comic movies and a sameness of style, as well as the genre overtaking all of cinema to the detriment of other genres. I think it was not only too much of a "good" thing, but too much of a thing that debatably not everyone wanted from Marvel superheroes.

[tliscord]

As much as I don't like Disney owning Marvel, Perlmutter remains poison and I'm glad his power is reduced.

There certainly was rot in those ship’s timbers.

[Nomads1]

It's an impossible question to answer with any kind of honesty without know if someone/who would eventually buy out Marvel. Creatively, I have to say Disney has just, IMHO, largely harmed Marvel, especially in the MCU, having the progressive agenda guide all it's creative decisions. Who knows what someone else would have done? In the MCU, Marvel seemed to be going on a great path before Disney took over, however, in the books, it already seemed quite aimless. Whithout knowing who'd talke over, it's hard to judge with any degree of honesty if it'd be better or worse.

Peace

[FFJamie94]

The MCU would probably be a lot smaller in scope and would have possibly ended with Avengers 2012.
That and the direction would be much closer to the Original Iron Man instead of being awkward comedies.

In terms of Comics, well, we'd still have old man Nick Fury and Marvel Now probably wouldn't have been a thing, even if the stories that came out of it still happened.

There wouldn't have been as many Avengers titles in 2012-2018, we would have gotten 2 or 3 at a push.
We wouldn't have seen Cates' and Ewing's Guardians of the Galaxy runs.

There would be no "Spider-Family" and we wouldn't have got Hickman on the X-Men.

Andrew Garfield would still be the focal Spider-Man, but he would be crappy films (which is a shame because after seeing NWH, I'd argue he is the best Spider-Man).

There wouldn't be as many comics. I think the Disney influence is enough to keep the comic hand in check, but there's enough freedom for creative teams to experiment and do what they want. That and I think the MCU keeps the comics afloat somewhat.

Fant4stic 3 would have been released by now.

[CrimsonEchidna]

Looking at the timeline, the Marvel Creative Committee didn't get phased out with Feige getting full creative control until the 3rd phase. So all things considered, I would say everything happening in Marvel up to say ~2016 would stay the same. So yeah, we still see All-New, All-Different Marvel through Marvel's attempt at brute-forcing a Civil War 2 comic to put on shelves to connect to the movie.

With no Disney I do see:

• Kevin Feige finally getting fed up a bailing on the MCU in Phase 3.
• Black Panther likely gets more interference from the MCC and doesn't end up the massive critical success it was.
• The Sony/Marvel deal breaks up after Far From Home and there's no Feige to play mediator to repair it.
• The Inhumans movie actually does see the light and day, and likely still remains a dominant force in the comics.
• Disney still buys Fox, but this leaves X-Men and Fantastic Four in limbo. I don't think we ever get a Krakoa-era in the X-Men comics.
• The Netflix Marvel shows actually do get to continue. I imagine Marvel would push for their lesser-known heroes through Netflix rather than Disney+ shows.

I honestly believe the biggest change to comics is the Inhumans would've likely still be getting a push and we probably wouldn't have seen the big X-Men revival through Hickman.

[shooshoomanjoe]

I'd rather know what if Shooter bought Marvel instead of Permutter.

[daredevil1]

It's an impossible question to answer with any kind of honesty without know if someone/who would eventually buy out Marvel. Creatively, I have to say Disney has just, IMHO, largely harmed Marvel, especially in the MCU, having the progressive agenda guide all it's creative decisions. Who knows what someone else would have done? In the MCU, Marvel seemed to be going on a great path before Disney took over, however, in the books, it already seemed quite aimless. Whithout knowing who'd talke over, it's hard to judge with any degree of honesty if it'd be better or worse.

Peace

I fully agree, and got crucified for saying in perhaps the wrong thread where everyone was out of sorts, that Feige used to be more laid back and is now forcing wokeness to the extreme be the hill he wants to die on at the expense of what's best for the films. In hindsight I shouldn't have taken the bait and even tried to defend myself, people who cannot be objective and think any criticism of an obvious agenda makes you a bigot, is the lazy insult of those unable to refute your argument. It's not about right or wrong, it's simply what he's doing when he used to not interfere, and making movies about D-list characters just for the sake of being progressive is not what I want to see at the expense of films about Daredevil, FF, Hulk, Punisher, etc. I didn't even really like the huge cosmic tone the MCU took before all this, so I kind of wish we had just gotten a couple more Avengers movies and sequels to phase 1, and the whole thing had died out by now. The MCU is so large it takes up all the air in the room, and ends up brainwashing people into retroactively thinking things were always a certain way that they were not- such as what made Marvel popular to begin with.

[TheRay]

They definitely would have gone in to more adult content sooner, but the way things are going they'll probably do that eventually anyway.

[GenericUsername]

What if Marvel Studios was never bought by Disney in 2009 how different would Marvel turn out in terms of story and content? Would it even be as successful and good as it is today? Do you think Marvel would eventually had considered doing R-rated and more adult-oriented content if it wasn’t bought by Disney; instead of by Paramount or Comcast/Universal?

I don't know that it'd even be still in business. They were in deep in debt and filing for bankruptcy before being bought out. Marvel overall was still very much struggling.