Disney Buys Marvel

The big news of the day today was Marvel being bought up by Disney. It's an odd marriage. I know there had been rumors of Marvel being available to be bought for months now, but I don't think a anyone had really put forward the idea of them being bought by Disney. In retrospect I guess it makes sense. I don't think we're going to be seeing all the crossovers that everyone seems to be dreading (I suppose it's possible we'll see a Mickey Mouse meets Spider-Man comic sometime in the future, I just can't imagine it being any good).

The other weird thing about the deal is that while Disney now has access to Marvel's inventory of characters, many of those characters are currently tied up in license deals with other companies and won't be available anytime in the near future. Sony has Spider-Man for who knows how long, but I've heard rumors of a Spider-Man 6 movie, so it doesn't sound like they're ready to let go of the property. FOX owns X-Men and Wolverine. In fact it sure seems like most of the marketable characters have already been snatched up by other companies. And then there's the Marvel characters at Universal Theme Parks, I can't imagine that's going to sit well with Disney (although the thought of seeing Hulk, Spider-Man, Iron Man at Disney World walking around with Cinderella and Seven Dwarfs seems like it would be an odd pairing also).

I guess it'll be interesting to see what happens. Disney is nothing if not a branding machine though. I mean look how firmly they've entrenched all the Princesses into the culture for little girls. And they don't only target little girls either as the plethora of High School Musical crap that's out there can attest. I think the only place where one might say Disney has a hole is with boys, and now that I think about it, that's a place where Marvel can actually help.

The worst part of all this was I had actually considered buying Marvel stock years ago when it was in the teens, but then it went into to twenties and I figured I had missed my chance. And now for the sale it's being valued at around forty-four. All of which tells me I have no business playing the stock market.