http://io9.com/5349410/the-house-of-mouse-eats-the-house-of-ideas-disney-buys-marvel

I felt a tug at the heart strings when they announced this on the news tonight, wondering if any creativity will still be allowed.

Think they will go after Top Cow next? :eek:

Marvel has had little creativity for 10 years. I doubt much will change, Disney has tons of adult oriented studio's.

I enjoyed this relevant comic:

http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp08312009.gif (http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp08312009.shtml)

You may doubt much will change, but look at ESPN. Everyone I know who work out of Bristol tell all sorts of "remember when..." tales from back before they were absorbed into Disney. A show like E60 was years in the making because the higher ups didn't think intelligent sports journalism would be profitable, where Rammusen loved to try unorthodox things out (you know, like a 24 hour cable sports network for one). Even the "impromptu" PTI now has to get scripts cleared and stuff like that.

Every time another smallish entity gets gobbled up, the creativity pool suffers at the expense of the shareholders and what has worked in the past (see: most movies now compared to even just 10 years ago), and we the consumer lose out in the end.

That being said, the internet and web-comics and the ease of entry into the marketplace for non-corporate artists can hopefully counter-balance this in the long run.

Except Marvel is making semi truck loads of cash, and it would be retarded to change anything at least right away.

Yeah, I forgot how pitaful ESPN was ... oh wait ...

Well, maybe Minnie Mouse will finally get some boobs! :D

Yeah because people can watch sports on the other sports networks...oh wait.

Hrm, somewhere you've stopped making sense.
Disney's ownership of ESPN and the changes they made there have been pretty blatant, like I said earlier requiring scripts for unscripted shows like PTI and discouraging the "intelligent sports journalism magazine" E60 - and those are just the few things I've heard about at work. To assume that Marvel won't undergo changes under their new mega-corporate parent would be pretty ludicrous.

If nothing else, think about Disney cartoons you used to watch growing up: Duck Tales, Tale Spin, Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troupe ... things you could watch Saturday morning and after school. Yet if you ask a child anymore who doesn't have the Disney Channel about anything Disney you'll see a glazed over look - all of Disney's television property is no longer available for syndication and are pretty much exclusively run on Disney owned networks.

We've long since learned that competition usually produces better results. When you have a company owning everything Disney as well as Miramax Films, Touchstone Pictures, ABC Television, etc etc etc its just one less entity to compete with. The only solace we have is that Hasbro owns the toys until 2017, Paramount has the rest of the Avengers films locked away already, and Spiderman and the X-Men films are probably indefinitely owned by News Corp and Fox as long as they keep making films.

I agree with you on the competition thing. That was my exact point on ESPN. It really does not matter what they do to it since there is no real competition for it. While for Marvel there is.

Fox Sports, Comcast SportsNet, Versus, CBS's College Sports network ( I forget the name) and most recently and blatantly the NFL Network have all hurt ESPN pretty badly over the past few years. NFL Network alone has crushed ESPN's profit margin and I'd imagine in the next 3-5 years ESPN won't be able to afford to cover Football (which of course is the NFL's plan, they don't want anyone making money off of their product).

Any given Sunday I'm working for either of these companies and its staggering how different I'm treated depending who I'm working for. NFL network has unlimited access to everything, ESPN isn't allowed to shoot during games anymore and has to vacate the stadium 30 minutes before kickoff and we're allowed back in at the 2 minute warning at the end of the 4th quarter (unless they're the rightsholder of course, but NFL Network still gets unlimited access during ESPN games)

So back to how similar the deals are...

And ESPN is synonymous with sports. There are more sports around than just football.

They've got awesome dodge-ball coverage on ESPN 8, The Ocho.