Disney and Marvel: Garsh! Kathoom! Happy Couple Celebrate

One year ago today news spread that Disney would buy Marvel Entertainment Group, the folks whose comics got me excited about reading in the early 1970s and later serious about writing.

Has anything really changed since then? Has Marvel (or Disney, your choice) learned to put the toilet seat down when it's finished?

James Hunt, writing for DenOfGeek, has some ideas.

James focuses more on what the match has meant for Marvel than what it has meant for Disney. He claims, rightly enough, that Disney hooked Marvel primarily because of the comic book giant's appeal to boys and teenagers, two demographics that Disney has historically struggled to satisfy.

Although I'm not as plugged into the comics scene as I was in younger years, I still keep tabs on it and agree with James' conclusion that Marvel comics have not visibly prospered with Disney at the helm. If anything, the recent spurt of derivative titles suggests that Marvel is slogging through another of its periodic creative troughs and hopes to weather the crisis by diluting popular characters like Wolverine, the Punisher, and the Hulk (whose dull son, Skaar, has appeared on Earth to combat the super-villain known as the Collective Sigh).

From a park perspective, Disney is hampered by the pre-existing contracts Marvel had with Universal, but even more so it's hampered by the creative conundrum of how to integrate violent comic book characters into its meet 'n greets and elsewhere throughout the parks. Does anyone really want to see Wolverine skewer Piglet on one of his adamantium claws and then have Skaar stomp in to say 'I smell bacon'?

This marriage may need counseling.

DenOfGeek, by the way, is a honkin' big geek site, with nearly 3 million unique visitors per year. Does it surprise you to learn there are so many geeks in the world? Or does it frighten you?