The “Disney Buys Marvel” FAQ
August 31st, 2009 | comics talk
No, I am not going to be writing Disney comics.
Fairly fucking obviously.
49 Responses to “The “Disney Buys Marvel” FAQ”
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Coilhouse is Hiring! Apply Here.
Coilhouse - 08 Feb 10
Back around the time of Issue 03, we launched the Small Business Advertising Program to create affordable ad space for indie companies in the print version of Coilhouse. By the time Issue 04 rolled around, the number of advertisers had grown significantly – by this time, we had record labels, jewelry and clothing designers, sculptors, other magazines, web hosts, toy makers and graphic designers advertising in our pages. Click here to see them all. With editorial duties taking up more and more of our time as the weeks go by, the moment has come for us to seek help with the advertising side of running the magazine. We’re looking to hire an Ad Manager for our Small Business Advertising Program, starting with Coilhouse Magazine #05… and possibly subsequent issues.
Full details after the jump!
Read the rest of Coilhouse is Hiring! Apply Here.
Post tags: Coilhouse
State of South Carolina Secretary of State Subversive Agent Form
jwz - 08 Feb 10
Check the appropriate box. Do you or your organization directly or indirectly advocate, advise, teach or practice the duty or necessity of controlling, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, the state of South Carolina or any political division thereof?
[ ] YES [ ] NOIf yes, please outline the fundamental beliefs. If applicable, attach a copy of the bylaws or minutes of meetings from the last year.
"Inflection Points" Presentation
Open The Future - 08 Feb 10
For those folks who are interested, here's the Slideshare version of the presentation I gave last week at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute annual meeting. I was asked to talk about foresight thinking, as the event theme was "The Big One of 2056: What Went Right?" a look at a fictional 7.8 quake in the SF region that was handled as well as they could imagine possible.
My goal was to offer a bit of reassurance to the audience that there is some real utility to thinking about the future, and to spell out (in a cursory way) the kinds of big picture issues they should keep in mind while looking ahead forty-six years.
Inflection Points
View more presentations from Jamais Cascio.
By and large, it was a successful talk. The post-talk questions were engaged, with little push-back, and I'm told that the overall response from the audience was quite positive.
The talk was video recorded, and I'm told will eventually be available to the public. I'll link when that happens.
CAN GIFTING ECONOMIES SCALE?
John Robb - 08 Feb 10
A gifting economy is different from a barter or market economy in that valuable items are given away to those that need them, without any quid pro quo, exchange, or payment. Gifting economics (lots of great papers on this topic) were/are the economic heartbeat of hunter-gatherer tribal cultures, the social organization where we spent 99% of our time as homo sapiens sapiens. Barter was, in contrast, a mechanism for economic interactions between tribes.
This gifting economic system wasn't based on pure altruism. It did have an enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance with the system over the longer term. On the positive side, there was an intangible increase in the social status (using personal or societal metrics) of a tribal member that gifted an item. On the negative, a failure to offer hospitality or gifts to those in need was considered a mortal slight that could incite violence or expulsion from the tribe.
There were also a considerable number of drivers for gifting at the tribal level. Here are some:
- The survival of the tribe, as a group, was more important than the survival of any individual. However, the loss of any individual could put the tribe at risk.
- The generation of surplus and innovation was highly uncertain. Sharing reduced that uncertainty to manageable levels.
- Sharing reduced internal friction that could put the tribe at risk.
Scalability
It's pretty clear that the societal drivers of tribal gifting economics and the mechanisms of enforcement didn't survive the transition to a global social system composed of billions of members. Simply, the connections between any two individuals (outside of immediate familial relationships) are too abstract for these drivers and enforcement mechanisms to be relevant. As a result, market based mechanisms for economic interaction have gained dominance.
However, the ongoing shift of the global market-based economy from a trade in rival goods (tangible items that invoke zero sum economics) to digital non-rival goods (items that can be copied at no expense or diminishment, endlessly) provides a window of opportunity. It may be possible to revive gifting economics for non-rival goods to amazing beneficial effect. Some ideas on how this could scale:
- Automated reputation metrics that enhance social status based on contributions.
- Mechanisms built using MMO gaming as a way to tie successful gifting to status improvement (leveling) or an ability to attract investment.
- The creation of an inside/outside barrier that separates a gifting economy from the global economic mainstream. Automated mutual interdependence (see my friend Bruce Sterling's absolutely brilliant story on this: "Maneki Neko").
Latest on SNOW
Jean Snow - 08 Feb 10
So what’s the latest on SNOW? I guess two new developments art that I added a dedicated Twitter feed, and also created a Facebook fan page. The Twitter feed is mostly just automated with new articles from the site — because some people actually prefer that over RSS feeds these days — but I do keep an eye on it, and will reply to questions and comments. The Facebook page is just another way of putting the site out there, and should be a good way of informing members of SNOW-related events as they happen.
Regular content updates have also continued over the past week, with a few new guest columns and my regular news items. Here’s a list of what you may have missed over the past few days.
- One Coin Comics
- Wired’s Personalized QR Codes
- Annapurna Moonrise
- Lone Expression: Tommy Guerrero
- Asato Z
- COLORS
- Shinjuku Disco
- Labyrinth of Woods
- Koukotsu
- Japan Pan Am
- BQLSI STAR LASER
- Mountain House by Atelier Bow-Wow
- Measuring Tape Toilet Paper
- Kuri
- No Man’s Land
- The 69th Tokyo International Gift Show
- Memories of Island Life: Ogasawara, 1992
- A House Made of Two
- 24-Hour Subway in Tokyo
- Tiltshift Generator for iPad
- Hair Club for Men: Style #326
- Droog Town House
- G-Tokyo 2010
- First Trailer for Kitano’s Outrage
- JAGDA 2010 Calendar for iPhone
It’s too bad really… a dystopian Ellis treatment of Uncle Scrooge might be fun
That’s a shame, I was looking forward to a Duck Tales/Nextwave crossover.
C’mon, I am sure you can do a bang-up job on a Toy Story/G.I. Joe crossover.
I LOVE YOU WARREN ELLIS!
Well, that’s a horrible disappointment. C’mon- Disney’s got plenty of forgotten properties that could be resurrected much like you’ve done for Marvel. DO IT. DO IT.
Devil Dinosaur bukkake.
That is all.
I was also hoping for some Uncle Warren Scrooge McEllis. I mean, he’s quite possibly the single most obsessive capitalist in fiction.
And here I was hoping for a setup where Minnie Mouse would step out of the shadow of her more famous male counterpart to reveal herself as a fully competent, in control half cyborg dominatrix who chain smokes and rules the men around her with an iron fist and Union Jack knickers…
The more pertinent is will you still be writing Marvel comics?
Aww. No Gizmo Duck/Iron Man team up written by Warren Ellis?
Clearly, WE’s already done his dystopian Uncle Scrooge treatment: Elijah Snow.
I heard donald duck is really popular in germany
The last thing I’d expect from you is to write fairly-fucking-obvious Disney comics…!
But all Marvel comics are now owned by Disney. So aren’t you already writing Disney comics?
Can we call you Mouseketeer Ellis?
Is Storm a Disney Princess now?
Minnie Mouse having an orgasm. Damn skippy you’re the only one who can write that.
Cheers,
B
Just out of interest, under what creative conditions *would* you be prepared to write an arc for a Disney character, and which one(s) would you go for?
Seriously, I’d love to see you do a take on a Disney character, though Disney might not be as thrilled with where you’d take it.
I only hope this leads to singing and dancing arse eels in future Disney animated features…….
Aww, no Ellis writing Darkwing Duck?
This could be good! I imagine a three-page spread of Spider Jerusalem sodomizing Mickey Mouse with a biovibrogenetic “Jesus loves ya!(tm)” strap-on.
Of course you wouldn’t — they’d be “by” Walt, much like Carl Barks’ stuff.
@Brian. Minnie Mouse having an orgasm you can see in those
Tijuana Bibles collections, or on various hentai toon galleries online.
So what? While this might actually have some impact on the life of Warren, will it really fucking matter to anyone not directly employed by either company?
“wow now im going to have to buy dc comics”…man even typing that line made my soul hurt.
mulan? jack sparrow? :(
It might just, if Disney decide to not continue with Diamond then that potentially puts the system in the shitter and while it’s wank to begin with, we could still end up having something wank-er that would fuck up the whole comics distribution network. Just saying.
From what I understand, the comics distribution network was fuXX0red in the mid-nineties, leading to a great deal of the mess we have today. While they’re hardly the ideal overminds, at the very least Disney knows how to sell ‘toons to kids. It’s possible the idea of “new reader” won’t be the running joke it currently is among superhero comics.
I think people are being a bit too alarmist about this. Disney acquired Marvel because Marvel is making large amounts of money. As long as Marvel continues to make large amounts of money, Disney is not likely to mess with the way they do business.
THIS SUCKS. DISNEY SUCKS.
the nice thing about marvel under disney is marvel doesnt have to rely on comics to provide them profit. So now they don’t HAVE to do variant cover gimmicks and cross overs to sell books such as in the 90’s, hopefully they realize that and a new trend can begin.
THANK FUCK
[...] de Disney en los cómics Marvel, y que estos sean aún más infantiles y que escritores como Warren Ellis, que ya ha dejado claro en su página web que él no va a escribir nunca para Disney o Garth Ennis, [...]
So we shouldn’t expect to see any exploration of the homo-erotic byplay between Mickey and Pluto?
For shame…
“No, I am not going to be writing Disney comics.”
That’s what they all say at first. Give it a year.
[...] Johnston; Nick Nadel offers a quick history of Marvel corporate ownership; and I’m linking to Warren Ellis for the hell of [...]
Warren doubtless remembers the story of Harlan Ellison going to work for Disney.
@Brian
Ditto.
Marvel are raking it in pimping out existing characters like Iron Man and Spidey etc. The revenue stream from comics is pretty paltry in comparison. They don’t give a fuck what Warren or anyone is doing fiddling with the characters in the dark corners of the Marvel empire so long as Disney gets to be the ones ejaculating them onto the big screen. It’s all about the money shot.
I was hoping you’d be making Donald Duck in some of those Spider Man movies, and plus, who are you to yel at the public. Inconsistent jerky come backs is all; celebrities think they are the boss. When they clearly just get money, it’s all a joje, funded on lies, and the supreme court doesn’t know Walt Disney till he saw Spyder man vs the raving rombos.
But you could be the next Don Rosa!
There was a time you wouldn’t have written Speedball or the New Universe… 8-)
Bonhome’s right you know. It is a joje.
http://superpunch.blogspot.com/2009/08/more-disneymarvel-mashups_31.html
See what you could be doing, Warren?
Actually the eude with the Toy Story/GI Joe idea is onto something….that works on the action figure level…
If writers like Warren are refusing to write… all the great stories we’ve been reading over the last few years will be slowly watered down with cross-marketed, tween-oriented mush. Take the good writing out of Marvel, and all what you have are hollow brands. Can you imagine Disney advocating something like Dark Avengers? More like Hanna Montana’s Avengers…. awww gawwwdd!
[...] conoce a Marvel 2009 Septiembre 2 etiquetas: Disney, Marvel by Noel Warren Ellis ya se ha encargado de zanjar la cuestión de manera contundente: “No, I am not going to be [...]
IT’S ALL JUST A JOJE!!!! WHERE HAVE ALL THE COWBOYS GONE???????
I hope Disney doesn’t mess around too much with Marvel, like in this funny parody of the situation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrAwJzda69I
[...] 11, 2009 by zwara81 aus warren ellis blog The “Disney Buys Marvel” FAQ No, I am not going to be writing Disney comics. Fairly fucking [...]
[...] de Disney en los cómics Marvel, y que estos sean aún más infantiles y que escritores como Warren Ellis, que ya ha dejado claro en su página web que él no va a escribir nunca para Disney o Garth Ennis, [...]