CBR: Uslan and Disney Speak Out on Blockbuster Deal

[CBR News]

"Batman" movie producer & comic writer Michael Uslan and Jonathan Friedland, Disney's VP of Strategic Communications, spoke with CBR News late Monday about the landmark deal that brought the House of Ideas to the House of the Mouse.


Full article here.

[ShadowDemon]

...and make sure he gets a lot of help from comic book heavyweights who know the source material inside and out like Joe Quesada, Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar...

That's a joke, right?

How about REAL experts like Tom DeFalco, Kurt Busiek, Alan Davis, and Chris Claremont?

[Brian Cronin]

That's a joke, right?

How about REAL experts like Tom DeFalco, Kurt Busiek, Alan Davis, and Chris Claremont?

I, for one, appreciate that this news has drawn you to register at CBR, ShadowDemon.

I look forward to many deep insights like this from you in the future.

Welcome!

-Brian

[ShadowDemon]

Thank you for the welcome, Brian.

I just have trouble believing that Disney wants it's name married to a raping Hulk, a cannibal Blob, or a Captain America who kicks people in the face.

Marvel comics used to be better than that...not to mention more interesting, more "densely packed" than what we've been served up starting with Jemas' regime.

I know it's the popular thing these days to mock "Old School" Marvel, but it was a LOT more family/kid friendly than the "New School" Marvel's...produce. (I'll try to keep the post work safe by not using the word I want to use.

Jemas and Joey made a number of decisions that I (and most OS Marvel fans feel) made for bad books and a lessened reading experience.

You can probably guess at the list, but I'll include it anyways, including:

• Banning continuity before ~2000.
• "Pacing for the trade"
• Widescale changes to characters and the setting in both tone and content that were first confined to their own separate universe, but seem to have leaked out and tainted the original continuity as well.
• Destroying the mutant part of the MU with "Decimation".
• Ignoring or worse MISwriting characters just to suit Editorials tastes (New Warriors as kickoff of Civil War, breaking up Spidey/MJ, and so forth)
• Bringing in "star" writers to do all of the above, while pushing out the writers who continued to write Old School.
• Deliberately trying to cancel popular books on the basis of Editorial doesn't like them (Spider-Girl)

I'm sorry to read that Disney doesn't plan to do anything about this...

[jackolover]

[ "Disney will sell toys and they’ll sell Happy Meals if they just let them make great movies and I hope that, as they’ve learned with Pixar, they let the animators make great animation, they let the filmmakers make great films and they let the comic book creators make great comic books. That’s what I’m hoping they will do.”

And Jonathan Friedland, Disney’s VP of Strategic Communications, told CBR News that is what they’ll do.

“We like what they’ve done creatively,” explained Friedland. “We want Marvel to continue to serve its fanbase. It’s not about turning Marvel into Disney at all.”]

If Disney take this course, then that will show some confidence in the current creators and their ideas, which would allay the fears of many fans who imagine that the logo on the Books will change from Marvel Comics, to DISNEY COMICS. I would not want that to happen, that Disney just absorb the Marvel logo out of existence. I would hope that the Marvel Logo remains. Makes me wonder if the Miracle Man acquistion wasn't part of this deal. also.

[jackolover]

Thank you for the welcome, Brian.

I just have trouble believing that Disney wants it's name married to a raping Hulk, a cannibal Blob, or a Captain America who kicks people in the face.

Marvel comics used to be better than that...not to mention more interesting, more "densely packed" than what we've been served up starting with Jemas' regime.

I know it's the popular thing these days to mock "Old School" Marvel, but it was a LOT more family/kid friendly than the "New School" Marvel's...produce. (I'll try to keep the post work safe by not using the word I want to use.

Jemas and Joey made a number of decisions that I (and most OS Marvel fans feel) made for bad books and a lessened reading experience.

You can probably guess at the list, but I'll include it anyways, including:

• Banning continuity before ~2000.
• "Pacing for the trade"
• Widescale changes to characters and the setting in both tone and content that were first confined to their own separate universe, but seem to have leaked out and tainted the original continuity as well.
• Destroying the mutant part of the MU with "Decimation".
• Ignoring or worse MISwriting characters just to suit Editorials tastes (New Warriors as kickoff of Civil War, breaking up Spidey/MJ, and so forth)
• Bringing in "star" writers to do all of the above, while pushing out the writers who continued to write Old School.
• Deliberately trying to cancel popular books on the basis of Editorial doesn't like them (Spider-Girl)

I'm sorry to read that Disney doesn't plan to do anything about this...

Go back to antiquity where you belong. If not for Joe Q and Bendis, Marvel would have folded around 1999. We needed to have Jemas and Joey. I could have cared less for your pre-2000 junk.

[marvelgeek]

Thank you for the welcome, Brian.

I just have trouble believing that Disney wants it's name married to a raping Hulk, a cannibal Blob, or a Captain America who kicks people in the face.

Marvel comics used to be better than that...not to mention more interesting, more "densely packed" than what we've been served up starting with Jemas' regime.

I know it's the popular thing these days to mock "Old School" Marvel, but it was a LOT more family/kid friendly than the "New School" Marvel's...produce. (I'll try to keep the post work safe by not using the word I want to use.

Jemas and Joey made a number of decisions that I (and most OS Marvel fans feel) made for bad books and a lessened reading experience.

You can probably guess at the list, but I'll include it anyways, including:

• Banning continuity before ~2000.
• "Pacing for the trade"
• Widescale changes to characters and the setting in both tone and content that were first confined to their own separate universe, but seem to have leaked out and tainted the original continuity as well.
• Destroying the mutant part of the MU with "Decimation".
• Ignoring or worse MISwriting characters just to suit Editorials tastes (New Warriors as kickoff of Civil War, breaking up Spidey/MJ, and so forth)
• Bringing in "star" writers to do all of the above, while pushing out the writers who continued to write Old School.
• Deliberately trying to cancel popular books on the basis of Editorial doesn't like them (Spider-Girl)

I'm sorry to read that Disney doesn't plan to do anything about this...

All ULTIMATE counterparts...not main 616 books most people pick up....just throwing that out there.

[ShadowDemon]

All ULTIMATE counterparts...not main 616 books most people pick up....just throwing that out there.

Nope, 616 has been infected with Ultimatitis...maybe not the cannibal part, but the distopian, jackbootedness certainly.

The war ove Spider-Girl was entirely a 616 issue.

Running off writers like Busiek, Nicieza, Claremount, Davis, et al in favor of trash like Millar, JMS, Bendis, ad nauseum: entirely 616.

Pacing for the trade: applies to 616 titles as well

Decimation: 616 again

Continuity ban: still 616...

Care to try again?

Go back to antiquity where you belong. If not for Joe Q and Bendis, Marvel would have folded around 1999. We needed to have Jemas and Joey. I could have cared less for your pre-2000 junk.

In like spirit, slink back to your coffeeshop and read whatever "edgy" indie titles you were reading before, and GIVE ME BACK MY MARVEL SUPERHEROES!

[striderhirryu2]

Running off writers like Busiek, Nicieza, Claremount, Davis, et al in favor of trash like Millar, JMS, Bendis, ad nauseum: entirely 616.

Last I checked, everything Claremont has written in the past 5 years have been reviled. Nicieza took Thunderbolts to the low 20,000s and needed a bailout from Warren Ellis. JMS tripled Spider-Man and Thor's sales and garnered the only Eisner attention either series have ever received, Bendis took a floundering franchise and launched 3 consistent top 10 titles with it, and created another consistently top 10 Universe with Millar. So yeah, I think there's a gasleak in your house that should be fixed promptly.\

Oh and you also glossed over Bendis' beyond excellent Daredevil run that passed the baton to Brubaker, and Bendis launching the Max line where we got things like Punisher Max and Supreme Power.

[strathcona]

Go back to antiquity where you belong. If not for Joe Q and Bendis, Marvel would have folded around 1999. We needed to have Jemas and Joey. I could have cared less for your pre-2000 junk.

Hahaha.. That's priceless. You really believe Marvel would be gone if it weren't for Joe Q and Bendis?

[[]D[]/\/\[]D @ Nite/So-tite]

Go back to antiquity where you belong. If not for Joe Q and Bendis, Marvel would have folded around 1999. We needed to have Jemas and Joey. I could have cared less for your pre-2000 junk.

Wait...

I thought if not for Marvel movie productions, animated properties and licensing, Marvel would have folded around 1999.

[ShadowDemon]

Last I checked, everything Claremont has written in the past 5 years have been reviled.

Because Marvel's fanbase has all but been been converted into Millar/Bendis/Morrison worshiping drones. I actually started to get back into Marvel when Chris relaunched his X-title with a classic X-Men baseball game, but Editorial kept frakking around with him, wouldn't let him work his stories or characters the way he wanted to and generally did everything it could to run him off.

Nicieza took Thunderbolts to the low 20,000s and needed a bailout from Warren Ellis.

There were other things happening at the time, and Nicieze also gave us the superlative New Warrors Vol1.

JMS tripled Spider-Man

With such wonderful ideas as "Spider Totem"...

Bendis took a floundering franchise and launched 3 consistent top 10 titles with it, and created another consistently top 10 Universe with Millar

.

Based upon catering to readers whose taste in superheroes is somewhat akin to that of a dung beetle for IT'S preferred meal...

[jarvSthe1]

Wait...

I thought if not for Marvel movie productions, animated properties and licensing, Marvel would have folded around 1999.

So did I. Didn't JoeyQ and Jemas saved Marvel?

[Superbeast]

Because Marvel's fanbase has all but been been converted into Millar/Bendis/Morrison worshiping drones. I actually started to get back into Marvel when Chris relaunched his X-title with a classic X-Men baseball game, but Editorial kept frakking around with him, wouldn't let him work his stories or characters the way he wanted to and generally did everything it could to run him off.



There were other things happening at the time, and Nicieze also gave us the superlative New Warrors Vol1.



With such wonderful ideas as "Spider Totem"...

.

Based upon catering to readers whose taste in superheroes is somewhat akin to that of a dung beetle for IT'S preferred meal...

Dude, it's a business. If there was a demand for Marvel books "the old school way", they wouldn't have had to go into Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the late 90s. The stories weren't interesting the readers and the books weren't selling. Whether you like the current order of things or not, you need to keep in mind the old order almost ran the company into liquidation and this current order you loathe wouldn't have even had the chance to exist and make money so the characters you do like aren't being used as fodder for DC's heavyweights.

I'm a comic fan going back to the late 80s but folks like me aren't the majority. Even I stopped reading until WWH and GL Rebirth piqued my interest. If old school fans were still supporting the product, it wouldn't have needed to change but they weren't so it had to happen.

[TOAA]

* Deliberately trying to cancel popular books on the basis of Editorial doesn't like them (Spider-Girl)

What are you smoking? It was selling like crap for years.

With such wonderful ideas as "Spider Totem"...

I bet that clone saga kicked ass.

There were other things happening at the time, and Nicieze also gave us the superlative New Warrors Vol1.

What other things? And what NW vol1 has to do with anything? It was written 10-15 years ago. He wasn`t working anymore because TB dropped too much and he was replaced.

Because Marvel's fanbase has all but been been converted into Millar/Bendis/Morrison worshiping drones.

I don`t like many thing done by those three but such statment is funny. I`d rather be their drone than worship a guy(CC) who barely can write anymore and forgets/ignores plot points, his own and left by others alike.

or a Captain America who kicks people in the face.

And what he should do? Give a high five to Banner for causing massive damage in the city?