 |
       |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|
Comic craze Earlier this month, Marvel shareholders approved the company's takeover by Disney and rival Warner Bros revamped its subsidiary DC Comics. Jules Grant reports on how comics are moving centre stage in kids' entertainment. Mediatoon's Tintin in Belgium; DC Thomson's The Dandy and The Beano in the UK; and American superhero rivals Marvel (The Hulk, Spider-Man, Captain America) and DC Comics (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman) led a global coamic boom in the 1930s that was sparked off again shortly after the Second World War by Japanese manga. While the comic form has seen many different phases and genres over the decades, it has reached a new level of popularity in recent years.  International convention Comic-Con, held in San Diego, has grown rapidly since its launch in 1970, attracting attendees worldwide, while Marvel and DC Comics continue to raid their back catalogues to create cinema blockbusters, with the former's Thor, Captain America and Iron Man 2 (left) due out over the next few years.The sequential nature of comics and the dominance of pictures over words doubtlessly lends them to audiovisual adaptation, and in Japan, many creators will work in both forms simultaneously, with screen adaptations of manga going under the label animé. "Comic book properties in general have been popular for many decades, with an incredibly fervent fan base," says Gonzalo Ferreya, VP sales and marketing at San Fransisco-based manga/animé firm Viz Media. "The growth in the past few years can largely be credited to the interest that Hollywood has taken in comics, and to retailer enthusiasm coupled with readily available content from both Japan and the US. The appetite for quality stories and characters is bigger than ever, and in comics and manga there's a vast wealth of material to be tapped." This year, two US studio rivals continue to go head to head and are entering a new phase of consolidation and growth. Warner Bros-owned DC has restructured its comics unit, creating DC Entertainment, to better exploit its properties across the parent studio's movie, television, interactive, digital and consumer products businesses. And Marvel now has a studio parent after its shareholders agreed to the Disney takeover. The likes of The Hulk, Iron Man and Spider-Man, as well as lesser-known characters such as Black Panther and Nighthawk, will all become part of the Mickey Mouse family this year, subject to regulatory approval. The US$4bn deal stunned the industry, with many questions being asked about what the move means for Disney, Marvel and the comic book community at large.  "It's a worldwide move," says Claude de Saint Vincent (left), head of Media Participations' comics and animation division. "Before the Disney deal was announced, we were seeing a lot of Marvel's characters, such as Iron Man and X-Men, coming back to the screen, and the same thing happened in Japan, when we saw manga characters adapted for cinema. It highlighted the disappearance of borders between formats such as books, television, cinema and video games. Comic publishers have become content producers over the past five to 10 years."Roger Smith, analyst and author at Screen Digest, claims that the Disney/Marvel deal is entirely positive. "In a single stroke, Disney has added an enormous trove of valuable comic book properties with applicability to nearly every entertainment medium," he says. "To date, only relatively few Marvel characters have been exploited as either film or TV franchises." Sharad Devarajan (below), co-founder of New York's Liquid Comics, agrees. "Disney is one of the best machines to take IP out of obscurity," he says. "Taking brands that are household names is one thing, but if you look at Marvel's other vault, they have thousands of characters that are relatively unknown. Disney has the ability to take those IPs and plug them into its machine as well as build synergies around them." Of course, Disney has become extremely girl-orientated in its offering over the past few years, with the like of Hannah Montana and the High School Musical franchise. Alongside the recent launch of its boy-skewed channel Disney XD, the Marvel acquisition adds a heavy male dimension to Disney's offering. The Mouse has continued this by buying 10% of Spider-Man creator Stan Lee's company POW! for US$2.5m  But the Marvel/Disney union has not been wholeheartedly welcomed by everyone. Many analysts have criticised the US$4bn price tag, claiming that Disney paid too much, particularly since some of Marvel's bigger properties are locked up with other studios, such as Paramount. However, it is expected that the money will trickle back to Disney while it waits for some of those deals to expire.Screen Digest's Smith says: "We think that the market has actually undervalued Marvel's store of creative content. For true over-payment, one should go back to Disney's 2001 purchase, under Michael Eisner, of the Fox Family Channel from News Corp and Haim Saban for US$5.3bn – a commitment to pure distribution just as the internet was radically devaluing the worth of such franchises." Of course, every time Disney does a deal – for ABC and Pixar, for instance – people say that it overpaid, but few would say that Disney paid too much for Pixar now. Other criticisms levelled at Disney come from the die- hard comic fans who fear that Marvel may lose its cachet and coolness among its young fanbase once it enters the corporate embraces of Disney. One industry executive, who preferred not to be named, says: "Disney has never been able to digest something that was not created by Disney, and for that reason, I'm not sure that the deal will work." Others think that if Disney runs Marvel as a separate entity it will be OK. "From what I read, Marvel will run fairly autonomously," says Liquid Comics' Devarajan. "Disney has a history that shows they know how to handle things of this nature." "What happened to MySpace once it became part of News Corp may be fresh in investors' minds," says Smith. "But we note a critical difference: Disney and Marvel are the film, television and video games businesses, with their existing enormous revenue streams, not some new kid on the block with a completely under-developed revenue model. Disney will have to become comfortable with the kind of edgy content that has been Marvel's trademark – again a necessity we suspect both managements are well convinced of." Warner Bros restructured its DC Comics unit following the announcement of the Disney deal, after years of lagging behind Marvel in adapting its properties for the big screen and other media. Diane Nelson, a brand manager who has overseen Warner's Harry Potter franchise since 1999, has been put in charge of the newly created DC Entertainment. The publisher of comic classics such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman operated largely independently of the studio prior to the restructure. According to analysts, tension between DC and Warner Bros has contributed to the studio's inability to match Marvel's success with its characters on the big screen. Numerous DC properties, including Wonder Woman, Justice League and The Flash, have languished in development at Warner Bros for years, with little coordination between the studio's producers and executives and the comic-book publisher. The latest move is seen as a good one for Warner Bros as it puts the characters firmly under the control of the people who make movies and television. The moves by Disney and Warner Bros have sparked speculation about whether a new round of consolidation is about to start across the comics and studios businesses. While there are few buyers with deep pockets around thanks to the recession, aside from Comcast, DreamWorks Animation is the name most often touted as a possible acquisition target for a large studio. Screen Digest claims the owners of valuable content will be the main targets in a forthcoming wave of 'content consolidation.' "Many of these may be highly attractive segments buried within much larger media companies, and they may lack such obvious and pervasive multimedia applicability as Marvel," says Smith. "But we think there are others lurking out there in motion pictures, television production, video games studios and even – just possibly – carefully selected speciality areas of the beaten down print category." Jules Grant 27 Jan 2010 © C21 Media 2010 
C21 Home | C21 Kids Home | Printer Friendly | Email a Friend |
|
|
|
|
|
|
