It was just a bit over a week ago that the big news broke about Disney buying Marvel Comics, and now there’s another big shakeup.

Time Warner, which has owned DC Comics for decades, has announced that they’re going to restructure DC, and Paul Levitz, DC’s publisher and president, is stepping down, supposedly so he can focus on writing comic books again.

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (WBEI) has created DC Entertainment Inc., a new company founded to fully realize the power and value of the DC Comics brand and characters across all media and platforms, to be run by Diane Nelson, it was announced today by Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, and Alan Horn, President & COO, Warner Bros.

DC Entertainment, a separate division of WBEI, will be charged with strategically integrating the DC Comics business, brand and characters deeply into Warner Bros. Entertainment and all its content and distribution businesses.  DC Entertainment, which will work with each of the Warner Bros. divisions, will also tap into the tremendous expertise the Studio has in building and sustaining franchises and prioritize DC properties as key titles and growth drivers across all of the Studio, including feature films, television, interactive entertainment, direct-to-consumer platforms and consumer products.  The DC Comics publishing business will remain the cornerstone of DC Entertainment, releasing approximately 90 comic books through its various imprints and 30 graphic novels a month and continuing to build on its creative leadership in the comic book industry.

In her new role, Nelson will report to Jeff Robinov, President, Warner Bros. Pictures Group, in order to best capitalize on DC Entertainment’s theatrical development and production activities and their importance to drive its overall business with each of the divisions of Warner Bros.

Nelson will bring her expertise and more than 20 years’ experience in creative brand management, strategic marketing and content development and production to ensuring DC Entertainment’s dual mission of marshalling Warner Bros.’ resources to maximize the potential of the DC brand while remaining respectful of and collaborative with creators, talent, fans and source material.  Additionally, Nelson will continue to oversee the franchise management of the Harry Potter property, which she has done since 2000, and also continue to represent the Studio’s interests with the author of the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling.  Nelson will segue from her post as President, Warner Premiere but maintain oversight responsibilities of that division.  (An executive succession plan for Warner Premiere will be announced shortly.)

Paul Levitz, who has served as President & Publisher of DC Comics since 2002, will segue from that role to return to his roots as a writer for DC and become a contributing editor and overall consultant to DCE.  This transition will take place as expeditiously as possible without disrupting DC’s business operations.

In his new role, Levitz will be called upon for his deep knowledge and more than three-decade history with DC Comics, both as a comic creator and an executive.  Besides serving as a writer on a number of DC Comics titles, he will be a contributing editor and consultant to DC Entertainment on projects in various media. 

Okay, that’s a LOT of corporate marketing-speak (and there was a lot more that I cut out, too), and corporate marketing-speak is designed to say as little as possible while looking like you’re saying a lot. Basically, all this says is: Levitz is out, Diane Nelson is in, and Warner’s is kinda tired of getting their butts whupped by Marvel’s movies. There’s a lot they’re NOT saying. Sure, we have no idea what really went down, but as they say in the blogosphere: Would it be irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to!

First, there’s not much question that this all went down because of the Disney-Marvel deal. The Warner bigwigs opened up their business section one morning, read about Disney’s big purchase, and said, “Hey, don’t we own a comic book company, too?”

At that point, research was done into one of Warner’s smallest properties, and someone came up not happy with what they saw. It would be nice if they said, “Holy cats! They cancelled Blue Beetle?! Teen Titans has turned into a murder parade?! They’re relaunching old characters and then abandoning them again?! These comic books are crap!” But ya know, like Disney, Warner’s almost certainly doesn’t care about comics. Comics are small fry. Movies and video games are where the big money is, and for the past few years, DC’s comic book movies have been, except for “The Dark Knight,” an unrelenting parade of suck. And even then, the pace of production has been ploddingly slow. Marvel had a huge hit last year with “Iron Man,” and they’re already filming the sequel. DC had an even larger hit with “The Dark Knight,” but they haven’t even started pre-production work on a sequel. To be honest, this was probably more about lighting a fire under their film division than it was about comic books.

…except for Paul Levitz. His resignation — and I have little doubt that this was a “resign-or-else” resignation — would not have happened if this was all about movies, ’cause Levitz isn’t in charge of making any movies. It looks to me like Levitz was pushed out because one of the higher-ups at Warner’s didn’t like something about how the comics side of the business was being run. It could’ve just been “Wait, why are Marvels comics more popular than ours? We’ve got Batman, dangit!” But that’s not certain — maybe someone at the top actually reads comics and is tired of seeing DC publish bad comics.

Now what does this all mean for us funny-book fans? With Marvel, I’m figuring Disney won’t care to interfere with the comic book side of things, but I’m not sure that’s the case with DC. Getting rid of the publisher means someone wants some changes made.

If we’re lucky, maybe Dan DiDio will get shown the door, too, and maybe DC’s books will see some improvement.

If we’re not lucky… Well, Diane Nelson doesn’t seem to have any prior experience in the comics biz — it’s all movies, brand management, and marketing. And I think we’ve all seen far too many marketing-driven comics to expect good things on that front. It doesn’t take too great a stretch of the imagination to see that DiDio might actually be very, very happy about this new arrangement — he may be afforded more power than he ever was before…

Daring Mystery Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1

For some reason, I thought Marvel was done with their 70th Anniversary Specials, but I’m very pleased to see that they’re still being released. This one features (along with one of the finest covers I’ve seen in ages) the adventures of a guy called the Phantom Reporter. He’s a normal reporter trying to track down the tough stories, hunting for the leads that will let him discover who killed a childhood friend-gone-bad. But when he gets too close to the truth, the criminal syndicates come after him, and he puts on a gag mask to try to disguise himself, then ends up unleashing ungodly amounts of whupass on the mobsters. And after that, he realizes he doesn’t have to play by the rules of journalism to get at the truth of who killed his friend — he can just hit gangsters ’til they tell him what he needs to know. But his final opponent may be too tough to beat. After the main story, there’s a classic story from the Golden Age about the Phantom Reporter and his multiple secret identities…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Absolutely outstanding noir adventure. You got your mask-and-fedora hero who’s willing to bend the rules, you got a mourning mobster willing to talk to someone who’ll help him get justice, you got a femme fatale who may have dark secrets, you got complete scoundrels running the whole show. They could’ve made this a movie serial back in the ’40s…

Mystic Comics 70th Anniversary Special #1

More noir adventure, this time with a magic twist — namely a Golden Age hero called the Vision, a crimefighter from another dimension who can manifest through clouds of smoke. The mob is desperate to rub him out — after they hear about some weird lights coming from a local professor’s home, they sneak a gangster into the home to work undercover as a gardener, and he soon learns that the Vision is really an interdimensional traveler named Aarkus who has become trapped in our world. An experiment to send Aarkus back to his world is disrupted by the fake gardener, and the resulting accident with the dimensional gateway releases a cosmic monster able to induce horrific hallucinations in any humans it encounters. And again, once the main story is over, we’re treated to an old story about the Vision, this time drawn by Jack Kirby as the Vision faces attacks by werewolves…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great magical adventure pulp, with a great dose of horror. I loved the creepy zombie who menaces the professor and his daughter, and the hallucinating farm family trying to kill each other are chilling, especially after the Vision banishes their illusions, and they realize they may have already killed another family member. And the backup story with King Kirby illustrating a werewolf story is also wonderful.

On this day in 1888, the body of Annie Chapman, the second victim of Jack the Ripper, was found.

That’s as good an excuse as any for us to talk about “From Hell.”

“From Hell” was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It was originally published spread out across several different magazines, but eventually compiled into a single book in 1999. It’s a gigantic book — almost 600 pages.

It’s about Jack the Ripper, of course. It’s a fictionalized account, obviously, following Inspector Frederick Abberline as he investigates the killings, a group of Whitechapel prostitutes as they slowly realize that they — very specifically, in fact — are being stalked by the killer, and it follows Sir William Gull, royal physician to Queen Victoria and the man behind the gory murders.

Oops, was that a spoiler? No, believe it or not, it isn’t. We know almost from the beginning that Gull is Saucy Jack. This isn’t a whodunit. It’s a whydunit.

I think “From Hell” is my favorite of Moore comics — better than “Watchmen,” “V for Vendetta,” or “The Killing Joke.” I got into it because I’ve always been a horror fan — in fact, I’m the only person in my immediate or extended family who cares for horror, which makes me, well, the only person in my family who likes horror. Anyway, as a horror nut, serial killer stories, and especially stories about Old Leather-Apron, have always appealed to me. And “From Hell” ladles on buckets of horror. Not just gore — and there is a lot of gore, and I mean a lot — but suspense, paranoia, psychological chills. It’s a very scary, creepy story about the best known but most mysterious serial killer in history, and horror fans will absolutely love it.

But on top of that, I’d developed a taste for conspiratorial fiction and stuff about secret societies — books like Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s “Illuminatus!” trilogy, Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum,” and the more demented style of modern conspiracy theories. And “From Hell” actually manages to scratch that itch, too, because it’s crammed full of conspiracies, esotericism, sacred geography, secret history, weird stuff both subtle and spectacular. In the story, Gull manages to make mystical connections with poet/painter William Blake and 20th century serial killers like Peter Sutcliffe. He sees visions of Adolf Hitler and WWII and even sees the 1990s — he even claims to have created all of it himself, through the murders.

None of it seems like it should have any place in a story about Jack the Ripper, but once it’s introduced, it seems to make perfect sense. I get irritated by Moore’s obsessions from time to time, but it really is a testament to his strength as a writer that he can shoehorn all these unconnected elements into a single story, and it all works.

The full collected edition also includes a gigantic appendix detailing, almost page by page, which elements of the story were based on fact, which were invented, and which were conjecture or theory, and it all closes with an illustrated essay called “Dance of the Gull Catchers,” which distills the entire history of Ripperology, its movers and shakers, and its leading theories and fixations down into a dozen or so pages. And it makes sense, and it’s entertaining. Heck, I remember laughing out loud when Moore made the Jack the Ripper/Cattle Mutilators connection, partly because it was completely mad, and partly because, holy macaroni, it had that perfect conspiracy-theory frission that feels so good to us conspiracy fanboys.

“From Hell” is a near-perfect mix of horror, detective drama, and conspiracy theories. I wish the movie (which I’ve never managed to see) hadn’t put so many people off of the comic, because it’s one of Alan Moore’s best and most ambitious stories.

You can probably find it at your local comic shop right now. Go pick it up.

Strange Tales #1

You may remember back in 2002, DC put together a project called “Bizarro Comics,” where they let a bunch of independent and small press cartoonists create stories about their superheroes. Well, Marvel finally decided to give that a try. This is the result — Paul Pope creates a story of the Inhumans as Lockjaw repeatedly tries to get someone to give him some dog food. Junko Mizuno puts Spider-Man and Mary Jane in a city of adorable spiders. Dash Shaw pits Dr. Strange against Nightmare. James Kochalka creates a bunch of different colors of Hulk. Johnny Ryan spotlights Marvel’s most embarrassing moments and introduces the Punisher as an academic counselor. Michael Kupperman notes that the Sub-Mariner is always disgusted with humanity. Nick Bertozzi chronicles MODOK’s tragic love life. And Peter Bagge’s near-legendary “Incorrigible Hulk” finally sees print.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This is an outstanding and very funny comic. Dr. Strange struggles not to yawn, Namor craves pizza, the Watcher is a peeping tom, Spidey eats bugs, and Wolverine misinterprets a blue hair. The best stories are Pope’s wonderful story about Lockjaw and the Inhumans, and Bertozzi’s genuinely sad story about MODOK. Best line? “I have to get my evil unicorn.” Best thing about this comic? Marvel is going to release two more issues in the coming months.

Sweet Tooth #1

This is the first all-color comic by Canadian alt-cartoonist Jeff Lemire. It focuses on a kid named Gus who has antlers and other deer-like features. He lives with his dying father in the wilderness — some sort of apocalyptic accident has caused children to be born as human-animal hybrids, and that’s made them all targets, though we never learn if they’re subject to extermination, capture, or something else. Gus has never seen another human other than his father, and when he dies, Gus is left on his own. Can he survive a hostile world he knows nothing about?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Weird, quirky, and sometimes intensely cinematic. Gus and his dad are both wonderful characters, and his dad’s death hits Gus and the reader hard. The scene where Gus meets the deer is short but amazingly cool. And there are a couple of bonus reasons to pick this up. First, it’s just a dollar. Just one freakin’ buck! One measly simoleon! You can afford that! Second, Lemire has an offer for you — send him your copy of the comic with a self-addressed envelope, and he’ll sign the book and send you an original sketch. (Check here for address and other details.)

Okay, one more week ’til Spacebooger starts the next regular session of Friday Night Fights up again, but that doesn’t mean we gotta wait for him. I know the last few weeks have been a bit free of the usual violence and carnage we’ve come to expect, but I’ve figured out what I’ve been doing wrong — too many kids comics, not enough Grant Morrison. Those Brits really know how to get the disturbingly gory violence flowing, right? So let’s turn things over to last week’s Batman and Robin #3 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely:

And Robin wins the prize for the understatement of the year. As for me, I’m off to scrub the horrors from my eyes with a wire brush. Hope y’all have a great weekend…

Green Lantern #45

Most of this issue is devoted to the ongoing “War of the Light” — as Carol Ferris and the Star Sapphires fight Sinestro and the Sinestro Corps, as the Green Lanterns fight the Red Lanterns, as Agent Orange’s orange constructs attack the tiny Blue Lantern Corps. And in the middle of all the fighting, the Black Lanterns make their appearances. Among the newly risen are the entire destroyed planet Xanshi, former GL and Red Lantern Lara, former Yellow Lantern Amon Sur, and the Weaponers of Qward. The best moment, however, was Larfleeze’s somewhat panicked discovery that his own hideout, already littered with hordes of dead aliens he’d killed, was now a breeding ground for zombie enemies — and all of his energy constructs are far, far away…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nothing real spectacular going on here, but the storytelling is solid, the dialogue is good, and the artwork is fun. Larfleeze’s “Yuh-oh” gets some extra prizes all its own.

Justice Society of America #30

Flash and Stargirl are the only Society members still standing against the army of supervillains. Since the bad guys are all refusing to attack Stargirl, Flash takes off to get help while Courtney lays some smackdown on some of the villains. Flash soon returns with the new Dr. Fate, and all three keep the bad guys busy ’til the rest of the JSA can recover. After that, the villains get their butts stomped good. Unfortunately, Mr. Terrific has been stabbed back at the brownstone and is near death, and the two new recruits, King Chimera and the All-American Kid, have conflicting reports of what’s been going on (actually, they have the only real clue about what’s been going on, if anyone would listen to them). And the stresses of the evening have Wildcat and Magog at each other’s throats.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Still not a great story, but it’s acceptable. It’s a bit frustrating that when the team’s looking for someone who tried to kill one of their members, everyone would just ignore the only people who were in the building at the same time. That’s a pretty obvious clue to overlook…

Batman and Robin #3

While Batman interrogates Professor Pyg’s fire-powered meta-terrorist (by zooming around the city in the Batmobile and holding him about a quarter-inch above the asphalt), Robin finally wakes up in Pyg’s hideout just before the bad doctor is preparing to lobotomize a girl named Sasha, one of his artificially doll-faced victims. Pyg introduces himself to Robin by… doing a really creepy sexy-time dance. Wwwwwow. That’s a pretty horrifically memorable way to introduce yourself to the world, I gotta say. Luckily, Robin has been working his way free of Pyg’s ropes this whole time and unleashes on Pyg and his dolls. Batman discovers that Pyg’s scheme involves releasing a aerosolized bio-weapon virus on Gotham City, and he comes to Robin’s rescue at the abandoned carnival. But they can’t find Sasha afterwards. And it turns out that the dollmasks don’t come off once they’ve been put on. Sasha wants revenge — and she meets up with a new partner to help her.

Verdict: Thumbs up. So much awesome stuff here — Batman’s near-face-scraping interrogation in the Batmobile, Pyg’s uber-creepy dance, Dick and Damian both dropping the whupass on the baddies, and some excellently creative sound-effects captions. This was a fantastically fun comic.

Detective Comics #856

Batwoman and her military dad make a narrow escape from Alice, thanks to the assistance of Abbot and his shapeshifting pals, all former members of the Church of Crime. Dad and daughter argue about the crimefighting biz, and later, Kate, her dad, and her stepmom — along with cousin Bette “Flamebird” Kane — attend the annual GCPD Charity Ball. Kate makes a scene by showing up in a spiffy tuxedo, to the disappointment of her stepmom. Kate runs into the only other woman wearing a tux — Major Crimes Unit leader Maggie Sawyer, formerly of Metropolis PD. After sharing a dance with Sawyer, Kate gets a visit from Abbot and his friends, now non-shapeshifted — they share some info about why they broke with the Church of Crime and reveal that Alice wants to succeed where the old leader, Mannheim, failed — they plan to destroy Gotham City. But has the warning come too late? Meanwhile, in our backup story, the Question is on the trail of the kidnappers and survives two different attempts on her life in only a few pages. But will she ever get the answers she needs to break the case?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great characterization work for Batwoman and her family. Excellent action, too. Some great intrigue as well. This is big fun. The Question backup story is good, too — very heavy on the action here, and Renee Montoya makes such a cool protagonist.

Wonder Woman #35

Wonder Woman and Black Canary are in Tokyo on some downtime from their next battle in Roulette’s metahuman fight club. Wondy’s down in the dumps about, um, various stuff, so Dinah tries to cheer her up, with some success. Their next bouts go well, until they’re matched up against a single fighter — and Wondy’s not strong enough to beat her. The new fighter is the goddess Pele, the daughter of the god Kane, Wondy’s chosen patron when the Olympians deserted Earth. Pele is angry because Zeus killed her father, and she plans on taking her revenge by killing Wonder Woman. Is there a way to survive a goddess’s wrath?

Verdict: Thumbs up, but largely for some of the smaller points. Wondy’s reaction to the over-sexualized toys of her in the Japanese stores was very funny, all the dialogue between Wondy and Black Canary was great, B.C. taking on all the villains in the arena at once was thoroughly and awesomely cool. But I’m getting a bit tired of the over-reliance on Roulette’s fight clubs as a storytelling gimmick, and Diana has spent much too much time lately fighting gods and goddesses.

Lockjaw and the Pet Avengers #4

Uh-oh, Thanos is on the scene, and he means to get all the Infinity Gems away from the Pet Avengers. None of them are tough enough to take him on, so Frog Thor (I just can’t get into calling him “Throg” — even for this series, it’s too silly) takes all the gems and gives them to Lockjaw, on the pretense that Lockjaw is going to betray them all and hand them over. Instead, Lockjaw blasts Thanos a few times, then teleports him pretty much all over the place before stranding him in an alternate universe where he can’t get back. Huzzah! Cute animals triumph over evil!

Verdict: I’ll give it a thumbs up, because this issue was still plenty fun. But this was still the weakest issue of the series. If Thanos couldn’t understand what the animals were saying, why all the subterfuge that Frog Thor goes through? How did Ms. Lion survive getting a face-full of Thanos-blast? Why wasn’t Lockjaw more powerful when he possessed all of the Infinity Gems? Still, like I said, lots of good fun in this one, and I’m looking forward to the planned ongoing series with these characters.

Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam! #7

Dr. Sivana is back and plotting more evil. After learning about Tawky Tawny’s connections to Billy and Mary, he manages to trail them to their home, bug their apartment, kidnap Tawny, and lead them straight into a trap — he’s re-activated the giant robot Mr. Atom, and he’s managed to super-charge him with the Marvels’ own lightning! Do they stand a chance to stop Dr. Sivana’s schemes?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Cute story, cute art, and they manage to raise the stakes and make things even more dangerous for Billy and Mary. That’s actually a pretty nice accomplishment for a kids comic.

Marvel Adventures: The Avengers #39

The Leader, the Abomination, and the Rhino are pulling off a ton of crimes as they work toward a plan to take over an orbital super-laser. Wolverine gets conned into making hot dogs while wearing an apron, just so Spidey can upload the pix to the Internet. Luke Cage beats the Abomination by beating him senseless with Wolverine. Spidey and Storm beat the Leader with rain. And Rhino wants out of the villain biz, so he and Tigra fake an epic battle so he’ll have an excuse to retire.

Verdict: Thumbs up. This one was just spectacular fun. The coolest scene was Tigra’s faked battle royale with Rhino — in a dramatic, drenching downpour, no less. The prize for best line goes to Tigra for: “Won the fight. Stole a line from the Thing. I’m totally a hero, and everything’s fine.” Just plain fantastic stuff.

Well, the Disney-Marvel deal still seems to be a topic of much interest, so let’s talk a little more about what it all means.

The first thing it means for Marvel is a great deal more financial security. Much like DC with Time Warner, Marvel is going to get a bit of a cushion if they have a financial downturn.

But the first thing that comics fans care about is — what’s this mean for my stash of new comics every week? And it’s not going to mean a single thing. Disney will probably never meddle in the comics publishing side of things, ’cause frankly, comics are a tiny, tiny part of the entertainment industry. A hit movie or video game makes more money than all of Marvel’s or DC’s comics do in a year. Disney won’t care whether Peter Parker marries Mary Jane, whether Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes is Captain America, whether Jean Grey comes back to life again or not.

Right now, everyone is assuming that they’re going to Disneyfy all of Marvel’s books to make them more kid-friendly or even tween-friendly. I don’t see it happening. Disney owns Miramax Films, and they didn’t release any kid-friendly versions of “Pulp Fiction,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “Dogma,” “Trainspotting,” “Kinky Boots,” “No Country for Old Men,” or “There Will Be Blood,” did they? Disney cares about making money, and as long as Marvel makes money, they won’t try to fix what ain’t broke.

The fact of the matter is — Disney is a gigantic, multi-national entertainment corporation. They care about making money. Disney does not care about comic books, not enough to meddle pointlessly. Disney does care about movies, TV, and video games. ‘Cause that’s where the money is in the entertainment biz.

And Marvel’s characters are proven money-makers in movies and computer games. That’s why Disney wants them. And they must want them awful bad, ’cause they’re not going to see a dime from “Iron Man 2” and probably not from “Iron Man 3” if Marvel had a three-picture deal with Paramount. Same for Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, the Avengers, or any other Marvel property whose film rights are held by another studio. A contract’s a contract, and there ain’t nothing in the world that the Mouse can do in that case. They can offer to buy the contract from Paramount, but that’ll be real expensive, maybe too expensive. Disney is probably at least three years away from being able to get a Marvel superhero movie out with their name in front of the credits.

But Disney knew that going in, and they still made the offer — which means they’re pretty confident that Marvel is going to be in a position to make Disney a very large amount of cash. They want Marvel’s superheroes in their creative stable bad enough to shell out $4 billion for them, and that may mean they’ll also be motivated to bargain for the rights held by other studios. After all, Disney has some of the deepest pockets of all the movie studios, and they may just have the pocket change on hand to get Tony Stark away from Paramount, or Spidey away from Columbia, or the Fantastic Four away from Fox.

Will the movies be good? The best we can do is keep our fingers crossed. Sure, Disney has always had a mixed record on live-action films, but the same goes for Marvel — or don’t you remember “Daredevil,” “Ghost Rider,” or the “Fantastic Four” movies? The hopeful side of me remembers that Pixar has a lot more say in Disney than they used to have — and Pixar’s one superhero movie was one of the best ever.

Are we going to see crossovers? Not on film, not on TV. Maybe in video games — the “Kingdom Hearts” series crammed in every Disney character they could, and they might try something like that again. But we’ll definitely see some crossovers in the comics, and probably before the end of next year. Probably not “Hannah Montana: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” or “MODOK in Wonderland” — but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see some sort of kid-friendly crossover, similar to DC’s “Superman and Bugs Bunny” crossover a decade ago. I’ll admit I’d really love to see if the Hulk can get as mad as Donald Duck can…

But there’s gonna be a lot of stuff that’ll happen that we’ll have no way to predict. We’re down the rabbit hole now, and it’s definitely a whole new world out there…

Holy guacamole!

The Walt Disney Co. said Monday it is acquiring Marvel Entertainment Inc. for $4 billion in cash and stock, bringing characters like Iron Man and Spider-Man into the family of Mickey Mouse and WALL-E.

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of 5,000 Marvel characters. Many of them, including favorites such as the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, were co-created by the comic book legend Stan Lee.

I have no idea what this means. I’m still a bit besmoggled by the whole announcement.

I know that this definitely solves what I always saw as one of Marvel’s weaknesses against DC — DC has been owned and supported by Time-Warner for decades, while Marvel was mostly on its own, despite all of its successes. Marvel now has Disney’s considerable economic and marketing clout to fall back on, if necessary.

Does this mean we’ll see Howard the Duck go back to his more Disneyesque appearance that he used to have? Heck, are we gonna see a Howard the Duck/Scrooge McDuck crossover? That might be fairly cool.

Okay, I’m also looking forward to the inevitable Wolverine/Mickey Mouse team-up.

Wow, still pretty blown away by this. What are y’all thinking about this whole thing?