I stopped reading comics recently and have already developed the non-comics-reader’s defensive shell of weariness at the thought of trying to figure out what the various characters are up to these days — which is good. That will prevent any relapses, so I can move on to other topics.
Nonetheless, I’m grateful for my past ties to the hobby — resulting in things like (a) an idea for a graphic novel script I hope to devote much of my spare time to completing in the next few weeks, (b) likely seeing the movie Whiteout, featuring Kate Beckinsale as Antarctica’s sole cop, next week (even if it proves to be as lame as the trailers suggest) just because Scott Nybakken once introduced me to the writer of the excellent original comic (Greg Rucka), and (c) getting a voicemail from my mom letting me know that Disney just bought Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion. It’s just nice to know Mom’s keeping me informed.
The Wall Street Journal, in turn, informs me that a single Marvel Entertainment movie, Spider-Man 3, made nearly $900 million, so if I were Disney, I might buy Marvel too. Incidentally, this creates a new source of rivalry between Warner Brothers and Disney, since Warner owns DC. This now means Mickey Mouse and Iron Man are natural allies in a fight against Bugs Bunny and Batman, for those keeping track. But I’m not supposed to think like that anymore. It’s a corporate merger, not a fight between rodents and men. Have to keep telling myself that.
By the way, for anyone troubled by the fact that very-recent movies (often ones that aren’t very good) keep being declared the highest-grossing ever, here’s the solution: the far more classics-filled list of biggest box office hits adjusted for inflation. With Gone with the Wind, the original Star Wars, and the comparably awesome Sound of Music up at the top, the Great Chain of Being suddenly seems righted again.
3 comments:
“The Wall Street Journal, in turn, informs me that a single Marvel Entertainment movie, Spider-Man 3, made nearly $900 billion”
I believe that should be $900 million.
Correct you are. Corrected above now.
Why, to make a gross of $900 _billion_, they’d need the kind of high-quality filmmaking achievable only with a budget of 80 quadrillion thousand hundred million hundred dollars, impossible in today’s cautious business environment.
By the way, right after I stopped reading comics, the Wikipedia hivemind decided to delete the entire “Fictional History of the DC Universe” page for insufficient substantiating citations, so by contemporary epistemological standards, I guess that whole reality _is_ dead to me now.
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