The acquisition of Marvel offers us a similar opportunity to advance our strategy, and to build a business that is stronger than the sum of its parts.
- Robert Iger
Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses. This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney's tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world.
- Ike Perlmutter
It is a mini-Disney in terms of intellectual property. Disney's got much more highly recognized characters and softer characters, whereas our characters are termed action heroes. But at Marvel we are now in the business of the creation and marketing of characters.
- Ronald Perelman from Comic Wars: Marvel's Battle for Survival
Tom Spurgeon listened in on the conference call, and asks the pertinent question of how this will affect the publishing side of things:
...the general notion that Disney isn't going to second-guess Marvel where they have expertise would indicate that the comics side of things stands a good chance of being left alone -- except perhaps in terms of a wider platform for book distribution. Disney's big book arms moved to HarperCollins from Hachette in 2007 as I recall; Marvel is I believe currently working with Diamond in the book market and people make fun of Marvel's book program a lot, even though there are isolated mega-successes.
Okay, the more I think about it, that's the comics industry question: Diamond.
Sounds like
Marvel is going to have to consider changing its bookstore market strategy vis-à-vis
Diamond at some point, in light of the
Disney purchase.
