| "Real World"
The following article refers to a person, place or institution that exists outside the fictional context of the Whateley universe. This article concentrates on aspects unique to the Whateley Universe. For a more general reference on their non-fictional aspects, try their Wikipedia page at Marvel Comics |
Marvel Comics is a real-world comics publisher which also exists in the Whateley Universe. This article is mainly about the points in which the Whateley version differs from the real-world organization.
A consortium headed by Ayla Goodkind, Ron Perelman and a third partner, who may be Hatamoto's family, managed to stage a corporate takeover over late 2006 and a very successful IPO on January 2007.
As Ayla describes the company's former situation:
- “I was lucky that Marvel’s been spawning off separate corporate entities for years, instead of consolidating, so when people finally wanted to incorporate in the 90’s, there were too many stumbling blocks to it. Then the bottom dropped out of the comic book biz, so no one thought it would be profitable to incorporate for years afterward. Marvel sold rights to several of their characters to get movies made, so, for instance, Sony owns more of the movie rights to Spiderman than Spiderman’s own creators. That limited the advantages of incorporation even further. Then they set up separate LLC’s to fund some of their movies, which complicated everything and actually lowered the net worth of the overall enterprise. Then they generated a chain of lame movies that did crappy box office business, and nearly went into bankruptcy.
- “Finally, the executive meddling at Sony made ‘Spiderman 3’ get put on hold, and made Tobey Maguire refuse to come back as Spidey, so Sony stocks took a hit and Marvel Studios Inc. nearly went under. So all those little screw-ups made the entire enterprise — all the individual pieces — readily available. So I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and see the possibilities if I could get the right people to cooperate. Sony wouldn’t play ball with Marvel Comics or Marvel Toys, but Hatamoto’s family owns enough Sony stock that they could apply pressure for me. Marvel Toys wouldn’t play ball with anyone else, but one of their wholly-owned subsidiaries utterly tanked because they depended on Disney merchandising, and Disney’s movies have bombed horribly over the last decade. I knew the right people here and there, so I was able to pull it off. Plus, I put up most of the necessary funding, when nobody else had the available liquidity.”[1]