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Disney/ Marvel and non-American superhero work

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paw broon:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/comics/news/a318802/disney-issues-marvel-content-restriction.html
This article is causing a bit of controvesy on comics UK forum and I might be about to put in my tuppence worth.:-
http://www.comicsuk.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4172

paw broon:
And here's somrthing by Tony Ingram on this very subject:-
http://www.brokenfrontier.com/blog/p/detail/british-marvel-is-not-american-enough-for-disney

John C:
Three reasons come immediately to mind:

1.  Consistency and homogeneity:  They're a big company and risk isn't a big part of the corporate vocabulary.

2.  Structure:  Dropping Panini means fewer editors and no need to account for licensing revenue.

3.  Copyrights:  British law has funny things to say about Works for Hire, like that they might not really exist and author rights supersede a bunch of other stuff.  Captain Britain and his ilk may very well be an enormous lawsuit waiting to happen with nobody owning anything outright, making reprints or adaptations terrifying.

From a fan perspective, there may also be a continuity spin, in that everything goes through the same offices and a story doesn't "break" on one side of the pond and not the other.

If they're really smart, they'll hire the better UK creators outright and mainstream them.  The only real damage done is to Panini and the UK's national pride, if they do, and they're pretty lazy if they don't.

Tony Ingram:
I don't think that national pride comes into it. The harm is being done to an already dwindling British comics industry which now has one less outlet for creators who are already short of work, and to the younger kids who bought and read those titles and for whom they acted as a gateway into the world of comics, whether it was the British reprint stuff, the comparatively small amount of British originated stuff like 2000AD or the US imports. A lot of those kids would have moved on from Panini's 'Marvel Heroes' to actual Marvel comics. Now, they won't-because whereas Panini's stuff was available on every high street, the US imports are tucked away in specialist shops these days and a lot of those kids will never even realize they exist. I fail to see how that benefits Marvel or Disney in any way. Unless they just don't care about any market outside the US, which seems to me to be no way to run a business in the 21st Century.

philcom55:

As Paw has linked the two sites on this thread I thought I might as well share a couple of my own contributions to the discussion:


--- Quote ---Having grown up on a diet of American and British comics I'd say there was a very definite contrast between the types of heroes that developed within the two traditions. To me America was a kind of 'Never-Never-Land' filled with skyscrapers, spaceships and cowboys, where larger-than-life characters such as Superman and Batman seemed completely at home. By contrast British heroes were always much more grounded in everyday life so that with a radio-controlled plane it was entirely possible to imagine myself as General Jumbo, or fighting bullies with my 'Q-Bike' and water pistol. Even grown-up characters such as the Steel Claw, Robin Hood and Tim Kelly were easy to copy with a painted glove, a bow and arrow or one of my Mum's cheap broaches. I loved both types of hero equally, but it soon became clear to me that there was something a bit inadequate about most British attempts to copy the American style, whereas few Americans had even encountered British comics at that point.

However this simultaneous exposure to two heroic traditions meant that during the 1960s a whole new generation were able to grow up in the UK equally at home with both styles. Thus, when they came of age, writers such as Alan Moore, Pat Mills, Mark Millar, Neil Gaiman, etc., were uniquely  qualified to apply a new, more realistic approach to US superheroes that had begun to seem increasingly dated - hence the famous 'British Invasion' which laid some vital groundwork for the genre's current success on the big screen (which is what attracted Disney to it in the first place!).
--- End quote ---

And:


--- Quote ---It's worth remembering that the scarcity of American comics in postwar Britain resulted not, as many people assume, from the contemporary paranoia about US 'horror comics', but rather from a deliberate import ban with which the Government hoped to protect a home-grown publishing industry that had been crippled by wartime paper shortages. In effect it was about British jobs, and it's hard to imagine that companies such as TV Boardman, Westworld, Miller, WDL, Thorpe & Porter, Alan Class, etc. would have ever got off the ground without this kind of support - even if they did reprint a lot of American material at the same time as giving employment to the likes of Denis Gifford, Ron Embleton, Don Lawrence and Mick Anglo.

Given the current state of the world economy one can't help but wonder whether Disney is simply responding to the same sort of political pressures in favouring American workers wherever possible.  :-\
--- End quote ---

 - In addition I'd have to say that I wouldn't be too keen on seeing American writers taking on traditional British characters such as Wilson, Billy the Cat or Roy Race - simply because they wouldn't have any understanding of the cultural background these grew out of. The end-result would probably be all-too much like Jonathan Frakes' unfortunate reworking of Thunderbirds! (Admittedly Jerry Siegel had some success with the Spider and Gadget Man & Gimmick Kid during the 1960s, but he was chosen to script these features precisely because they were intended to have an American feel in order to cash in on the worldwide success of Adam West's TV Batman)

Of course this doesn't really apply to American artists as people such as Alex Toth and John Severin proved long ago that they could draw British comics as well as anyone (and personally I'd love to see Sergio Aragones having a go at the Bash Street Kids...!).

 - Phil Rushton

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