By
Rick Aristotle Munarriz
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September 5, 2009
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Just remember, Marvel (NYSE: MVL ) fans, Spider-Man was coming to Broadway long before Disney (NYSE: DIS ) took over.
I'm getting this out of the way now, because I know that Marvel purists will be bellyaching over this week's deal. Years from now, they'll point to Disney's $4 billion purchase of Marvel as the comic book giant's "jump the mouse" moment.
It wasn't. It won't be.
Disney has its reasons for buying the licensing pinata that Marvel has become. Disney's a master milking machine on that front. Disney also won't mind being relevant to a young male audience again.
It's a deal that makes sense for both companies, because Marvel is no longer expected to Iron Man it out of the park every time it takes a self-funded theatrical swing.
Disney is unlikely to soften Marvel. Well, at least it won't tenderize the well of superheroes any more diligently than Marvel already has.
So, remember that it was Marvel -- on its own -- with the licensed theme park eventually going up in Dubai, the animated shows, and the Broadway show. I'll have the playbill to prove it.
Briefly in the news
And now let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.
- The Skype saga is over for eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY ) , sort of. The online auctioneer is selling a 65% stake in Skype that values the popular voice-chat platform at $2.75 billion. It's less than what eBay paid for Skype originally, but it's a subsidiary that never fit in with the rest of the company's e-commerce-enabling empire.
- Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG ) Gmail was down for all of 100 minutes, but that was enough to send tech worrywarts scrambling. Keep in mind that Gmail is primarily a free online service. Let this be a warning to larger freemail providers Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO ) and Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT ) : Even freeloaders have great expectations in cyberspace.
Until next week, I remain,
Rick Munarriz
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