Wait, New York is a real city?

Bully the Little Stuffed Bull lives in New York City, and his recent post about Doctor Strange mentions that real New Yorkers never call for a cab to the airport: they either hail one in the street, or call a "car service".

That got me thinking about the Fictionopolis, and the conceit shared by publishers and many fans that Marvel Comics are more "realistic" for eschewing such constructs.

Perhaps Marvel New York had some verisimilitude back when Stan and Jack and most of the rest of the Marvel creators actually lived in NYC, or were at least from there, tapping into its rhythms, into the lyric cant and jargon of its inhabitants. Once the House of Ideas started casting its net wider, however, employing writers and artists from across the country and the world, it became as much a fiction as Metropolis or Gotham.

Here's a secret: even in the '60s, it never did feel any more authentic to a kid growing up in Southern California. East Coast cities in general, and New York specifically, are entirely different from their West Coast counterparts. The New York of comics and movies and television might as well have been Metropolis.

Or Bespin.

Or Minas Tirith.

Of course, on the other claw, I never thought twice about the palm trees and brush-covered hills surrounding the low-lying sprawl of Adam West's "Gotham". After all, that was what the Real World looked like, right? Native Californians never notice California Doubling until we travel outside the bounds of the Bear Flag Republic: the world on TV looks like the world around us. It never occurs to us that Angela Lansbury's Maine has a whole lot of chaparral scrub along its Mendocino cliffs.

I can understand how Marvel must feel to Easterners and New Yorkers, though -- or how it must have felt at one time. One of my favorite comics as a hatchling in the '70s was Marvel's Werewolf by Night. I enjoyed all of the horror-themed heroes of that era, but Jack Russell's adventures had a special appeal, because it wasn't set in that mythical, far-off land of New York. Jack hailed from Los Angeles, and the wide, open streets, the palm trees, and LAX's iconic Theme Building often graced its pages. The sun-drenched daylight scenes contrasted not only with the moody, broody moonlit nights in which Jack's alter-ego played, but with that strange and claustrophobic city crammed full of capes and costumes, mansions and Baxter Buildings, in which Bakshi's animated Spider-Man could swing and swing for hours without ever running out of Thoroughly Useful Vertical.

As an adult living in San Jose, New York City is still an alien world to me. A couple of years ago, I was watching CSI: New York, and found my attention caught by one of those sweeping camera pans across the Manhattan cityscape. For the first time, I really looked. at what I was seeing, and realized that I simply had no touchstone for it. San Francisco is a tiny peninsula with a distinctive skyline, but most of the tallest buildings are along one of two streets. Oakland and San Diego each have a tight, localized cluster of tallish buildings. Los Angeles has a larger one, rising up out of nowhere in the middle of the eternal suburban plain, but they were largely erected after my move North.

And San Jose? San Jose is cute. It has a burst of the Tall, right there where the freeways meet, no more than half a dozen buildings that are only considered "skyscrapers" by the truncated standards of a seismically active region. It looks like Town, as in "goin' to Town", the local civic center of a far-flung rural community.

Which is exactly what it was, right up to the middle of the last century.

Those sweeping camera pans, though ... New York goes on for blocks and blocks, for miles and miles, with a density that is flat-out incomprehensible for someone from the Sprawlwest. The buildings I consider "tall" are medium-sized in that urbscape. I finally caught a glimpse of the urban archetype that inspired Asimov's Caves of Steel, of planet-wide cities, of the Human Hive.

I was ... intimidated.

It's an appropriate setting for the larger-than-life conflicts of the Pantheon of the Twentieth Century, most assuredly.

But it's still not real to me.

Not yet.

That headline again:

Disney. Buys. Marvel.

Tempting as it is to just follow that with "'Nuff said", I have to wonder....

• How will this affect Marvel Sudios and their ambitious "Avengers Cycle" movie plans?
  
• Will Disney cancel the Gemstone Comics license, and start releasing Disney titles using Marvel's production and banner?
  
• Conversely, will that matter if both companies continue to ignore newstand and grocery store distribution in favor of the hard-core fandom's boutique market?
  
• What does this mean for Kingdom Hearts and Capcom vs. Marvel?
  
• Will there be an even more vigorous crackdown on Marvel fanfic and games with "Character Creators" that let you "duplicate Marvel intellectual property", like City of Heroes and Champions Online?
  
• Will Howard return to his original character design? Will he turn out to hail from Duckburg? Will he lose his pants?

If this doesn't fall through, it'll bring a symmetry to the comics world: both major comics companies will be owned by massive global media juggernauts.

Strange days indeed.

Initial reaction to this news shows a lot of people are worried about Marvel getting "Disneyfied". Funny, that hadn't really occurred to me.

I'd hate to see the intelligent, thoughtful storytelling of recent years compromised by a company who didn't respect the years of development and history of these characters. I'm not sure the store where I work could survive without merchandise aimed at the mature, sophisticated sensibilities of the modern comics audience.

I know, I know, when people hear "Disney", they still automatically think of the "wholesome" Mouse Factory of fifty years ago, as if the company had no idea how to tell exciting, entertaining action-adventure tales. But, seriously, folks: the modern Disney megalopoly has its tentacles in a lot more than happy, sappy, saccharine kiddie stuff. When I hear "Disney", I don't hear "Cartoon Company" anymore. I hear "Entertainment Powerhouse".

When I mentioned the effect this might have on the Marvel Studios movie series, it was almost entirely wondering if that side of the business would see a cash infusion that would re-accelerate the filming schedule (which has been pushed back a couple of times from the original plan of two big-name superhero pictures a year for three or four years). Word is that Marvel owes its recent barrage of movies to "complex financing", and that this may have something to do with the acquisition deal. Ike Perlmutter's $1.4 billion net from the deal lends some credence to that hypothesis.

A lot of folks, on the other claw, are worried about them somehow compromising the integrity of the properties.

Personally? I think that the megacorp that gave us movies like No Country for Old Men and Miracle at St. Anna won't bat an eye at Tony Stark's antics.

It's a positive-sum game: the architect of Marvel's revival gets filthy rich, and the company gets a measure of financial stability that it honestly hasn't had since New World Cinema (hardly a financial powerhouse) sold it off in the '80s.

It's good for Disney, it's good for Marvel, it's good for Perlmutter. Yay!

On the other claw, is it good for us? One of the worst offenders in the copyright wars has suddenly gained control of yet another chunk of modern folklore, much of which would already be in the public domain if the Mouse hadn't repeated pushed Congress to enact ever-more-damaging Copyright Extensions.

But that's a whole 'nother topic.

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Edited and cross-posted from Your Obedient Serpent's LiveJournal. I've incorporated material from some threads that originated there; thanks to my loyal readers for contributing!

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