THE DEATH OF MARVEL COMICS

By NICHOLAS GAZIN

I love all comics but Marvel’s best work is long behind them and I couldn’t give less than a shit about the future of the company. I am also not stupid enough to get upset about the welfare of characters because I know they aren’t real. "Did you hear that they killed off Mysterio and Iron Man’s gay and Venom had knee surgery and Thor turned out to be manic depressive and the Scarlet Witch was just two children sitting on each other’s shoulders?" I don’t care. Good comics will probably keep coming out of Marvel at the same rate they have been for the last two decades. One or two good things every couple of years.

(Dear Marvel, I’d know what you were up to if you sent me shit to review or just one good press release a week instead of the 50 you send now.)

What I am concerned about is Disney. Why is Disney taking on Marvel of all properties? Yes there’s money in superhero movies but it dilutes Disney. I don’t want to go to Disneyland and see Spiderman running around. Spiderman’s great but he belongs with Bugs in the Universal Studios/Six Flags theme-park ghetto. Let him frolick with the rest of fried-dough-eating, Harley-Davidson-shirt-wearing assholes who smoke Marb Lights in front of their children and the moms with the halter tops. That’s where you get to hang out, Marvel characters. You stay the fuck away from Disneyland.

Every time I go to Disneyland I weep intense tears at how beautiful the whole thing is. The smells, the intricate design, the example Walt Disney set, the idea of reaching for perfection, seeing children with their parents and stupid teenagers on dates. Why did Disney have to die when he did? Maybe if he’d lived he would have made Epcot into a real city of the future instead of a really dated theme park. Maybe he would have kept these goddamn depressing superheroes out of the only place that makes me believe that people might have souls.