I’d say it’s a toss-up whether Lucas’ biggest impact was in marketing or in special effects. He was well ahead of everyone else in both areas when Star Wars came out. It turned out to be easier for everyone else to catch up to him in marketing, but I don’t know whether that indicates he was more or less influential there than in SFX.

I think my biggest worry about Misney is that Disney will cut back operating expenses at Marvel publishing (which I don’t think are very large to begin with), which will hurt the industry as a whole, as I noted in my article. The interesting wild card would be if they decide to make a big push to develop new properties through Marvel publishing, which has been difficult for DC and Marvel to do over the last 20 years as creators have realized it’s better for them to make money on work-for-hire projects at the big two on existing characters, and save their own creations for independent publishing where they retain the rights, even if they’re never big money-makers.

My guess is that Disney looked at Pixar’s potential for turning movie scripts into dollars via toys (perhaps George Lucas’ biggest impact on the industry was the spinoff revenue streams from Star Wars) – and online games/properties/webisodes more importantly, as that could be seen as a harbinger of the future. They looked at Marvel and decided that they not only had a large stable of suitable properties, they had already started to monetize them. This would be their best chance to jump-start their portfolio towards that wave.

I’m not particularly worried about the comic books themselves, but it’s entirely possible that Disney will attempt to find top-flight talent to cast new stories for the new media that it will ultimately monetize, which would tend to harm the comics themselves – as Scott McCloud points out, some stories are best told as comics to take advantage of the medium, but retelling stories conceived as moving pictures is not likely to lead to great comics. Of course, not buying Marvel wasn’t going to stop that trend.

J.D.: I’m with you on Dark Knight, believe it or not: Decent film, but the first one was better. Although Heath Ledger’s performance was certainly excellent.

I’d recommend Spider-Man 2, by the way, although I’ve yet to watch SM3. Am I the only one who liked the Fantastic Four movie (OK, I admit that I didn’t see the second one, but I did enjoy the first…)

Seriously, though, I’m guessing you’re right, with the added point (as has been pointed out elsewhere) that a lot of Marvel’s IP is already tied up, with Fox, Sony and others having secured the movie rights for a number of the characters for the foreseeable future.