Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: Don Mclean "American Pie" ::
In the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried and the poets dreamed, but not a word was spoken, the church bells all are broken. I am of course speaking of a great historical event. No, not the day that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Vallens, and the Big Bopper perished in a plane crash. It's the day that the Disney corporation bought Marvel Comics and the rights to 5,000 of its characters. Granted this buy-out just happened this past week so we have yet to see the fallout, and who knows, I could be mentally freaking out over nothing. For all I know Disney could just let Marvel run itself and chug on as it has been. After all, it was the existing editor-in-chief at Marvel who already made iconic characters Wolverine, J. Jonah Jameson and Nick Fury stop smoking their trademark cigars, what more could Disney do they haven't already done to themselves (yes, I'm looking at YOU Brand New Day!)?
Well my main worry here folks is that Disney has one heck of a poor track record when adapting stories. I mean, I know when you interpret a book to a film that some things can just plain not be done or get lost in the translation from one form to the other. However to just out and out change the "facts" and mess around with the "heart" of the whole story? Look at, say, The Little Mermaid. Sorry kids, but she didn't get married to The Prince and live happily ever after. The Prince married another and was very happy and the Little Mermaid died, but was so good and tried to be good and true that she was granted a chance for post-mortem spiritual harmony. Yep. And Hercules was the bastard child of Zeus and a mortal, human woman and his main adversary all his life was NOT Hades as Disney would have you believe, but Hera, Zeus's jealous wife and King Eurystheus. That's right, the whole plot of the Hercules tales is that Zeus cheated on his wife and she took it out on his love child. Also, Hercules killed his wife Megara and their children, which is what led to the famous twelve labours as penance. Somehow I don't think Disney liked all that extramarital sex and the murder of women and children, but if that's the case, why choose to adapt Hercules in the first place? It would be like Disney adapting Silence of the Lambs and cutting out all the gruesome murders and fucked up gender identity stuff. Could you really call that Silence of the Lambs without those key elements?
What sort of continuity and over 40 years of back story be damned policies would they force upon these beloved comic book characters? What horrifying retcon awaits?
Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider and become Spider-Man! He lives with his sweet old Aunt May in Queens, New York. What? No. He never had an Uncle Ben! What are you talking about? The untimely death of a close loved one would be too traumatic for young children to read! Aunt May never married. There never was an Uncle Ben. Shut up. Never happened. Says Disney.
Mutants are great! They preach peace, love and understanding in the X-men! And everybody loves and supports the X-men and mutants in the Marvel Universe! Huh? Prejudice, hate and intolerance against those that are different? That doesn't happen! That never happened to anyone in the X-men! Young readers could never go through a story about people who want to kill all mutants and know that this is wrong! There's no such thing as genocide in the Marvel U and there never has been! It was ALWAYS this way!
The other side of the superhero spectrum lies The Punisher. He uses guns when other have super powers to take down criminals. Guns loaded with beanbag rounds and rubber bullets. What? The Punisher has always wielded hand guns and they've always been loaded with blunt ammunition! ALWAYS. No one wants to see a serial rapist or human trafficker outright murdered! They want to see those people brought to the police (where there is never any corruption, by the way) and to justice, alive! The Punisher killing people?! I don't know what you're talking about!
Okay, I think I just threw up a little... from my soul. Of course, this is all wanton speculation on my part (except for what Disney did to The Little Mermaid, Hercules and other old stories... that's all terrifyingly true) and of course I'm praying (do agnostic/atheists pray? Hm.) that nothing like this will happen but... you never can tell with those wily Disney bastards. So for the next few months or maybe year, I'm going to be in a perpetual cynical holding pattern waiting for the other metaphorical shoe to drop. When it does, I claim the right to say "I told you so."
William the Bloody (from the depths of Disney despair)
