I ran sound for a comedy troupe called “The Garrens” back in the mid-90’s, and one of their largest performances was to be held at a Brigham Young University freshman orientation event. There were about 2,000 kids (even then they looked like kids to me) in attendance.

There was a dance before the show, and the huge floor area was packed. The DJ’s stage was in the middle of it all, and I was up there with him setting up the gear for The Garrens while he dropped jams, or mixes, or beats, or whatever you kids call that stuff. The heads and shoulders of 2,000 freshmen were a tumultous, rhythmic sea that came up to my knees.

Then the DJ dropped in “Macarena,” and there was order in the chaos. Like iron filings in Hell’s own magnetic field, 2,000 freshmen aligned themselves and oscillated in unison.

It was amazing, and just a little frightening. This was the sort of power supervillians crave, and it was being used as a party game.

Forget the humor inherent in Wolverine showing up in Kingdom Hearts, or a Howard the Darkwing Duck consolidation (let alone Mickey doing cameos in Deadpool,) I want to address the absolute perfection of this merger:

Both companies have iconic characters as their stock-in-trade. And the characters are so iconic they stop being characters. In fact, they stop being interesting. Mickey Mouse and Spider-Man are both franchises, like Tony the Tiger or the Pillsbury Dough-boy. When was the last time any of them got lasting character development? And by lasting I mean “didn’t get stripped away with the last reset.”

Answer: DECADES.

So… Marvel and Disney have always shared a certain measure of business philosophy in this regard. Now they can share business practices, HR departments, and script doctors, too. What will change? Marvel will get more efficient, Disney will get bigger, and super-hero comics will remain utterly staid and boring.

It really is the perfect merger. Unless you were hoping that comics would get more interesting.

I am always saddened when I stay in a convention hotel beyond the end of the con. The cool, nerdy, familiar things are gone and the place is just a hotel again. Here in downtown Indy the GenCon layer has been stripped away from countless locations and it’s just another city center. My tribe has left. The magic is gone.

Maybe this is a good thing, because it leaves me all the more anxious to be home again. My plane leaves at 11am. Not soon enough.

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