[.ca] Comic Wars: Marvels Battle For Survival (ISBN 0785116060)

Jumps around:
This book would have been better with a better editor. It is a complex amount of happenings, and I found myself forgetting who was who.

There were few winners in this battle:
This book almost reads like a 400 page script for a daytime soap like As The World Turns or One Life to Live in that it's full of unexpected twists and turns in the story. That a lot of rich people in fancy suits battled over the future of a company and they kind of end up destroying themselves in the process and that ultimately the company was saved and is run by people who are more interested in doing good business for all, but a lot of good people lost their jobs in the battle itself. What this book does not cover is the stories of the people who had been with Marvel for over thrity years and had lost their jobs during the bankruptcy process. They were writers,artists, and editors who were told one day to clean out their desks and that was it. They have never worked again at Marvel or at any other company, and their loss was also a loss for comics in general. They were among the losses that Marvel went through as Avi Arad and his partners both at Toy Biz and in Hollywood saved the company. It is not clear just what role if any Stan Lee played in trying to save Marvel, many of the people who lost their jobs had known him for a long time. Wither he did anything to try and save their jobs is not clear. During the whole time that Marvel was going through this, Stan had been living in Hollywood and had been out of touch with the comics publishing end of the company for quite a few years. I think he was there at the Hollywood end of things trying to get people to invest in Marvel and do whatever they could to save the company, but that was about it. I don't think he was able in any way to save people's jobs from being fired. Some have accused him of not doing anything to help people he had known for thrity years, but there is no evidence of this at all. Today, Marvel is still around and they are being very successful at the movie studios, but their comic book publishing has never recovered, and it's really only a matter of time before Marvel will cease that all together and just stay with other forms of media to get their characters out to the general public.

Money well spent:
Here's the great thing about this book: it's a fast read. The bad thing: it's not easy to follow. I found it tough to keep up with the cast of characters, and felt that the author is a bit predisposed to pointing out everyone's Jewish faith, religious observances etc. As a result, many of the characters blended together. A lot of focus on the heritage of the characters here, almost to the point of distraction. Bottom line though, as a shareholder, this book made a hell of a lot more sense to me than did the quarterly and annual reports. In all, a good book about a sad story that is well priced. The author has done his homework. I would have loved about another 100 pages of detail here and there though to help with the transitions. And again, a little less focus on the faith of everyone involved.

Hardball Business Tale Colorfully Told:
At first glance, Dan Raviv's book might seem irrelevant to readers of intrigue novels. Despite the flashy title and cool cover, reading about two rich businessmen fighting for the control of a publishing company might not seem all that exciting. It is exciting. Like in any theatrical drama, Raviv begins his book with an annotated list of players. Most names will be unknowns outside of the industry. Stan Lee is here, as you might expect, but so is Isaac Perlmutter and numerous lesser executives. Their parts in this drama are crucial and understanding who they are from the beginning will help keep the plot clear. This is, in some ways, a history of Marvel Comics, beginning in 1939 with Captain America, the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch. Raviv walks us through Marvel's troubled times under various owners. We get the play-by-play debacle hindering the X-Men and Spiderman from the silver screen, and the intense personalities behind it all. The cynicism of loyal comic readers is told, as Marvel aimed for the financial speculator and played games with collectors (remember the many covers and bags of certain Spiderman issues?). When the quality of the Marvel Universe stunk up the magazine racks in the 1990s, it seemed if Spiderman would weave his last web. Letters, trial notes and other details fill in this adventurous tale of the struggle for power, money and egos. We find out how Spiderman was finally able to make the bigtime. I fully recommend "Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled over the Marvel Comics Empire--And Both Lost" by Dan Raviv. Anthony Trendl

Business for Comic Book Fans:
Comic Wars is a sprightly, fast-paced book about the bankruptcy and hostile takeover troubles Marvel Comics faced in the mid-1990's, when billionaire financiers Ronald O. Perelman and Carl Icahn engaged in a tug-of-war for control of the company that almost killed it and eventually left it in the control of neither man. Instead, toy company owner Ike Perlmutter scooped them both. Comic Wars's main strengths are propulsive narration that makes it a fast and compelling read, and the simplicity with which author Dan Raviv explains the hideous complexities of the bankruptcy process. This is a book about business that a business dilettante can read and understand. Its descriptions of the way junk bond financing and overextension got Marvel into trouble and of the various types of deals the bankruptcy parties thought of to get it out of trouble contain useful general business knowledge. Its combination of simple narration and simple explanations made it an educational experience that I also enjoyed. On the other side of the ledger, Raviv borrows from comic books a habit of making his characters larger than life and designating them good guys or bad guys. The good guy in Raviv's version of this true story is Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter, and we know we are supposed to identify best with him because, unlike the other major parties, Raviv always refers to Ike by his first name. Meanwhile, Perelman and Icahn are referred to by their last names, except in chapter titles, which refer to them by the names of Marvel Comics villains Dr. Doom and The Vulture. The good guy versus bad guy idea makes this a simple book to read, and that makes the business education go down more easily, but it undoubtedly grossly oversimplifies the true situation. Late in the book we see that good old Ike, who's worth half a billion dollars, won't spring twelve hundred bucks for an office Christmas party to improve Marvel's wounded morale -- he's no super-hero, and I imagine Perelman and Icahn aren't quite super-villains, either. I still recommend the book. It's fun to read, and that's something it'd be hard to say about anything else that contains as much useful information on high finance and business bankruptcy. Given our present economy, it behooves us all to learn a bit about both.