It's a bizarre sort of wishful thinking, isn't it? Considering Disney has made a couple billion dollars off concepts developed in relatively recent comics like Captain Marvel and Guardians of the Galaxy, shutting down publishing would be counter-intuitive to say the least. It's impossible to assess Marvel Comics's profitability now that it's a whisker of the Mouse, but it was a $100 million business before the takeover, and likely will continue to be as long as there's a direct sales market to leverage.

If anything, Feige's promotion is a signal of strength. Why would Disney lash their arguably single most valuable employee to the mast of a ship they were about to scuttle?

I think of Harvey Comics and SPAWN.  Harvey shut down and the CASPER and RICHIE RICH movie franchises disappeared.  They're talking about doing a new SPAWN movie--which I think would be totally out of the question if McFarlane shut the comic down twenty years ago.

I think Feige is smart enough to prop up the comics arm, maybe clean out all the crazy stuff (endless "events," new #1's every time you turn around, rampant continuity confusion, etc.).  A strong comics arm could only be good for future billion dollar movies.

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Netflix acquired Millarworld, which was probably a good move considering the relative successes of KICK-ASS, WANTED, and KINGSMAN. Meanwhile, Paramount has a deal with a media group that acquired the Atlas/Seaboard library... which makes less sense. 

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And yet a lot of Marvel movies, cartoons, and merchandise utilize material from the last 5-10 years. 

A) What is the status of Marvel Comics right now, and what will be the status now that Kevin Feige has been put at the top?

B) In a couple years... what will be the status of the MCU movies?

All comics - including Marvel - seem to be dropping in sales precipitously. Let's consider sales figures of ten, five, and two years ago. How are those comparisons? Good enough to keep a failing industry afloat?

ITEM: Even though I have no interest in Marvel Comics these days, I have NO desire to see them go away. But as I have found out in lo, these many Cleveland Browns games - what I want or don't want is pretty insignificant.

As for the movies - yup, each one is a money factory. But how close to the point of saturation is that market? Four MCU movies a year might be the one to break the dam and drain the profits. Yet, without the MCU comics... where will the characters be? Let's assume three MCU films a year... will that be enough to keep the Hulk or Hawkeye in people's minds? Disney animated films seem to have gone away - I can't remember the last new one.

I guess the question is, can the Marvel movies keep Marvel in business without comics? Because it sure looks to me that it's the direction that Marvel is going.

Nobody here is a futurologist but I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that the company that's making crazy amounts of money incrementally for the past 11 years will continue to do so and that putting the very same executive responsible for this in charge of the comics is probably a good idea.

The mental loops you have to make to imagine failing scenarios are quite commendable, though. Committed.

It sure doesn't look like that's the direction they're going when the company decides to put its most valuable asset in charge of the comics. It looks like almost the complete opposite of that, actually. But we're repeating ourselves now.

RC: "The mental loops you have to make to imagine failing scenarios are quite commendable, though. Committed."

Are they REALLY that much a stretch of the imagination? I see it, I think others have seen it. I'm not making a prediction; I'm going from what data I'VE seen.

As for committed... well, many people think I'm committed. Or should be.

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Yes. Your point? If the older stuff were sufficient to provide material for other material and licensing, they wouldn't rely on the newer stuff. Yet they keep going there.