Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel Comics Empire--And Both Lost Hardcover – April 30, 2002

Dan Raviv's retelling of the Marvel Entertainment bankruptcy is one of the most riveting business books to come through the book publishers in a long time. I've been a fan of many of Marvel's characters and collected books throughout the seventies, eighties and early ninties. I was aware they had enjoyed a golden period in the mid nineties when the market value of Marvel grew to $3 billion. I knew they got into trouble right afterward. I never knew how close to the brink they came to non-existence.Comic Wars tells the story of how a couple of billionaires saw value in a popular publisher, bought and fought over it, and nearly destroyed it. Like one of the books it published, Marvel was saved from extinction at the last moment by the wheeling and dealing head of a toy company. Many business books will tell you what happened, but never in the detail of this one. Comic Wars lets you get to know all the parties involved in intimate detail. These are a bunch of angry New Yorkers and the fight is very personal. Ron Perelman bought Marvel in 1989 for a mere $10 million of his own money and managed to grow the company through a series of acquisitions. Fleer, Skybox and Panini joined the company as subsidiaries, engorged the balance sheet, allowed Perelman to sell junk bonds against this inflated stock price, and the billionaire lined his pockets with the proceeds. The huge debtload of nearly $1 billion nearly sank the company when Carl Ichan joined the fray, at first looking like a white knight, but soon revealed his true colors in attempting to buy the company on the cheap by buying the distressed bank debt, bankrupting the company and wiping out the debt, converting his bonds to a controlling interest and selling the post-bankruptcy Marvel for a tidy profit.In many ways this has numerous similarities to Barbarians at the Gate and the fight for RJR Nabisco between management and LBO legends KKR. The difference between that fight and this one is the interest in the business involved. RJR was a corporate behemoth and neither side was willing to wring so much money out of it that it was no longer viable as a going concern. Perelman and Ichan both wanted to generate as big a pile of cash as possilbe without any concern for the business itself. Neither had a concern about the people who worked for Marvel. Had Perelman remained in charge of Marvel, we would never have seen Spider Man the movie with a $700 million to date box office gross. Perelman was only interested in generating hype about a movie and cashing in on that. Generating interest and then generating intangible value, cashing in and not delivering seems unethical to extreme. Destroying a company for its present value seems unethical in the extreme.Even Ike Perlmutter, Marvel's eventual savior had ulterior and selfish motives. His royalty free in perpetuity license to make toys based on Marvel characters was at stake. He saved (and absorbed) Marvel to preserve this. In the end, things turned out alright and Marvel is slowly climbing its way back to health, but Dan Raviv's account tells of unbridaled greed. The book is a page turner and worth every penny.

This was my second book about Marvel after my introduction to the company in Tales to Astonish by Ronin Ro. That was an indepth look at the creative side of the company with a focus on Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. This book looks at the company from a completely different angle, one which Kirby and Lee would despise - The business side. I enjoyed the book very much and although in business myself failed to realize the enormous power and ruthlessness that individuals such as Perelman and Icahn have and use. They really did seem to be like the villains in the comic books but their power source was money and lawyers rather than muscle or the ability to fly. It's interesting to note that Marvel is doing very well now and still being led by Ike Perlmutter who is the protagonist in Raviv's version of this time in the Marvel Universe.

I love comics and I love business. This book really focuses on the business side of Marvel comics and it's bankruptcy years. The book also opens peoples eyes to the greed that runs rampant with "investors". I say "investors" as it actually shows capitalistic greed at its worst. In the 80's 90's and still today, investment groups swoop in an prey on weak companies pilfering as much as they can. Interesting read.

One of the best books I ever read on distressed investing ... a must read for any distressed professional ... must read this and the Vulture Investors by Hillary Rosenberg and Distressed Debt Analysis by Stephen Moyer

The struggles of Marvel Comics, both historically and financially are given the "epic" treatment in this throughly enjoyable book. Dan Raviv has taken a corporate story of greed and powerlust and created a hot pageturner, where supervillians come straight from the pages of the Wall Street Journal. The battle for control of Marvel, fought in backrooms and ultimately decided in Bankrputcy Court has a cast of characters that are riveting (Carl Ichan, Ron Perelman), primarily in the fact that they feel compelled to destroy an American cultural phenomenon for the sake of personal gain.As you read this book, you are amazed by the arrogance and ignorance of most of the major players. Marvel remains loaded with franchise players, and the potential for (financial) exploitation of its cast of comic superheroes (X-men, Spiderman...) seems obvious to everyone but the money men and the lawyers (the true evildoers in this story).This is a great summertime read for both MBAs and comic fans.The only shortcoming that I can point out is a lack of a rich development of the history of comic books - it would have placed this courtroom battle with the significance it deserves. Allthough the book itself is fiction, I strongly reccomend Michael Chabon's "Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" as a companion read to this book, for Chabon delivers incredible insight into the comic book industry's origins and struggles.

Two books in one. First, it gives a good insight on the market Marvel was in before going into movies.Second, it describes well how one of the most richest persons in the world, Ronald Perelman, enriches himself through extracting as much as possible out of a company and its investors. Apart from bringing Marvel towards bankruptcy, he uses too high priced stock as collateral for "securing" a debt issue. Self enrichment not through growing a company but through extracting as much as possible the money of investors.