5 Things We Don't Miss About '90s Comics (And 5 We Do)
6. Don't Miss - Marvel's financial issues
Marvel is the proverbial king of the comics castle right now. Granted, comic books themselves aren't selling anywhere near the way they did once upon a time, but the run of financial juggernauts that comprise the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made the company extremely valuable.
Therefore, it's nearly unthinkable to imagine a time in which Marvel very nearly went the way of the dodo back in the mid '90s. In 1996, the entire comics industry was in a slump, and Marvel was forced to make some very hard decisions. Among them included filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. This action resulted in them eventually merging with Issac Perlmutter's company Toy Biz, a company that specialized in making action figures based off of Marvel's comic properties.
From there, Avi Arad, Perlmutter's business partner, was tasked with finding ways to license out the most lucrative potential franchises in order to keep the company afloat. That meant selling off movie rights to characters like Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Hulk, and the X-Men to various movie production studios.
While the decision limited Marvel's profit off those early Hollywood films, it bought them time to get back on their feet before gambling and winning big on 2008's Iron Man.
And if you need to be told how Marvel has done since then, congratulations on waking up from that coma.