Comic Wars: Marvel's Battle For Survival [Paperback]

Dan Raviv (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 2004

From the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Every Spy a Prince comes the colorful true story of the business superheroes who rescued Marvel Comics from bankruptcy. In the mid-1990s, Marvel Entertainment became embroiled in a crisis as strange as one of its comic book stories. Locked in a battle for control of the half-century-old company were two Goliath-style corporate raiders and two virtually unknown Davids: Israeli immigrants with a passion for the toy business. This was a test of wills that led to a unique Wall Street showdown. Combining hard-hitting journalism with entertaining storytelling, Comic Wars takes readers behind the scenes of America's most bitter bankruptcy and captures the high-stakes, often hilarious twists and turns of this financial fiasco. The unforgettable cast of characters ranges from tycoon Ron Perelman (who bankrupted Marvel through overexpansion) and Carl Icahn (who then launched a hostile takeover of Marvel) to Ike Perlmutter and Avi Arad, scrappy owners of Toy Biz and the duo who ingeniously outmaneuvered the moguls. Culminating with Ike and Avi's triumphant launch of the blockbuster movie X-Men, and published just in time for the Spider-Man live-action movie, this is a marvelous must-read for the business world and all admirers of true grit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Raviv, coauthor of several books on Israeli politics (Every Spy a Prince; Behind the Uprising), turns to high-stakes finance for his first solo effort, a feisty account of Marvel Comics' meltdown in the 1990s (and slow resurrection, thanks to the success of the movie X-Men and the buzz over this summer's Spider-Man flick). When Ron Perelman bought Marvel in 1989, he described the company, home to heroes like Captain America and the Fantastic Four, as "a mini-Disney in terms of intellectual property." His junk bonds and grandiose expansion plans swiftly raised Marvel's market value to over $3 billion, but also brought its debt past $600 million, at which point corporate raider Carl Icahn smelled blood. He managed to wrest control of the company from Perelman, but the takeover process dragged Marvel through bankruptcy court for years. Raviv's depiction of this clash of the titans is rooted in the perspective of Marvel investors Ike Perlmutter and Avi Arad, whose other company, Toy Biz, made action figures based on Marvel heroes. Their underdog efforts to rescue the company from the Perelman-Icahn conflict, then get movies made to sell comics and action figures, are viewed with sympathy perhaps, in fact, too much sympathy; outlandish claims like Spider-Man is "maybe the best known intellectual property character, on a worldwide basis" routinely pass unchallenged. Fans of the cutthroat finance genre will find much to enjoy in the boardroom confrontations, but those unfamiliar with Marvel may wonder what all the fuss is about, as Raviv's overview of the comics and the characters tends to treat their popularity as a given without exploring the nuances of their success.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Raviv, coauthor of Every Spy a Prince and a national correspondent for CBS news, recounts a Wall Street story of greed, pure and simple, in this "fly on the wall" view of the takeover and eventual bankruptcy of Marvel Entertainment. This book has all the makings of a great screenplay "Spiderman Meets Wall Street in Bankruptcy Court." The major story is of the battle for control waged by Ronald Perelman, who bought Marvel in the late 1980s, and Carl Icahn, who began buying Marvel bonds in an effort to take over the company. Ironically, neither Perelman nor Ichan was ever interested in comics (both bragged that they never looked at the product); rather, they were obsessed with profit and personal vendetta. A parallel story deals with Ike Perlmutter and Avi Arad, two entrepreneurs with Toy Biz who had a significant interest in Marvel, its characters, and further sustaining the enterprise over the long term. While the era and the situations differ, Comic Wars is in the vein of The White Sharks of Wall Street. This chilling tale of corporate infighting is recommended for business collections, although the subject matter may give the book wider appeal. Steven Silkunas, North Wales, PA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Marvel Comics (August 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785116060
• ISBN-13: 978-0785116066
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,235,430 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Make Mine Marvel!, August 12, 2002

By 

D. Smithee "Universal Daddy" (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel Comics Empire--And Both Lost (Hardcover)

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.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Business for Comic Book Fans, October 26, 2002

By 

Daniel H. Bigelow (Cathlamet, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel Comics Empire--And Both Lost (Hardcover)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Adventures of Greedman and Bankruptcyboy, June 12, 2002

By 

Karl Miller "kemspeaks" (Phoenixville, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel Comics Empire--And Both Lost (Hardcover)

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.