and what happens now pull both presidents appoint their own ministers and governors will someone resort to force. the government is supposed to be preparing for talks with the taliban following up on a u.s. troop withdrawal agreement last month there right now it's unclear which government that will be. and you're watching to get your news from berlin coming up next a documentary on how marvel comics made after roic come back after being on the brink of bankruptcy i'm exposure and for watch. it go beyond. that. we're all about the stories that matter to. the country that. whatever it takes to get around enough cut into the good enough that. you just made for

mines. from captain america and spiderman. to the x. men and the whole place. no one else. even if you've never read the comics will likely recognize these iconic superheroes and that world famous creates a quite accurate to say that marvel revolutionized the superhero comic with thousands of characters and interweaving storylines the marvel universe is one of the most astonishing tales in multan fiction. doubts it all becomes one rival for the company at the time of the millennium. it was losing sight of what you were trying to sell sell stories it was kind of like a victim of his own success. it's a great story has a points where the hero. is on his knees seemingly beyond salvation mobbles talk is

doubt. came when it declared bankruptcy followed by an all out war between investors that raged for years. a lot of screaming on top of threats to destroy one another everybody was weak just scared to death this is the inside story of how one of the world's most beloved pop culture icons real moche from the ruins of its comic book empire. and force its way back to the top. new york. times of marvel's headquarters and so many of its super errands. from dramatic battles a ground central station. to spectacular rescue something starting on an every. part of the magic of marvel for

a long time fans like sean how is that is cart's is a set in the wheel wells. to build it i mean for me york city had the feeling that they might. catch a glimpse of super battle you know in their underwear the post office or something for almost 80 years marvel has captivated comic fans across the globe she sings best selling comic books costumes. video games. and record breaking books office hits marvel has conquered the entertainment world class bouncer rewinds for 3 decades and model wasn't just bottling comic super villains it was combating bankruptcy stop defections and tied up in a legal battle that threatens destroy the company. while another sure thing.

still. to find out we go back to the beginnings of the marvel universe. 2 the superheroes we next day were born in new york in the late 1930 s. . 2 2 in the midst of the great depression marvel's rival d.c. comics screeched a character that became an instant hate. superman who was the inspiration for a lot of kids in the depression he was a crusader for the masses superman was soon followed by mouth like a crusader. the 2 propelled steel see comics popularity well ahead of mom posts then just a small pulp fiction publishing ninus timely from earlier years marvel was always the kind of 2nd place company superman and batman and d.c. comics were were kind of the industry standard and marvel was. through

a scrappy other player to cash in on the trends time he hired didn't seem to use its own line of superheroes cartoonists jay simon and so jack toby would go on to create some of marvel's must famous characters. and says america and to the 2nd world war. right. time these patriotic super heroes i felt real life anime's in world war 2 you. struck a chord with soldiers and their families back home. i think that it was a way to see victory to have an idea of what that would feel like. imagine such a simple she's with the golden age of comics in the united states and his american soldiers for the comments overseas yes against popularity in korea and japan. this

helps influence the development of local magic bullets. but in the 1950 s. there was a growing movement against violence and gore in comic books. and it allowed. with. everything else is in regulation that severely limited the kind of content publishers could print. the homage to the shortage of vampires from drugs in a comic everything was just completely defanged and no fun so how much else wanted it. by the early 1960 s. marvel was struggling just to stay in business the company's editor in chief stanley was ready to create. but then marvel's old rival d.c. comics through together its most popular characters into a single super group. their mission to fight injustice i do search all

mankind. the justice league the can a surprise case and inspired stan laden's artist jack kirby to create their own team of superheroes. greatest team a super democracy to the world as ever and all fantastic. the 1st issue broke convention with all superhero archetypes of the day unlike the stoic and sneer flawless superman and batman. movies heroes came not just with superpowers both problems that readers could relate to. it was the beginning of characters having a 3 dimensionality that really set marvel apart. danny finger off edited some of marvel's most famous superheroes for close to 2 decades. marvel comics gave you a depth of characterization. where people could work together but not like each

other or like each other but be angry at each other with the team as far as comic books that was fairly unprecedented. a year later marvel straight even further from comic conventions for the 1st time a teenager became a superhero. such was marvel's impact that's now an exhibit dedicated to its famous character in new york. spider-man is as my favorite character now he's very complex and yet he's very simple he's he's the most like a regular person peter parker was an introverted didn't have a lot of friends also asked to work 2 or 3 extra. and then has a sick relative and yet wants to excel. and he wants a try to have a social life i mean it's really a very modern story side it's about the kids who has more responsibilities than any

kids especially ability of in spite of very great responsibility. spider-man became the most popular comic book character since superman but marvel's biggest innovation was just around the corner. as more superheros imagine they become sick interact and cross over with each other's stories. this collective became known as the marvel universe. the narrative of the marvel universe is just a staggering achievement that i think is really the most complicated narrative that probably exists in history. it wasn't just a new universe that stan lee and his collaborators forward in periodic updates stanley gave readers a glimpse into the you know what it's of the marvel office. featuring brightest. artists. even secretaries so you had 2 levels of connection

and every comic. you have not just the stories themselves but you have updates what was going on in the office and things you had a sense that you know the people behind the stories they were like almost surrogate family members the team at marvel became most popular with fans as the superheroes they created. i think stanley is one of those figures without whom there might not be accountable industry both creatively and a business and promotional level and he reinvented what the superhero was and could be. by the 1970 s. marvel was the number one comic book company in the wilds. releasing 40 different titles every month. and something 50000000 comics

a year in more than 100 countries. it's super harry's even became stars on animated chinese. the company traditionally in 2nd place to his rival d.c. comics is now number one is somehow retained its status as an underdog so you have d.c. comics with superman batman or wonder woman it everybody knows those characters but with marvel we were like the shrugging company we had we had spider-man involved in these guys who had problems and so even though we were the best selling comics we were still the underdog new banks joint vote in the mid 1980 s. . as the underdog the guys were fighting the good fight and it felt like we were all fighting the good fight about as the company became increasingly successful that changed. the owners of marvel became progressively less knowledgeable and less

interested in their comic books. by the 1980 s. the comic industry was booming worldwide with people hungry for heroes once considered cheek and disposable comics have become prized items and speculators were snapping up issues in bulk to resell them to collectors for enormous profits. in the us vintage comics the cost $400.00 in the 1970 s. shows up to $5000.00 u.s. dollars a decade later. by the early ninety's and some 1st issue comics were west of $40000.00 u.s. dollars and up to cash in the number of specialty comic books all surged globally from a few hundreds to over $10000.00. as rare and new comic books were flying off the shelves marvel attracted the interest of millionaire

businessman ron paul mn the book the company for over $80000000.00 u.s. dollars in 1909. how men would scream if they changed the way novel ran its business. probably was kind of a step above cream glamorous owner he was in the corporate raider he was somebody who had no emotional connection to the topics so you know this was marbles the 1st real existence as. kind of a piece in time once again. i can remember ron coming through the office during that 1st week. and he was he was he may not have been smoking the cigar but he was at least chewing the cigar uses this short little man who looked like he owned the world being toward through the offices by a young woman dressed as spider woman in spandex and to me that's who run pro men

will always be this guy who owns the world it can make young women dress up in spandex. new banks joint models he has before the company. when i started it more of all you know i was i was surrounded by the people whose comics i had grown up reading it was really amazing it was fun it was exciting everybody was thrilled to be there when the announcement came that the company was being sold. everybody was nervous. as we saw perlman walking through the office we became more nervous. to drive growth home and fesa town to raise the price of comic books by appealing to collect says they started marketing their comics as products as collector's items as things that were other than you know the inherent value of. something you read we had a practice of doing special covers enhanced covers glow in the dark covers well

covers for our great covers and adding a glow in the dark cover caused us to take that same 32 page comic book that we sold for a $1.15 instead make it to $95.00. in the short term consequences of that were that we would sell 4 times as many copies of economic double the price so $4.00 times the government lives portrayed on the bottom. initially polman strategy was dramatically over the next couple of years model's revenues grew by 50 percent and its profits multiplied 6 phones. in 9091 the company went public in its market value of our lives to 3000000000 of us don as. we all thought that was hilarious because we're just a bunch of guys running around the office shooting each other with plastic guns at night but the mood at marvel changed significantly after the initial public

offering with shareholders now expecting bigger returns the pressure at marvel intensified to. marvel goes public that's one profits have to be up every quarter. marvel started just. increasing production at a crazy rate in 1905 marvel have been publishing 40 titles a month by 993 they'd more than doubled that number. but printing so many comics and specialty covers started to dilute the marvel brand there's all different gimmicks some very nice gimmicks but gimmicks arguments adventure the day they want to get fame. hellman's marketing team also began to dictate the contents of the comics. artists and writers were told to engineer more crossover stories that featured its best selling superheroes to display a comic book stores like this one in new york. we knew that there were people there

were ravenous overeem and punisher and always spider-man collectors and all you got to do is put those characters into or a low selling comic and suddenly you some more copies because people wanted to maintain their complete spider-man collection of the complete wolverine collection . but at some point the guy who collects every appearance of wolverine can no longer afford to collect every appearance of movement at some point you chase the guy away by trying to take too much of this morning. the plots also figured into one another so readers have to buy all related issues if they wanted to make sense of them as production increased the quality and contents of the comics began to suffer. and this started to alienate the company's cool audience. bounce if marvel was losing readers why was it still seeing a record number of sales every month. the problem was

the distribution system. unlike traditional news stands specialty comic book shops comp return unsold copies for a refund. if the issues don't sell retail is a show to the cost. so marvel couldn't tell how many comics the shops were actually sending to customers. and this was about to become a big problem. bookstore manager jeff as discovered shops that oppose a huge oversupply of comic books would speculate as. i have seen in other stores i worked out the basement long boxes of these millions of books there spawn the one box one box to box 3 parts for as because doors and bought so much of this manufactured trite and sold that that's going to everybody's going to want 50 of those and it just wasn't the case and then i mean a lot of stores are hurting when news got to little bank he went to the comic book

stores to find out what was going on. when you had those conversations with comic book store owners about what they were selling or what they were sitting on that's when they started getting very dark conversation was very bleak. and it gave me the sense that something was going on here that we needed to record this new scent field representatives out to survey comic stores across the country their findings was shocking. every time marvel sold its special editions the subsequent issues or a 20 percent decline in sales. readers were getting tired of expensive and gimmicky comics that were mainly marketed to collect isn't speculators. new sense an urgent memo to marvel senior management. and i'm sure a c c 6000000 other people showing that we were literally chasing away our

long term readers are long term customers by doing these enhanced covers and the reaction to that memo was silent. 2 marvel continued to publish enhanced covers and also began seeing clue trading cards to encourage more connect as. a mating even more of their readers. meanwhile comic book shops unable to cope with unsold stock started to close down. so it just seemed absolutely absurd to me you know now i understand what they were doing they were in it for the long haul they wanted to make as much money as they could make right now right here and be on the consequences the i'm the to the people who suffered the results of their decision we got what we needed out of them . we don't need them anymore i didn't want to be

a part of that strip market i didn't want to be a part of what i saw errors be coming down for. a more. insatiable drive for profits at marvel was also beginning to westin with its creative team. by. this time founding editor in chief stan lee had moved to california to pursue hollywood deals for the company. and the new editors left in charge one being allowed to do their jobs. the editor's job was to set direction for the comic and suddenly there was this this marketing division that was setting to rich and the editors were not happy they feel like they should have more say in what the stories are at some point that created a conflict and certainly demoralize the people. working in

editorial and that's the devil it's sort of being friends with you know this the static feeling for the characters you also know you're in a business and that that constant tug of war and you had all these editors slamming their heads up against the wall to make their comics that they were responsible for spike in sales get really sad and and there was more infighting and people were just unhappy they were having fun. and then in 1902 the inevitable happens. in a mass exodus marvel's top talents left to join rivals and to form their own publishing houses. by alienating writers and artists who had developed stories who had popularized the characters marvel ended up setting themselves up for failure. as comic book readers followed their favorite artists to the new labels marvel's market share dropped from 45 to 30 percent. meanwhile

the special and collectible comics but over saturated the markets. if you print tens of thousands of a particular kind of comic immediately it can't be worth as much so is it was kind of like a victim of his own success in 1903 when spain. kilometers and collectors realize that the value of comics have been inflated the comic industry implied it. publishes sales plummeted by 70 percent. and 9 out of 10 comic book stores in america close their doors. the comics division a turn once made up 90 percent of marvel sales was now a 3rd of its business in a desperate attempt to spur growth. pomona to gone on an acquisition spree. from trading card manufacturers to stick a company's and a toy retailer how montrose marvel's debt up to $600000000.00 u.s. dollars all the while moving it farther and farther away from its core comic books

. by 995 the company was in crisis it reported a 48000000 dollar loss the 1st time since permanent bought the company that they haven't turned a profit. its stock value collapsed shares once where $35.00 in 1903 that sunk to just $2.00. each. as a result marvel announced a company wide cuts. 40 percent of its workforce was necco. after almost 2 decades of the company edited down a finger off made the difficult decision to leave. i was heartbroken to leave more of all things had changed there in such a way that it was very unpleasant for me on a day to day basis but you know i'd work 18 years it was where i grown up you know i'd say outside of the end of

a romantic relationship with the death of the loved one living moral was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me. by 996 marvel reported a staggering loss of over 400. $60000000.00 u.s. dollars the company desperately needed cash to keep running and so pay back its debts. but it's in a disagreement with shareholders over the company's future home undeclared bankruptcy. as majority owner it gave him the power to reorganize marvel without their consent. but interlink so pohlmann dragged the company's reputation through the mud in a series of very public court battles. surrounded by the small during ruin of its comic book empire marvel was in its darkest hour and the future looks bleak. and a lot of screaming out of phones and threats to destroy another there is something

that was so absurd and grotesque about these cold hearted men suing each other to have custody of something that a motion only a lot of card readers thought belonged to that in 1998 after a 2 year battle it was finally over. from coleman sued for diversity over $500000000.00 u.s. dollars from marvel to his other businesses. was ousted from the company. but marvel was still broke surviving on a $200000000.00 loan that had to be repaid soon. it now needed a super hero of its own to save the day. in 1909 the company brought in peter cuneo known as the turnaround king he successfully guided 6 businesses through tough times including cosmetics company clairol and security hardware group black and decker. about hiring cuneo to rescue marvel was

a huge risk he knew nothing about the comic book industry was not a particularly a comic book fan i wasn't a nurse at all in the comic book world comical community sad to learn that. but a crash course is all. kunio what have time for. the company's stock could fall into a dismal $0.96 a share. with marvel in disarray and investors impatient for results the pressure on cuneo is intense currents are not for everybody there really in fact you have to be a little nuts to do what i do really it's not normal my experience has been that things are always worse than you thought they were and they'll be sleepless nights with barely $3000000.00 in the bank the 1st thing that kept cuneo up at nights was how to get marvel the cash it desperately needed. for $26000000.00 u.s. dollars marvel sold its sticker and trading card companies

a mere fraction of the $400000000.00 pounds on it spent on them. while kinnear's searched for ways to settle the company's remaining debts he also had to start reviving marvel's lifeline it's comic books. they have to get their readers back the years of gimmicks had left the stories in a sorry state. to reinvigorate them he would have to convince some of the creatives who had left marvel to return. a lot of the creative people particularly comic book industry felt that they had been mistreated frankly by the company obviously wanted to get the best back and so that's what i was doing was basically courting people the creative people in most business are the ones that actually make you money. and so the people working in the creative jobs have to feel wanted needed and rewarded. immediately instigated

a complete change of atmosphere he gave his artist the freedom to walk. he also tasks for my us sports executive and comic fan bill janus with reviving marvel's superhero comics. at the time the company. publishing 60 monthly titles that were filled with convoluted plots threating back to the 1960 s. . he recognized i think that it's very difficult to get new readers into the comic book industry because if you want to get. emotionally attached to a character or set of characters what say spider-man you had to come in at issue $475.00 so you have 40 years of storytelling. so bill recognized that we had to start telling the stories of our major characters all over again from there are region and he started a new series of comic books that did that will join us also gave the series an upgrade for the new millennium. park and became

a tech geek with an enzyme chip at the. the 1st issue of the ultimate spider-man became an instant hits. by the cutting through thousands marvel had reclined is a lead in the comic industry's market share. meanwhile cuneo and his team mates thought of another way to translate the company's cash problems and pay back its loans. they would focus on models most valuable asset its unique library of comic book characters. we need a business that would generate a lot of cash and this is why we adapted as a business model a licensing model in licensing it does not require us to put up much capital. marvel began licensing out his characters for toys clothes school supplies and video games. but to generate more revenue the company's characters needed to appeal to a much wider market not just hardcore comic fans so marvel turned to hollywood movies

were just always just out of reach for stanley although he has been trying to get them made for decades. i'm out here hoping to put the use and other properties into movies and television shows that unfortunately for marvel's famous editor in chief previous licensing deals with studios have been anything but successful. partly due to the limits of technology. and partly because marvel have no creative control over the movies. films like howard the duck in 986 and my friend happiness an animal kingdom decking a critical and financial disaster as. cuneo and his team decided that marvel would from now on tightly control how their movies were made they would commission the

scripts hire good quality directors and find the right cost for the characters themselves and then partner with large hollywood studios to produce and distribute the movie so. marvel was finally moving in a new direction toward dealing in intellect. instead of selling products. we have to look at our characters as talent and we had to treat them as if they were living people but we had also run them like brands spider-man as a brand models hope was this a successful film would transform this other businesses. if someone goes to your movies they're probably going to buy toys for their kids someone plays you video games are going to go and movies kids like the toys you're going to buy back to school products from and on and on and on ladies and gentlemen we are now seeing the beginnings of another stage of human evolution. x.-men was released in the year

2000 to critical acclaim and grossed over $290000000.00 u.s. dollars worldwide x.-men one proves something very important to marvel and i think the rest of the entertainment industry and that is that you could have a big success financially if you made a good film even if the general public did not know the characters 99 percent never heard of yes me before they started seeing trailers and then you had people lining up around the block when the film was opening. suddenly superheroes were all the rage and big budget adaptations like spider-man. the hulk and devil also became massive hits. marvel's movies like x.-men had been a smashing success but the company wasn't getting the full profits from its partnership with hollywood studios. when sony's to spider-man films made a combined $3000000000.00 worldwide marvel only received $6000000.00 from selling

the current to rights. the new management cannot with a radical idea. should produce its own films and keep 100 percent of the profits. it was a bonus plan. not everyone agreed it was a good one. marvel had never produced a film before and a flop in hollywood could cost the millions. of us taking some financial risk and films was not initially particularly popular with some of our investors. but i think the people me outside didn't understand it as we had been apprenticing and 12 films we learned how to make it. in 2005 the company's board gave marvel studios the green knight to finance its films marvel struck a risky deal with wealth management firm merrill lynch it offered up its hand of its most prized kerrick says including captain america fought and iron man as

collateral for a massive $520000000.00 cash reservoir to make 10 movies bounce if marvel studios failed all of the superheroes would belong to the bank. as marvel studios went into production for its 1st film and man it decided to take an even thinker risk and break with hollywood convention. hollywood has a tendency when they're worried about a film to chaos very well known and often highly paid actors and actresses because they will quote guarantee the box office we didn't believe in insurance and we thought that the characters were so strong the company really view these characters as the stars. they found their tiny stock in robert downey jr but at the time he was pressing one for his past problems with addiction rather than his acting talent

the choice was seen as a big gamble. he'd had some ups and downs in his life and his career so there was certainly some natural questioning about well his straight testing. well the people running marvel studios showed marvel board robert downey jr screen test . in this edition in 2006 robert downey jr is reading from one of the 1st scenes in iron man working out what's going through the called my time don't ask don't tell to much of a about ago he's on script for the 1st couple of minutes and then he just goes off as robert can do and he right in front of us became tony stark done you're still buckingham palace where we go but out of break out the psyops there it is there's a smile it's ok yes it's natural just less muscles to. the surface i'm man of

course became a massive success largely chucho downey genius onil to doc's take on tony stark to flatter to be feared or respect i say is it too much to ask for it ranks number one of the box office and grossed over $580000000.00 on a budget of $140000000.00 a good look people. think you're the only long way in on mom's purse credit scene novel set up not only the next movie the avengers but whole new world of overlapping characters is big fury directorship. here talking about the of injury. the marvel cinematic universe was born. realizing the huge potential in marvel's library of superheroes disney touches the company for a full 1000000000 u.s. dollars in 2009. with disney's global reach the

top catapulted a whole galaxy of marvel's stock characters to a new level. to date it's movies have grossed over $12000000.00 u.s. dollars worldwide thank you. at the biggest film franchise in history. if you think you can. marvel's remarkable turnaround was in large part helped spice budgeting popularity in asia. as time progresses is proving that asia is very important to companies that marvel movies for example like man which was one of my was relatively unknown characters that did very well in china a few movie grossed somewhere around 140000000 more white and of that one for was contrary to the chinese market. but the loss of marvel's business its comic books is in decline. in the heyday publishers could sell

a 1000000 copies per issue. these days selling 40000 disc considered a success. now a new battle is brewing in the comic book industry. marvel is looking to expand its business in asia and that means it's barely serious mistake on the ensuring the popular starry eyed gals of lanka. but it went be that easy. monga is a form of comics that originates from japan is very different to superheroes in the fact that i'm one of the characters are very young the starters for unique and the story types of very different to western comics as well among german speaking in asia is much more popular than a western drama. manga dominates almost every major city in the region. and it's more than 50 percent of the market share in taiwan and hong kong while western

comics take less than 11 percent here. to see competes modernize it has to build a stronger emotional connection to asian readers. to tickle early at regional events like the singapore comic convention. water most exciting event of the year hopefully will fix that but we've upset like. singapore an illustrator and avid marvel fan gary chu comes here every year. in a way this is so brushing off people with like minded obviously the interest of the interest in american superheroes has grown the characters on display here don't really reflects marvel's new target audience was always patient characters but you know truth be told they've always been a little bit there to they were greeted by writers based mainly in the west and it was a japanese character is based on an adventure or a samurai or a geisha there was a chinese character was always on food. you see peaceable ski as marvels man in the

east responsible for bringing the marvel universe to asia and vice a versa he say is scouting for local artists to incorporate deep asian influences in the comics we're looking for now so bring a little more authenticity to it since our fanbase has gone global we want the people to feel like the world is outside their window so that the characters are authentically asian from the actual cities and that the writers were hiring the artists we're hiring i bring a piece of their lives to those care. just to make them feel you know just really real to the readers who marvel's new characters are now gradually starting to reflects the diverse readers the company wants to connect with and for the 1st time in their history. muslim superhero is headlining happen in comic books this mobile is muslim pakistani american i think it's great because right now they're getting fans to understand that hey there's a bigger it's a bigger picture here this more people there's a lot of other different ethnicities living together. gary chu cause his big break

here 4 years ago when he met marvel's talent scout see peaceable steal our super nose but not that way hopefully oh you felt like. we were just going touch with each other after so we also also the 1st couple i drool form lovel. it was excellent special. i was really happy with the end of that and i couldn't wait for it to be printed. today gary continues to work as a freelance artist for marvel. as a last trade irish level where i've delivered best exportable. and to me that is very satisfying those films and licensing deals remain marvel's main business it continues to develop its comics for a more global audience based on the strong station of storytelling stanley and his

collaborators began in the 1960 s. i think any good story appears to anyone anywhere and usually it's a case of someone being dumb and not having a problem somewhere they're being given great polish and what it is they do without i'll just look pretty universal kind of on the story marvel has a wealth of characters that have never been explored in any shape or form. that should they get not like they will be here for many many many years to come. because. the pyramid becomes short for complex frank. rich. top entertainment in the top. to clinch the title to close

a single. thing that. could have demonstrations uncompromising to. extinction rebellion formed as a protest movement against climate change. their supporters call for big changes to be implemented quickly. but how far are they willing to go to save the planet existing should rebel movement protest or eco terrorism loose up. in 90 minutes on d w. y subscribe to d.w. books you meet your favorite writer write. to but i write is too short to find beautiful. over your books on you tube is the shaman race destroying itself.

we are ruining the basic elements of our business we're using too much water and we're polluting. life. want to go for supplies will last for ever but they won't. when the rain stops stores more 20th on w. . this is deja vu news and these are our top stories italy has extended its emergency anti coronavirus measures nationwide prime minister just separate conte says that from tuesday morning travel restrictions are to apply across the country while all sporting events are to be called off. fears over the corona virus have

left a trail of losses across the world share prices have plunged with billions being wiped off the value of global in this.