The Spider and the Mouse? All of Hollywood is abuzz with the big news that Disney is scooping up Marvel. It's not the first time that the superhero outfit has been viewed with hungry eyes by the giant entertainment power -- we told you last year that Disney and Dark Horse once had designs on the House of Ideas -- but no one saw this coming. My colleague Dawn Chmielewski has the story:

The Walt Disney Co. today announced that it had agreed to acquire comic-book giant Marvel Entertainment, creator of such characters as Iron Man and Spider-Man, in a cash-and-stock deal worth an estimated $4 billion.

The acquisition would give Disney access to a library of more than 5,000 characters -- several of whom have inspired major films for other Hollywood studios. Marvel, meanwhile, gains the clout of Disney's ability to take a popular character and make money on it through films, television and licensed merchandise.

"We believe that adding Marvel to Disney's unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation," said Disney President and Chief Executive Robert A. Iger.

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Photo, top: Marvel and Disney comic books on display at Midtown Comics in New York on Monday. Credit: Daniel Aker / Bloomberg. Bottom photo: Michael Richardson of Dark Horse Comics. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Barry Levine is focused on Hollywood aspirations these days, but he came up in the music world as a photographer for KISS and Mötley Crüe, so he knows a gold rush when he sees one. Crüe was part of the 1980s Sunset Strip metal scene that stirred an industry craze just as Liverpool and San Francisco had done in the 1960s and Seattle would in the 1990s.

“Right now in Hollywood, the rush is on, comic books are the new sensation and they are not going away,” Levine said with an insider’s assured nod at he sat in front of a plate of pasta at a Los Angeles sidewalk café. “What’s happened already is impossible to ignore but what’s happening now and what's going to happen next is even more interesting.”

The past-tense statement was a reference to “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man,” "Hancock," “Wanted” and other 2008 comic-book films that have been piling up box office receipts that, collectively, are astounding. “The Dark Knight” alone is closing in on a billion dollars in ticket sales and may even end up as the first comic-book movie to fly high at the Oscars.

The interesting future, according to Levine, is on the way because Hollywood players are climbing over each other for comic-book properties, both famous and obscure, like gamblers trying to pump coins into the same slot machine. Levine is taking a different approach –- he’s built his own slot machine.

Levine is co-founder of Radical Publishing, a company that began publishing comics this year with sleek production values and the proud agenda of treating every comic book as if it is a storyboard for a film that’s just waiting to be made. Some people make pitches in Hollywood, Levine hands out comic books.

I have to say, the guy seems to have a pretty good sensibility for the contemporary cinematic version of the fantastic; the comics he is putting out sound like movies. There’s “Caliber,” the tale of King Arthur reimagined as an Old West adventure where the magic sword is replaced with a six-shooter and Merlin is a Native American shaman; the future police-state tale “City of Dust,” a sort of tricked-out “Blade Runner” channeling of George Orwell's thought-crime fears; and a bloody take on “Hercules,” where the embittered man-god runs with an ancient, all-star mercenary group, a sort of “300” version of “The Magnificent Seven.”

Yes, at Radical it’s all high concept, all the time. And Hollywood is paying attention.

Peter Berg, director of “Hancock” and “The Kingdom,” has a deal in place to produce and direct that grim version of “Hercules” for the screen, while Johnny Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil, is on board for a “Caliber” adaptation that has John Woo ("Face/Off") attached as director. Bryan Singer, the director of “X-Men” and “The Usual Suspects,” has signed on to produce an adaptation of “Freedom Formula,” a Radical title about racing teams in the wastelands of the far future. For comics fans, too, Radical has brought in notable creators, among them top horror writer Steve Niles ("30 Days of Night" and "Criminal Macabre") and Jim Steranko, one of the more celebrated and influential artists during the Marvel Comics glory days.

“These are very exciting times for us,” Levine said, patting a stack of the comic books Radical has produced in its first year of publishing. Exciting, yes, but then the roulette table is always exciting while the wheel is still spinning.

It's an exciting time here at Hero Complex as we approach our five-month anniversary. We're getting a lot of new contributors. One of them is Nathan Olivarez-Giles, who has this dispatch...

It's time to put your monocle on: "The Umbrella Academy" is in Los Angeles in a big way.

Dark Horse Comics is celebrating the quirky and compelling "Academy" here to mark the release of "The Umbrella Academy: Dallas," the second installment of the critically acclaimed series.

The first issue of the "Dallas" book hits stores Wednesday (Nov. 26), and at 8 p.m. on Friday (Nov. 28), Gerard Way, author of "Academy" and lead singer of My Chemical Romance, will be signing autographs at Southern California's famous comics landmark Golden Apple (7018 Melrose Ave).

Meanwhile, Secret Headquarters (3817 W. Sunset Blvd.), the great comics store and gallery in Silver Lake, is displaying Way’s concept sketches for the first "Umbrella" series, "Apocalypse Suite," as well as the original art by Way's Brazilian-born collaborator, Gabriel Bá.

That exhibit will run through Dec. 11. To celebrate, Way and Dark Horse hosted a party on Friday at the gallery. Way said he adores the place and his band has a history with it; he and his band mates often founds themselves roaming its aisles while working on their third studio album back in 2006.

“When we were working on 'The Black Parade,' we lived up the hill on Micheltorena, and we’d come down here all the time,” Way said of Secret Headquarters. “If I owned a comic book shop, I’d want it to be just like this.”

Everyday Hero, your roundup of handpicked headlines from the fanboy universe...

The Oregon success story of Dark Horse comics is historic -- in fact, it's so historic that it will now be protected and indexed in a massive archive project at Portland State University. Two copies of every Dark Horse publication will be kept there, one in general circulation and the other in a special collection preserve.

Heidi MacDonald has the story on her blog, the Beat: "The library’s Dark Horse collection will include everything they’ve produced, from books in 24 different languages to Aliens stickers and Hellboy lunch-boxes. The Beat spoke with Portland State University Librarian Helen Spalding, who explained that even a Buffy marquee statue can be useful to academics. 'The key rings, action figures, mugs and tee-shirts are all rich research material for examining marketing, gender roles, and many other topics,' she said. The idea for the collection was sparked a few years back when Spalding saw DHC Publisher and PSU alumnus Mike Richardson speak at a university luncheon. 'They’re an important Portland institution, and the University is really engaged with the community and the alumni,' Spalding said, 'so it just made a lot of sense that we work together on this important collection to our mutual benefit.'" [Publisher's Weekly] ... If you want to learn more about the fascinating contours of the Dark Horse story, check out a major piece I wrote earlier this year during a visit with Richardson (pictured above) and his team in Portland.

Now on with the rest of today's handpicked headlines...

"Heroes" needs a heroic effort: Jeff Jensen isn't ready to give up on the floundering NBC series "Heroes," which hit a series low of 8.2 million viewers on Oct. 6 (waaay down from its peak audience of 16 million) and has lost so much of its urgency. Jensen writes that "NBC's No. 2 drama won't ever reclaim its status as a ratings powerhouse, but it can regain its creative glory — provided producers start fixing things now. In order to speed things along, we present our five-point plan to save Heroes...from itself." Those five points: 1. Retire Some Capes 2. Make The Heroes Smarter 3. Get Back to the Heroes’ Roots 4. Get a New Bag of Tricks and 5. Find a Big Vision – And Set an End Date. Sounds easy enough! [Entertainment Weekly]

To Serve Man: Wait, there was a show called "Twilight Zone" and it wasn't about a Tiger Beat vampire in Washington state? Yes, kids, a long time ago a fellow by the name of Rod Serling hosted an unsettling and cerebral show about creepy creatures, twist endings and the slippery nature of reality. Sci Fi will air a two-day, end-of-the-year marathon of the grand old show and they want your vote on your 10 favorite episodes. Remember, as with any popularity contest, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Tucker Stone has an essay on the fuzzy logic that applies these days when it comes to labeling comics books for violence and sexualized content. He writes: "The mature readers/explicit content tag may have once been there as a warning to the parent or the queasy, it may have been there to keep the non-comics-shop-haunting evangelicals at bay, but that was then. Now? It's a neon sign, a greasy guy in a trenchcoat, and it's beckoning the reader down the street, and around the corner — and he's saying 'You want some gore? I got you some gore. I got it right here.' For whatever it's worth — that cat ain't lying."  [Comixology]

Who's "Who"?: Grant Morrison would love to write a "Doctor Who" movie but, sadly, nobody has asked. "That would be fantastic to do,” he said. “I’ve got quite a good story for Doctor Who. I think it would have to be quite definitive, especially because the recent series have had a few really strong definitive stories, such as ‘Human Nature,’ and ‘Silence in the Library.’ A couple of those I thought just nailed the character so completely, and that’s what you have to aspire to: a definitive, iconic, almost ultimate Doctor Who story.” [Splash Page blog, MTV]

The Great Sulu-Kirk War of 2008 continues. Here's a press release that came in today about a George Takei interview with "Entertainment Tonight" that will air this evening: "Takei talks to ET exclusively about his "Star Trek" co-star William Shatner's now-infamous YouTube rant about not being invited to his wedding, 'It's absolutely baffling to us because we did invite Bill and we didn't hear from him! But it wasn't surprising because it's true to his history. He's never responded to an invitation. Every time there was something happy to celebrate amongst us, he never showed up.' Shatner says in the YouTube video that Takei has a 'psychosis,' to which Takei responds, 'I think his stability is quite questionable. Bill likes to be the star of the show. He likes the attention focused on him. It's a big, shiny, demanding ego. It's all typical of Bill.  His ranting and raving is just silliness.'" [Entertainment Tonight]

And, finally: Check out our very own Denise Martin's guide to "Twilight" Halloween costumes...

-- Geoff Boucher

2008 photo of Mike Richardson of Dark Horse shot by Robert Durell/Los Angeles Times; Zachary Quinto of "Heroes" photograph by Chris Haston and courtesy of NBC. TARDIS image courtesy of the BBC.

EXCLUSIVE

I ran into one of my favorite people in comics and music, Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance fame, backstage at the Spike TV Scream 2008 Awards. We wandered around a bit, and I was fortunate enough to introduce him to both Frank Miller and Tim Burton (I do love my job). Way was in such a good mood that he gave me the major lowdown on "The Umbrella Academy" ramping up as a film project at Universal. He talked about his hopes to bring in people such as "Children of Men" director Alfonso Cuarón, Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood ("Chicago," "Sweeney Todd") and perhaps screenwriter Diablo Cody, who picked up an Academy Award for "Juno."

GB: So what's the good word on "The Umbrella Academy"?

Way: "We just had our first meeting at Universal, and it went great. The hardest thing was finding the right building and the right gate. Nah, the meeting was great, really, really great. The book was optioned before [International Comic-Con in] San Diego, and now it's been green-lighted. Now we're talking screenwriters and directors, obviously. There's no director attached yet."

GB: What can you tell us about the process so far and your priorities?

Way: "They want me to be very involved in it. I'm interested in co-scoring it with somebody too. Something like RJ-D2. Something completely different. Do you know what I mean? I think everything he does has an interesting '60s vibe. It almost has that dystopian 'The Prisoner' feel to it."

GB: You would almost want a "Harold & Maude" meets "X-Men" sensibility to an "Umbrella" movie, if that doesn't sound too odd.

Way: "No, basically that's it. Yeah, 'Harold & Maude' meets the 'X-Men.' The soundtrack can't be a straight score. It has to have some kind of quirk to it. I want to make the music super, super interesting."

GB: What do you know about the timetable for the film?

Way: "I've heard 2010 and 2011. I think 2010 is the big Marvel year, right? So maybe 2011. Not that this is going to be like those movies, really. I said going into the meetings that this film has to be really progressive. It can't simply be the next opportunity for a video game. In the way that 'The Dark Knight' made its own rules, it needs to have its own energy. One of the names I was really interested in as far as screenwriters was Diablo Cody. I think it's an unexpected choice. Everything about this book has been making the less-obvious choices."

Eric Powell has been in the comics field since 1995, but his career really took off with debut of his signature character, The Goon, in 1999 in the pages of Dark Horse Comics. And his success is building: He won two Eisner awards this year and five since 2004. The series follows the meandering underworld adventures of the title character, a brawny palooka who clashes with mobsters and zombies in a world that looks like "Sin City" channeled by E.C. Segar's Popeye universe. Early work on an animated film adaptation is now underway with Blur Studios.

The Tennessee-based Powell talked with Hero Complex correspondent T.J. Kosinski about the film venture as well as the 10th anniversary of "The Goon."

TJK: When you started "The Goon" in 1999, did you have any aspirations to see your comic book come to life in the world of film?

EP: I think everybody dreams about that, but it’s not a rational dream. It’s one of those "Wouldn't it be great if?" kind of things, but to actually think that it would? No, I didn’t believe that. I had a hard time believing that I was even going to be successful at making the comic. My biggest ambition was: "If I can make a living off of this comic someday, that’s all I want." And as far as it's gotten, I couldn't be happier that I've been able to make a living off of it and it's become this independent success.

TJK: How did this whole project come about?

EP: There was some initial interest from Blur, the animation studio, and they kind of were looking for other people to be interested, then David Fincher came along, and they came together and approached us and I went out to L.A. for some meetings with [Dark Horse founder] Mike Richardson, and that went really well and I liked their view of the comic and what they wanted to do with it, in terms of content and things like that. They seemed to have this willingness or desire to really capture what the comic was. So that really drew me in, and they had a couple of great pieces of concept art that they showed me and I was like, "Yeah, I want to do this."

Here's a surprising (and exclusive) tidbit: In the 1990s, when Marvel's fiscal situation was in shambles, upstart Dark Horse comics was making covert plans with Disney to take control of their far more established rival.

"This hasn't been out there, but we were in serious talks with Disney about buying Marvel," Dark Horse founder Michael Richardson told me the other day. "I met with Michael Eisner, who is a good friend of [my mentor, producer] Larry Gordon, and they were going to buy Marvel and put Dark Horse in control of it."

Richardson told me this over lunch in Milwaukie, Ore., the small town near Portland where Dark Horse is headquartered. (I was there working on a Sunday Calendar cover on the Hollywood success of Dark Horse.) Richardson told me that he thought the proposed take-over of Marvel was quite viable and he was absoutely giddy at the prospect of taking control of the Fantastic Four, Captain America and the other iconic characters he adored as a young fan in the 1960s.

Why did the gambit fail?

"There was some skepticism about numbers we were getting from Marvel. And in the end the [Disney] family just didn't like the idea of seeing Wolverine products on the same shelf as Mickey Mouse." Dark Horse Comics today has sales approaching $40 million a year (which doesn't include their Hollywood ventures, such as "Hellboy 2") and almost 10% market share, but gobbling up Marvel, the sector's no. 1 seller, a decade ago would have been a case of the canary eating the cat.

"I know," Richardson said with a smirk, "it would have been great, wouldn't it?"

-Geoff Boucher

Update: An earlier version of this post was missing a few words that changed the meaning of a quote. It previously identified Michael Eisner as a good friend of Mike Richardson. This updated post reflects what Richardson actually said, which is that Eisner is a good friend of producer Larry Gordon, Richardson's mentor.

Photo of Michael Richardson in Milwaukie, Ore., malt shop by Robert Durrell/Los Angeles Times

Mike Richardson's Dark Horse Comics empire has put the sleepy town of 21,000 on the map.

MILWAUKIE, ORE. — IT'S A three-block stroll from the leafy banks of the Willamette to Main Street here, but on most lazy afternoons, it's so quiet you can hear the river's lulling drone the whole way. As one local said the other day as he walked toward the malt shop on Main: "It's like this town got to about 1959 and said, 'This seems good, we'll stay here.' "

Unless there's a remake of "Stand by Me" in the works, it's hard to imagine this town grabbing the attention of distant Hollywood and its Bluetooth brigades of executives and agents. But it has managed to do that very thing because mild-mannered Milwaukie has a secret identity. The "Dogwood City of the West," it turns out, is also "Dark Horse, U.S.A."

Dark Horse is a pop-culture content company that has grown so steadily over the last 20 years that it currently occupies six separate storefronts along Main Street, and with 150 employees, it's now one of the top five employers in the town of 21,000. Dark Horse made its mark as an upstart, indie publisher of comic books, but now its ventures go well beyond that, which is why its founder, Mike Richardson, hops a flight to Los Angeles every week to tend to Hollywood pursuits.

"Hellboy 2: The Golden Army," which opened as the No. 1 movie in America last weekend, is the latest Dark Horse property on the screen, joining the florid parade that includes "300," "The Mask," "Sin City," "Time Cop" and "Alien vs. Predator." In May, Universal Pictures and Dark Horse announced a three-year production and distribution deal. That's not especially shocking in this era -- Marvel Studios, born from a comic-book company, delivered its first film that month, the massive hit "Iron Man," followed by "The Incredible Hulk" -- but for Dark Horse, the Universal deal is a validation of its long, quirky odyssey. "This," Richardson said, "is a major moment in our history."

That history reflects the personality of both Richardson and the place where he grew up. Richardson is a big man in this small town (literally: He's 6-foot-9), and the small town is very much in him. In the 1980s, when New York City was still considered the only place to publish big-time comics, Dark Horse shook up its industry by luring star writers and artists with unprecedented deals that gave them ownership of their work and a share of profits. The nimble little company with a fondness for edgy work became the Miramax Films of comics. Eventually, Hollywood types noticed and came dangling option money.

"I told them, 'That's great, but I want to produce it,' " Richardson said. "I got laughed at and I got cussed out and I got called an idiot. They were shocked. One guy told me that if I didn't take his deal I'd never get a chance to work in Hollywood. I said, 'OK, great, I'll stay in Oregon and do comics. That's what I like to do anyway. You go back to your world. I'll stay here in mine.' "

Richardson knows his world and seems to be in tune with his times. Marvel and DC have household-name heroes that yield bigger films, but almost every one of them is based on characters created before 1970. Marvel has long billed itself as the "House of Ideas," but since the Reagan years that title might rightly belong to the Oregon upstarts.

The company is making a big push on MySpace now looking for readers as well as new talent. Dark Horse is "the place I wanted to be and the place where you can find the most sophisticated stuff, but it also has a sense of comics history," says Gerard Way, lead singer of the band My Chemical Romance and writer of "The Umbrella Academy" comics for Dark Horse.

We're starting a new feature here at the Hero Complex called The Essential Shelf in which we invite some esteemed talents to tell us about their favorite graphic novels. Our first guest is Gerard Way, the lead singer of the rock band My Chemical Romance and the writer of "The Umbrella Academy," the wonderfully surreal Dark Horse series that (we hear) may be coming to a theater near you in the next few years.

Here's No.'s 8, 9 and 10 on the list of 10 that he e-mailed me, the rest will be posted here over the next few days.

"Hellboy: Seed of Destruction," by Mike Mignola
This book was an inspiration in the format I chose to do 'The Umbrella Academy' in, as well as the publisher, Dark Horse. This comic is extremely pure, it is the opposite of pretentious, and an exercise in storytelling. Combining elements of old-school E.C. Comics horror, adventure, and the occasional history or mythology lesson, it also frees itself from the confines of continuity typically found in mainstream comics. It has a continuity but does not remain chained to it, hopping around the many years an[d] aspects of the main character's life, telling the stories Mike Mignola wants to tell.

"Akira, Vol. 1," by Katsuhiro Otomo
I do enjoy manga but would not consider myself a "super-fan," only really connecting with certain works such as Lone Wolf and Cub, or Tekkon Kinkreet, the more breakthrough works, and Akira, to me, is the daddy of them all. This book collects the serialized comic originally found in 'Young Magazine' in Japan, which must have been very exciting coming out weekly and serialized, and also must have taken a lot of time, as the series is massive. It takes place in a futuristic version of Tokyo, which has rebuilt after another seemingly atomic explosion, and deals with a corrupt government, psychic children, and motorcycle gangs. Some of the best characters I have ever encountered in a comic.

"Wanted," by Mark Millar

I love this book. It came out of nowhere for me, and literally forced me to read it in one sitting. It has a way of tapping into that nihilism of "Fight Club" without being redundant and is a great example of a great modern comic with original ideas. The concept is another brilliant one that makes you jealous you didn't come up with it first, but in reading it you realize that Mark Millar is the only person that could have written it. I haven't seen the film but I imagine, if they at least kept the narration intact, that it is probably an excellent translation, as the main character's inner monologue is what really keeps you hooked, especially from the opening line.

- Geoff Boucher