Marvel Vs. Disney: Two Very Different Americas

TED ANTHONY

"Wish upon a star," Jiminy Cricket, Disney's arthropod muse, likes to say.

"Leave Hulk ALONE!" the Marvel superhuman most in need of anger management likes to say.

It's difficult to come up with two more competing takes on American life than those built by Walt Disney on one hand and Marvel Comics on the other. Here are distinctly opposite versions of the American experience, each an indelible part of the country's popular culture.

In this corner: Disney's America, a pastoral vision built upon one man's idealized memory of his small-town childhood, filled with trains and friendly people and dreams that really do come true if you believe hard enough. A world of black and white, rendered in brilliant Kodachrome.

In this corner: science run amok, reluctant superheroes transformed by radioactive spider bites and weird cosmic rays, costumed avengers who are in therapy, struggle to pay the bills and grouse about their superhuman lot. Shades of ambiguous gray, drawn in color-drenched shadows.

The contrasts are stark and sometimes way too easy: New York vs. the Magic Kingdom. Wishing and dreaming vs. struggling and coping. Doe-eyed sincerity — literally, in Bambi's case — vs. the worldly wisecracking of Spider-Man and the Thing.