A quick read for those interested in getting a start on the functions and responsibilities of various Israeli intelligence agencies. Although highly entertaining, it seems that this book should be read with a grain of salt, since there are some doubts to the origins of the information printed. Yet that is not a problem since the book focuses a great deal on the politics of the Israeli intelligence community rather than on the details of individual cases.

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.

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.

At first glance, Dan Raviv's book might seem irrelevant to readers of intrigue novels. Despite the flashy title and cool cover, reading about two rich businessmen fighting for the control of a publishing company might not seem all that exciting.

It is exciting.

Like in any theatrical drama, Raviv begins his book with an annotated list of players. Most names will be unknowns outside of the industry. Stan Lee is here, as you might expect, but so is Isaac Perlmutter and numerous lesser executives. Their parts in this drama are crucial and understanding who they are from the beginning will help keep the plot clear.

This is, in some ways, a history of Marvel Comics, beginning in 1939 with Captain America, the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch. Raviv walks us through Marvel's troubled times under various owners.

We get the play-by-play debacle hindering the X-Men and Spiderman from the silver screen, and the intense personalities behind it all.

The cynicism of loyal comic readers is told, as Marvel aimed for the financial speculator and played games with collectors (remember the many covers and bags of certain Spiderman issues?). When the quality of the Marvel Universe stunk up the magazine racks in the 1990s, it seemed if Spiderman would weave his last web.

Letters, trial notes and other details fill in this adventurous tale of the struggle for power, money and egos. We find out how Spiderman was finally able to make the bigtime.

I fully recommend "Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled over the Marvel Comics Empire--And Both Lost" by Dan Raviv.

Anthony Trendl

Melman and Raviv maintain that it is odd for the US a capitalist nation to be so staunchly allied to the "Socialist" Israel. They fail to realize that the socialist zionism is essentially a dead concept, that zionism has become a right-wing capitalist ideaology. It's simple, we finally created a nation based on zionism and where did it tend to capitalism or communism? capitalism...