Money matters: Also at Ninth Art, Paul O'Brien takes another look at Marvel's emphasis on licensing, and what that approach means to its comic books:

"... Spider-Man has value because he's already a household name, not because of today's comics. Less well-known characters such as Blade have value (if they have it at all) because somebody thinks there's a good central idea. It's vaguely useful to have ongoing comics for the major characters to stop them turning, like Mickey Mouse, into historical relics. And for the second tier characters, the existence of a comic is totally irrelevant to the success of the film. But really, the value in these characters is already there -- and once they become the multimedia juggernauts Marvel seem to be hoping for, the comic becomes a bit of a side issue."