* Everyone including Marvel believes that the company had a fine third quarter. Comics publishing gets its usual "everything is still very profitable"-type mention, and although I'm not a financial analyst the general thrust of Marvel's take on the better than expected period is that licensing fees were still strong in support of a Spider-Man movie that was the third in a series and which probably had a shorter than expected duration of box office vibrancy, and that things are sound going into next year's move into financing their own films. I have no idea if notes like Forbes' piece makes that Marvel seems to be underplaying the amount of revenue expected from next summer's Iron Man and Hulk films is par for the course or not, although overall expectations are raised.
