Contrary to Stan Lee's doubts and hesitation about the whole arrangement, popular opinion on the Creed-Marvel partnership was quite boisterous.

Overwhelming relief and excitement, mostly.

The extended Marvel publication hiatus since October had really gotten the community rattled.

The comic book community, of course.

Their overblown assumption that Marvel was brought down by the recent crisis was almost about to really get overblown.

And to think that the whole story was far more removed than how they imagined it to be.

Forget Marvel's bankruptcy and failing business.

Creed actually bought and owned them now.

How crazy was that?!

It was crazy enough that a lot of people felt they were going crazy because of it.

While they were out and about worrying that they might not be able to purchase any Marvel publications for the foreseeable future... Creed actually went ahead by purchasing the whole thing!

Any fan would be happy enough to buy a single issue from their favorite storylines... how exhilarating it must be to just lay claim to all of it.

It's really hard to consider Alexander Creed to be a Marvel fan though.

Both the Creed crowd and Marvel crowd sure found that hard to believe.

It seems like it was only yesterday that the two parties were going head to head and bumping into each other like enemies.

Well, that's probably because the news of this whole Creed-Marvel merger just broke today!

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And there it goes... another M for Alexander to be lost in thought about.

The merger. Mergers and acquisition, in this scenario.

While the interested populace was going to take their while in mulling over the Creed-Marvel implications, he was caught up in it as well.

The process this time just wasn't the same as it was with Pixar nor was it as easy as hugging a tag-along girlfriend to sleep.

It was something a bit burdensome that Alexander had to deal with when it came to this recent acquisition.

For starters, there's the recent public reveal of the whole matter.

It was necessary news to be broken but it most certainly didn't from Creed's side of public relations.

Nothing was really wrong with how Marvel's team had done it. It's just that Alexander found them to be a redundancy.

And more other redundancies after that.

For someone who values Creed Entertainment's somewhat seamless multi-faceted business structure... Marvel's independent and long-established structure prove to be the burdensome overlap that he had to get around to.

And get around to it, he did.

Stuff like Marvel having its own distribution routes and partners while Creed obviously having theirs as well.

One way or another, someone had to be the bearer of bad news when certain partnerships are cut-off to streamline a more optimized option.

It's a choice between direct market distributors for comic book stores while newsstands' viability would probably be in question.

Then there's printing presses. Comic companies certainly had a close hand in those.

Which repeats the conundrum that they had with distribution or maybe Creed's and Marvel's corresponding printing partners could stay as is.

It would certainly help if there was some homogeneity from here on out.

Which brings Alexander to certain printing nuances... like him disliking the stamped pricing on front covers and the debilitating Comics Code seal.

Rather fortunately, Creed Comics had been quite the spearhead of change and Marvel was a shameless copycat of success.

The CCA's influence was still present but it should be gone soon enough with him somewhat in charge.

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As for the somewhat in-charge part... well... that's where Alexander was headed to.

The fact that he had no care for Marvel's current presiding management.

The fact that they messed up this company so much and allowed for him to be able to swoop in was quite good... but also quite bad.

They gave him the opportunity but it was also his opportunity to get rid of bad apples like them.

It was a matter of termination notices from there, with a bit of reshuffling for Alexander to appoint proper point persons for him.

The handy Stan Lee and Jim Shooter, both pivotal to the current status quo, would be spared from this upcoming purge.

Oh, what a bloodbath and regime change it would be.

Alexander wasn't much of a Star Trek fan but he had to go with the Borg's philosophy when it came to this one.

You will be assimilated...

Resistance is futile...

Quite grim but it had to be done.

As a matter of fact, many companies have, more or less, approached acquisition decisions in a "Borgian" fashion.

Even if these acquisitions weren't formal mergers, the result was that one company with its employees, culture, and technology would essentially be "assimilated" into another.

It hits hard on morale, culture, brand identity, coordination, and leadership autonomy... but it's a necessary adjustment.

For folding Marvel into the Creed collective.

A process that is easy to ruminate about but hard to act on.

Of course, the reward will be well worth it.

It's a premier company that's considered one of comic's Big Two, after all.

They didn't just have a respectable line-up of heroes and a well-established rogues' gallery...

For Alexander... they were copyright property that was going to be worth billions.

And that was just the comic's side of his recent acquisition.

Part of his purchase from Cadence was Marvel Productions as well.

It's actually a Los Angeles-based animation studio with a fair few projects under its belt.

Even though he already had a fair few animation studios of his own, it wouldn't hurt to have another one.

Another thing that he's going to have to look into when he's back home.

Something that he'll have to juxtapose with the other thing he already had in mind.

After all, aside from those truly and directly involved, there's a certain group of people that really take the consequences of this Creed-Marvel thing very seriously.

And it was high time Alexander got to meet them.

Since he can, why shouldn't he?

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Like clockwork and as if on cue... when the Creed-Marvel merger news broke... correspondence was hurriedly made and an emergency meeting was scheduled.

The Anti-Creed Alliance was on the case.

An ally was lost to the cause but that made this meeting all the more serious.

DC Comics, who was close in power to Marvel, pretty much pushed the emergency button in a panic.

With one initiating, everyone else must have felt the same measure of worry as they really sought to convene in a hurry.

Fresh from their basement and fresh from lamenting the big loss of Pizza Cats in stark contrast to the Ninja Turtles' enviable popularity, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird of Mirage Studios scampered to their backers.

On a different but same agenda, a duo of Thomas had qualms of their own. Especially with snippets of Predator being in production.

Which in turn spurned, another pair of screenwriters to worry about their SuperCop aka RoboCop.

If those didn't already bode well, then the news of Creed's ownership of Marvel takes the cake.

Marvel literally is quite a portion of the market cake that smaller-sliced comic companies like Charlton, IPC Media, Archie, and others didn't want to condone the most-embellished Creed to encroach their icing on all of it.

One would think that such an upheaval was isolated in comics yet an outlier like Hasbro also had to step up, for concerns that are not anything less than the others.

It was this shared plight that brought them all together and they had to share this camaraderie once again.

They arrived in such a hurry that it was almost as if they teleported from whatever task they were busy doing.

Unfortunately, their secret rendezvous was compromised.

They arrived one by one and found seats in the rented conference room.

Yet no discussion and discourse have yet to be made for a while now.

Usually, at this point, they should have been pointing fingers, assigned blame, and whatnot.

Weirdly enough, they were very behaving and silent. Eerily so.

It's as if there's an imposter among them.

Only the sound of a cube shuffling echoed in the room.

Well, given that the imposter didn't bother hiding and was leisurely playing with a Rubik's cube... it's more like there's a monster among them.

With a young but admittedly handsome face, this surprise attendee seemed harmless...

But that indifferent expression and that cold, calculating eyes is no joke to everyone else present.

Even the ease with which he handled that Rubik's cube, solving and unscrambling it in mesmerizing succession, is a showcase of might in itself.

They've only seen this person in pictures, cursed him in their dreams, and targeted him in their discourse.

Now, they were just genuinely stunned that he was seating among them.

Alexander Creed in the flesh! In an Anti-Creed Alliance meeting!

If the Creed-Marvel thing was crazy enough, then this was even crazier!

-------

What!

Why?

Also, how did he even know?

Did someone leak something?

What was even more curious was the fact that they were still too shocked to ask these aloud.

Were they that timid? Was he that intimidating? Or was his Rubik's mastery way too stunning?

Eventually, saving themselves from the collective embarrassment, the seasoned Alan Hassenfeld found the bearing to ask out. "I don't mean to be rude, boy... but what are you doing here?"

Which in turn stopped the magical display of the magic cube.

After all, Alexander took this cue to stop messing around as he reasoned. "As Marvel's new boss, I found myself somewhat compelled to attend. Marvel is still a part of your alliance, is it not?"

"Cheeky!" Alan scoffed at that loophole. "None of us still want you here though."

Alexander pivoted to that. "Well... don't worry. I won't be staying long."

"Even I can tell how paradoxical it is for me as a Creed to be present here while I represent everything you, the Anti-Creeds, stand against."

"But still... you call yourselves the Anti-Creed Alliance... how childish..."

"Cheesy, even."

Alexander was just being honest here.

Obviously, it wasn't just Alan Hassenfeld that was hit with that. His peers shared the brunt of it as well.

It really made them question why they named themselves with that in the first place.

Granted, with them shut up in awkwardness, Alexander took the chance to try discuss what he wanted to discuss.

And sure enough... it pertains to another M once again.

Monopoly. Or issues closely associated with it.

An annoying M for business, regardless.

Which was why he directly confronted these annoying bunch of people to begin with.

To nip future annoyances in the bud.