Rebirth in America

In the early 1950s, American psychologist Dr. Frederick Wertham promoted the "harmful theory of comics" in his book "Seducing the Innocent" and believed that they were the main culprit in juvenile delinquency.

Terrified parents began boycotting the comic and even burning comic books. Congress held a special hearing for this. At the meeting, EC Company, which is famous for publishing horror comics, tried to defend itself, but it had the opposite effect.

Comics companies have to agree to form a self-regulatory organization, set regulations, self-censorship, or self-castration. The golden age that was so prosperous for a while also declined.

A large number of comic companies went bankrupt and cartoonists changed careers. The few remaining companies had to play it safe and did not dare to go too far. Horror and crime themes were banned, and other themes were also eliminated. Later, the situation where hero comics became the dominant one was also caused by this.

Not only comics were affected, but also Hollywood movies and newspapers.

However, because newspapers have to deal with the public, they are very cautious about the content of the comic strips they publish. There should be no bloody horror, and sensitive topics such as race and religion should not be touched, so they are not included in the crackdown.

This censorship regulation is just a strict curse on comic books and has nothing to do with newspaper and magazine comics.

Therefore, some comic companies changed their approach and published them in the form of magazines. For example, EC Company switched to publishing the satirical comic magazine MAD, which was a great success.

In order to circumvent censorship regulations, Marvel also published horror comics in the form of magazines.

Unfortunately, the losses still cannot be made up. At this time, Goodman, the founder of Marvel Comics, had no choice but to close the company then named Atlas. Although its comics were still being published, the company ended up with only a small office and lost all distribution channels, having to use the channels of rival DC Comics to distribute the few remaining comics.

Marvel Comics was teetering on the brink of collapse, and the comics industry seemed so hopeless that Stan Lee, who had struggled for many years in the face of adversity, almost decided to quit the industry and find another job. It was not until the 1960s that comics could really turn around. Today's comic companies are money-losers, and no one wants to get involved, even the people who draw comics have stopped working.

Seeing this situation, Alex felt that he had an opportunity to take advantage of it. He planned to acquire both Marvel Comics and DC Comics. As for losing money, he didn't think about losing money. He thought, since he won't draw Superman or something, then I can draw other things. He has read a lot of comics, so he might as well let those artists work on girls' comics.

However, the first thing is to do a good job as an investment company. Alex mentioned his idea to his parents to see their reaction.

"Carpenter Investment Company? What is that for?" Bart was a little confused after hearing this. He really didn't understand investment.

Angel understood it clearly, and she asked: "Alex, do you think the company controlled by our family now has chaotic relations and complicated fund mobilization?"

After all, she is a person who manages finances. Even if she has no real education in this area, she still understands this issue. Angel knew that the Carpenters now controlled more and more companies, but the relationships among them were becoming more and more complicated. If there is no company to mediate the relationship, they will end up in trouble.

In fact, Alex didn't know much about this, but he knew that it would be very complicated to easily withdraw a large amount of funds for other things like before. If there are some emergencies that require several companies to withdraw funds, it will be an impossible task. There are too many things to wade through, and no one company can control the whole situation.

"So what are you going to do?" Bart asked.

"I think the best way is to set up a Carpenter holding company, and use this company to control all the companies under our Carpenter family name. As for the mobilization of funds, this company can also be used to cooperate."

"It sounds good. Maybe if we integrate electronics, batteries, records, movies, agents, etc., will it be very troublesome?" Bart doesn't want to change the status quo. He thinks it is good as it is now. . Everyone is in charge, and there is no trouble. Now the Carpenter family is in the expansion stage. Once they have a holding company above their heads, they will feel uncomfortable doing anything.

Angel thought for a while and felt that it was better to be quiet now, so he also said: "I think it will be better to wait in a few years. When you and Richard are adults, we will sort out the shares. Let's do it now. If so, it will be difficult to change the shares in the future.”

Her concerns were not unreasonable. Alex had never considered this issue. He doesn't care how many shares he holds in it, as long as he has enough money to spend. As for power, it really has no attraction for him.

"Okay! Then I'll set up my own investment company first. Anyway, I made so much money from the movie this time, it should be enough."

As soon as Alex mentioned the money earned from the movie, he immediately changed the subject. Both Bart and Angel are very concerned about how much money DreamWorks has made, especially "The Sound of Music", which is said to have nearly exceeded 100 million in box office (it has not yet been released). It is even possible to catch up with the box office record of the movie "Gone with the Wind", which is really an astronomical figure.

A few days later, Alex informed Morris that he would withdraw two-thirds of DreamWorks' funds. After hearing the news, Morris was shocked and thought something had happened.

"Why were so many funds taken away? Did something happen? So much money was needed." Morris asked.

Alex then explained to him about the investment company, which made Morris understand.

Morris has nothing to do about this. After all, he has only joined DreamWorks for a short time. He only has options and has not yet been able to own shares. 100% of DreamWorks' shares belong to Alex alone. No one thought at the beginning that he could make so much money just by relying on one or two movies.

Alex plans to withdraw US$100 million from DreamWorks as start-up capital for the investment company.

This is already a large amount of money, and it will certainly not be available all at once. It may take a year or so to reach that much money, but what he is worried about is not the money problem, but the people problem. After all, he couldn't manage the investment company all the time. He had to find someone to take care of it for him.

Who should I look for? Alex felt a little worried. He thought about looking for Soros, but when he thought about it, this guy was probably still in school, not to mention Soros was a fund manager, which seemed a bit inconsistent with his requirements.

So he wanted to find Buffett. This guy is engaged in stocks. He is known as the god of stocks and his investment is extremely good, but he has not graduated yet. After much deliberation, I still didn’t have a good candidate, so I had to do it myself first.

Carpenter Investments was founded quietly, starting with just a few million dollars. Looking at it today, these millions of dollars are simply not enough to do anything big. But at that time, it was already a lot of money.

When Buffett started, he had already established an investment company with only US$300,000.

Alex originally wanted to bring Soros and Buffett over so that he would have two investment geniuses, one good and one evil. In his eagerness, he discovered that the other party had not yet completed their studies. Even if they wanted to work, Alex was a little uneasy. People only see the successful side of successful people, but selectively ignore the moments of failure.

All success is piled on the basis of countless failures, and he does not want to become the cornerstone of success for such a family. However, he still asked people to investigate and pay attention to these two big guys, and when the time was right, he would recruit them.

The first thing Alex's investment company did when he was established was to help Richard get the "Captain America" ​​special issue, and he acquired the entire Marvel Comics Company.

Faced with the dollar bills that Alex waved, Goodman quickly sold the company to Alex happily.

However, in order to retain talents, he still made some adjustments and established an option system. With the attraction of options, many people are willing to work for the new boss. Even Goodman, the original boss of Marvel Comics, has sold himself out.

"Our company's current distribution channels are basically gone. Even if we have comics, we can't sell them." After Goodman sold the company to Alex, he told the grim fact. UU read www.uukanshu.net

Alex was mentally prepared for this, and he asked: "Then how do our company's comics sell?"

Goodman said helplessly: "Those sold through DC Comics still have sales channels, but we have to pay them a commission fee."

Alex thought for a moment and said, "How much will it cost to buy DC?"

Goodman looked at Alex with some surprise, wondering if this young billionaire was crazy, why would he spend so much money to buy a comic company. Could it be that rich people just have quirks and like to spend money on fun?

Although he thought so, he didn't show it on his face. He said, "It may cost $500,000. After all, their company is bigger than ours."

When Alex bought Marvel Comics, he only spent $100,000. Don’t think that $100,000 is very small. $100,000 at this time is equivalent to $1 million in future generations. At this time, Marvel Comics only had one office and a few people. For Goodman, this is simply a pie-in-the-sky thing, so why not do it.

However, when Alex bought it, he had already signed a contract with him to stay and help manage the company.

Even if Goodman leaves the company, he will not be allowed to work in the comics industry for twenty years, which was Alex's condition for buying the company. He didn't want to spend money, only to have the person run away and use his own money to build a new company.

This contract is also signed with other employees of the company, but the conditions are different.