Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is the Wonderful World of Four Colors?

A. It’s a superhero universe based on Disney movies. Essentially, it’s a look at what superhero comics based on Disney properties might look like. The name is a combination of Disney’s “Wonderful World of Color” and “four color” comics books.

Q. Wonderful World of Four Colors is a mouthful. Want to shorten that up?

A. Sure. Call it the WW4C for short.

Q. Why are you doing this?

A. Initially, this started out when I was watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks for the first time in a couple of decades. I realized that the story of a witch fighting Nazis was kind of a superhero story, and from there I started to see how I could connect a bunch of live-action (or live-action with animation) Disney movies together into one coherent universe.

Later, after Disney acquired Marvel, it became a reaction to that—or maybe a counter-reaction to the reaction that Disney was going to turn Marvel comics into a bunch of lace and frills aimed at tween girls.

Q. Is this legal?

A. The First Amendment protects “fair use” of trademarked or copyrighted material for purposes of parody or criticism. The WW4C is a bit of both. It's a look at some classic (and not-so-classic) Disney movies through the eyes of a comic book fan.

Additionally, it’s never going to be confused with Disney’s actual product (for one thing, Disney makes much more attractive websites), and it’s definitely not a substitute for actually watching these movies, some of which I’m only including based on Wikipedia entries because I’ve never had the chance to see them myself.

Q. What’s with the game statistics?

A. I like roleplaying games. I was planning on using the Wild Talents roleplaying game to write up characters, but I find it to be unwieldy. I'm still using its system for describing the game world, but characters will be written for Mutants & Masterminds 2nd edition or, when it comes out, DC Adventures/Mutants & Masterminds 3e.


Q. You forgot to mention my favorite movie/TV show/cartoon. What gives?

A. I’ve set arbitrary ground rules for myself on what gets included. First, only live-action (or primarily live-action) movies from Disney. I do include a couple of Disney TV shows, and a couple of Disney’s TV movies but, for the most part, live-action movies. Where appropriate, I borrow the superhero convention of parallel universes to explain some things, like where Princess Giselle comes from in Enchanted. Yes, this does mean that I won't be discussing Gargoyles and Darkwing Duck, except to say that they exist in a different world than this one.

Also, there’s just no way for me to see everything that Disney has done, so I accept that some things will fall through the cracks.

Q. Disney owns Marvel, so all the Marvel characters are in this, right?

A. Yes and no. Before Marvel started making its own movies, it farmed out the movie rights to several of its top characters to other film studios. Until Disney buys back the rights to Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, the X-Men, and so forth, there can’t be Disney movies based on them. The rest of the characters that are showing up in Marvel movies—like The Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, etc.—are going into their own parallel universe.

The director of the upcoming Captain America movie, though, also directed The Rocketeer for Disney. I would be elated if The Rocketeer made a cameo appearance somewhere in the Captain America movie.