Merger Mondays may be back.

After an abysmal summer—an abysmal year really—Monday brought hope for a more active mergers-and-acquisitions market in the near future, with two high-profile multibillion-dollar buyouts ranging from the glamorous world of entertainment to the gritty but valuable energy sector.

Walt Disney is buying Marvel Entertainment, and oilfield-services player Baker Hughes is buying B.J. Services Co. Together, the deals announced Monday were worth almost as much as all the other U.S. mergers-and-acquisitions deals announced in August put together.

The deals announced Monday were worth about $8.9 billion. In all of August previous to Monday, there had only been $13 billion in deals done, the lowest number since February 1992. "You are starting to see more action in the M&A market," said Jay Sherwood, head of media, entertainment, and banking at McGladrey Capital Markets, an investment bank based in Costa Mesa, California.

Unlike in the heyday of the private equity deal, Monday’s mergers weren’t leveraged buyouts. Both were strategic acquisitions, with companies buying up competitors in cash and stock deals meant to strengthen their own competitive positions. "These are strategic acquisitions of value. Private equity still is not necessarily back in this market because financing and outside money are tight. Until you see private equity back, you won’t see a big push behind M&A,” says Roger Aguinaldo, CEO of The M&A Advisor, a firm that connects M&A professionals. With fewer potential buyers on the scene, M&A valuations are off of their peaks. “It is a good time to buy. These companies have been bought at a lower relative value than in the past," Aguinaldo said.

In the higher-profile but less valuable deal, Walt Disney announced it was buying Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion, a deal representing a 30 percent premium over Marvel’s valuation, and one that gives Disney access to some 5,000 Marvel characters for future movies, television shows, theme-park rides, and videogames." Are Marvel franchises fully exploited? No. There is more opportunity to develop them across platforms, in movies, and in live entertainment," Sherwood said. And Marvel, which has been itching to make more movies, can tap the resources of its huge new parent, Sherwood said.

Marvel characters such as Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and the X-Men have already been made into successful movie franchises. And with a library of characters like Thor, Captain America, and the Silver Surfer, the possibility for more comic-themed entertainment from the Marvel division is rich.

And it should help Disney reach a key demographic. "This helps give Disney more important exposure to the young male demographic that they have sort of lost some ground with in recent years," David Joyce, an analyst with Miller Tabak & Co., told Reuters.

And Disney says it doesn’t want to mess with the formula. Marvel’s management, led by Ike Perlmutter, will continue to run the division.