No one ever said comic-book fans were an easy bunch to please. Perhaps the best-known caricature of rabid comic fandom can be found on The Simpsons: Comic Book Guy (AKA, Jeff Albertson), the portly, ultra-curmudgeonly proprietor of Springfield's Android's Dungeon, whose protectiveness of his hobby (not to mention his livelihood) is rivaled only by his dismissiveness of anything that undermines or threatens it. When confronted with the slightest alteration to a beloved entertainment property (in this case, an unpalatable episode of Itchy & Scratchy, the cartoon within the cartoon), he is prone to snarl, "Worst. Episode. Ever."

With Monday's announcement that Disney would be acquiring Marvel Comics for $4 billion in cash and stock, reactions from comic-book fans was typically negative. But mixed with the primal screams was optimism about what the deal might mean for what Disney's Bob Iger called Marvel's "treasure trove of content."

"*sobs* WHY, MARVEL?! WHY'D YOU LET THOSE BEASTS HAVE YOU?! WHYYYYY?!" moaned one Twitter user who calls herself Farah Stark. (Stark lists her location as "Mars. Vulcan, Earth," which makes her unrestrained display of emotion all the more surprising.) Another named Desiree Davidson (from the planet Toronto) tweeted, "Terrible news... Marvel better not get all lame now." Self-described "comic-book geek" Michael Effron of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, went through part of the Kübler-Ross-like stages of tweet, going from shock ("Damn it…why couldn't NBC/Uni buy Marvel?"), followed by bargaining, ("As Disney owns ABC…will more Marvel TV series hit the digitial [sic] airwaves?"), then testing ("Will Marvel Island in Universal Studios be it's own park at Disney?"), and, finally, acceptance ("Don't forget Disney owns the Muppets!: Hulk and Kermit the Frog team-up!") within the span of about 20 minutes.

But for some, the deal doesn't automatically portend the end of a beloved franchise.

"Our first thought was, Jeez, what took so long?" said Mitch Cutler, CEO of St. Marks Comics in New York's East Village. Cutler said comic retails and fans knew Marvel would sell to a larger company some day: "We'd been thinking about it for a while—some even wishing for it," he said, adding, "We didn't know it would be Disney."

Over at Forbidden Planet, another New York City comic-book store, Arlen Schumer, an illustrator and the author of The Silver Age of Comic Book Art was talking with store manager Matt Desiderio about the deal. "I don't think it's the old Disney. It's the new Disney," he said. "The old Disney would've made me worried."

Schumer called Disney's move for Marvel "very historical," noting, "America's No. 1 creator of fantasy is taking up with a native art form. Maybe it means that comics have arrived." He said he hopes that Disney can use its clout—and its influence with parents—to promote comic reading as a form of literacy. He's also hoping for a "realistically animated" Disney animation take on a Marvel property.

Desiderio pointed to Marvel's edgier, more adult-oriented Max and wondered about the publisher's new parent company "taking away" its essence, softening the explicit comics to fit a larger Disney culture. "It could totally go either way," he said.

Few people had come to Forbidden Planet with concerns about the Disney deal, Desiderio said, but he expected a rough adjustment period: "There's gonna be a lot of backlash at first."

St. Marks's Cutler also anticipated negative feedback from fans. "It'll all be negative. It's the nature of any fandom," he said, citing to early, negative buzz for this J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movie, which eventually gave way to rapturous praise from fans upon its release. "The natural response to this [by Marvel fans] is to be concerned. The thinking is, They're going to screw this up!"

"I think that it's premature to be concerned."