In the early fifties, Dr. Frederick Weitham, an American psychologist, in his book "Seducing the Innocent", advocated the "harmful theory of comics" as the main culprit of juvenile delinquency.

Frightened parents began to boycott comics and even burn comic books. The National Assembly held a special hearing on this, at which EC, which is known for publishing horror comics, tried to defend itself, but it was counterproductive.

Comic companies had to agree to set up a self-regulatory organization, set regulations, self-censorship, or self-castration. The golden age of its primeur was in decline.

A large number of comic companies have closed down, cartoonists have changed careers, and the few remaining companies have no choice but to play the safe card and dare not take a step beyond the thunder pool. Horror and crime themes were banned, and other themes also died, and later the situation of hero comics being the dominant family was also caused by this.

It's not just comics that have been affected, but also Hollywood movies and newspapers.

However, because the newspaper has to face the public, it is quite cautious about the content of the comic strips it publishes, and there can be no bloody horror, and sensitive topics such as race and religion cannot be touched, so they are not among the crackdowns.

This censorship regulation is only a tightening spell for comic books, and has nothing to do with newspaper and magazine comics.

As a result, some manga companies changed course and published in the form of magazines, such as EC companies, which published the satirical manga magazine MAD to great success.

Marvel has also published horror comics in magazine format to circumvent censorship regulations.

Unfortunately, it still can't make up for the loss. At this time, Goodman, the founder of Marvel Comics, had no choice but to close the company called Atlas at the time. Although its comics were still being published, the company was left with a small office and lost all distribution channels, having to borrow the channels of rival DC Comics to distribute the few remaining comics.

Marvel Comics was teetering on the brink of collapse, and the comic book industry seemed so promising that Stan Lee, who had struggled for years in the face of adversity, almost decided to quit the industry and find another job. It wasn't until after the 60s that comics really took a turnaround. The current comic company is a money-losing company, and no one wants to get their hands dirty, even the people who draw comics are gone.

Seeing this situation, Alex felt that there was an opportunity to take advantage of it, and he planned to take both Marvel Comics and DC Comics into his pocket. As for losing money, he didn't think about losing money, he thought, since I don't paint Superman or anything, then I can't paint anything else. He reads a lot of comics, so it's better to let those artists do girl's comics.

However, the first thing is to do a good job of the investment company. Alex brought up his thoughts with his parents to see how they reacted.

"Carpenter Investments? What is that for? Bart didn't understand after hearing this, he really didn't know anything about investment.

Angel understood, and she asked, "Alex, do you think that the relationship between the companies controlled by our family is chaotic and the transfer of funds is complicated?" ”

After all, she is a financial manager, and even if she is not really educated in this area, she understands this problem. Angel knows that the Carpenter now controls more and more companies, but the relationship is becoming more and more complicated. If there is no company to reconcile the relationship, it will end up being a problem for them.

In fact, Alex didn't know much about these things, but he knew that it would be a very complicated thing to easily take out a large amount of money to do other things like before. If there is an unexpected event that requires several companies to withdraw funds, it will be an impossible thing to do. There are so many things to blame for no one company to control.

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

"I think the best way to do this is to set up a Carpenter Holding Company and control all the companies under our Carpenter family through this company. As for the mobilization of funds, it can also be coordinated through this company. ”

"Sounds good, but maybe if you put electronics, batteries, records, movies, agents, and so on together, wouldn't it be a hassle now?" Bart didn't want to change the situation, and he thought it would be nice to be like this. Each man is in charge of a piece, and there is no disorder. Now the Carpenter family is in the expansion stage, once a holding company is on top of their heads, it feels like nothing is very cool.

Angel thought about it, and also felt that it was better to be quiet and not move now, so she also said: "I think it will be said in a few years, and when you and Richard are adults, we will sort out the shares in it." If you do it now, it will be difficult to change the shares in the future. ”

Her concerns were not unreasonable, and Alex had never considered them. He doesn't care how much he has in it, he just has enough money to spend. As for power or something, it really doesn't have any attraction to him.

"Alright! Then I'll start my own investment company. Anyway, I made so much money from the movie this time, it should be enough. ”

As soon as Alex talked about the money made from the movie, he immediately pulled the topic away. Bart and Angel are very concerned about how much money DreamWorks makes, especially this "The Sound of Music", which is said to be on the verge of surpassing 100 million at the box office (which has not yet been painted). It is even possible to catch up with the box office record of the movie "Gone with the Wind", which is really astronomical.

A few days later, Alex informed Morris that he was siphoning off two-thirds of DreamWorks' funds. Upon hearing the news, Morris was taken aback and thought something had changed.

"Why do you want to siphon off so much money? Is there something going on, it takes so much money? Morris asked.

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

Morris has nothing to do about it, after all, he has only been with DreamWorks for too short a time, and he only has options, not a stake yet. 100% of DreamWorks' shares belong to Alex, and no one thought that they could make so much money just by relying on one or two movies.

Alex intends to set aside $100 million from DreamWorks as start-up capital for the investment company.

That's a lot of money, and it's certainly not going to be in place all at once. It may take a year or so to reach that much money, but he is not worried about money, but about people. After all, he couldn't manage the investment company all the time, and he had to find someone to take care of it for him.

Who should I look for? Alex was a little worried. He thought about looking for Soros, but after thinking about it, this guy is probably still in school, not to mention that Soros is engaged in a fund, which seems to be a little unsuitable for his requirements.

So he wanted to find Warren Buffett, this guy is engaged in stocks, known as the god of stocks, and his investment is extremely good, but he has not graduated yet. After thinking about it, there was still no good candidate, so I had to do it myself first.

Carpenter Investments was quietly founded, starting with millions of dollars. Today, these millions of dollars are simply not enough to do anything big. But at the time, it was a lot of money.

When Buffett first started, it was only $300,000, and he had already set up an investment company at that time.

Alex originally wanted to bring in both Soros and Warren Buffett, so that he would have two investment geniuses, one good and one evil. It's just that in a hurry, they find that the other party hasn't finished their studies yet, and even if they want to come to work, Alex is a little uneasy. People only see the successful side of successful people, but they selectively ignore the moment of failure.

All success is piled up on the basis of countless failures, and he doesn't want to be the cornerstone of such a person's success. However, he still asked people to investigate and pay attention to these two big bulls, and when the time is right, he will recruit them.

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

Faced with Alex's waving bills, Goodman soon happily sold the company to Alex.

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, and even Goodman, the original owner of Marvel Comics, has sold himself to join him.

"Our company's current distribution channels are basically gone, and even if there are comics, they can't sell them." When Goodman sold the company to Alex, he told the hard truth.

Alex was prepared for this, and he asked, "How did our company's comics sell?" ”

Goodman said helplessly: "If you sell through DC Comics, they still have a sales channel, but we have to pay them a consignment fee." ”

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

Goodman looked at Alex in some surprise, wondering if the young billionaire had gone crazy and spent so much money to buy a comic company. Could it be that rich people just have quirks and like to spend money to play.

He didn't show it on his face, saying, "It might take $500,000, because they're bigger than us." ”

When Alex bought Marvel Comics, he bought it for only $100,000. Don't think that the $100,000 is a lot, the $100,000 is equivalent to $1 million in the future. At this time, the Marvel Comics company was only one office and the size of a few people. For Goodman, this is a pie in the sky, so why not.

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

Even if Goodman leaves the company, he will not be allowed to work in the comic book industry for twenty years, which is a condition of Alex's purchase of the company. He didn't want to spend the money, so he ran away and used his money to build a new company.

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