AXEL ALONSO, the new editor in chief of Marvel Comics, was recalling how, about 10 years ago, when he was less experienced and recently hired by the company, he persuaded the British writer Peter Milligan to take over a struggling superhero comic called X-Force.

“We drank all night, to the degree I realized I can’t go home because I’ll be sick,” said Mr. Alonso, a lean man of 45 with a bald head and a close-cropped beard. “We walked around all night, got breakfast the next day. I said, ‘So, you’re writing this.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m writing this.’ ”

With some wistfulness, Mr. Alonso added, “Those were the days.”

In the year 2011 this is how the day-to-day destiny of Marvel Entertainment, the home of universally recognized characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man and the mighty Thor, and whose publishing division releases 60 to 90 comic books a month, is now determined.

One day last month in the company’s office in Midtown Manhattan, its top creative talent — 30 or so people, mostly male, many bald or bearded, or both — were gathered in a conference room known as the Hulk room, for what felt like the simultaneous meetings of a corporation, a television writing staff and the traders of the New York Stock Exchange.