Definitely going to check out the book referenced in the thread but the 1996 Chapter 11 Filing is pretty well documented on Google.
but you are right; surely MArvel isn't so stupid as to license away their most valuable assets for such a long duration unless they were going broke. And they deserved it at that time too from my point of view they sued some legit comic book publishers (like Defiant) just because even though they had no case. But the defending comic book makers went outta business anyways from the legal fees.
Marvel was dirty and I stopped buying their comics for a long time.