Marvel vs DC (Comics)

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First of all, it always distresses me that people are so eager to jump into the DC vs Marvel discussion without actually having any basis in the actual comic books. People tend to base their answers on the general stereotypes of the two companies, or the movies or the 1960’s Batman tv show. I know I sound like one of those snobs who accuse everyone else of being fake geeks for not doing things their way, but who here actually reads comics on a monthly basis. 👋 I do.

I buy about fourteen comic books a month, all but one (IDW’s My little Pony title) are published by DC. In 2008, I decided that I wanted to read comics. Having limited funds, I then decided that I would focus my funds on only one comic universe. Maybe it was because of the Justice League cartoon, maybe it’s because my favorite comic reviewer Linkara (who got me into my favorite super hero, Booster Gold) leans a little on DC’s side, maybe it was because the Batman in The Dark Knight Returns reminds me of my father, but for whatever reason, I chose DC. I bought the occasional trade paperback for a while until the New 52 was announced in 2011. Because the whole point of the relaunch was to encourage new people to start reading, I thought that this was a good opportunity to start taking the monthly comics thing seriously.

My pull list has changed over the past two years and I have considered adding Marvel books, but I haven’t. Some of DC’s books are $2.99 and others are $3.99, but almost all of Marvel’s books are $3.99. Marvel also has several titles that are published twice a month. This meant that I would have to give up two, maybe three DC titles to pick up a single Marvel title and still stay in budget. It doesn’t seem worth it. I also considered getting trades, but I still have several DC trades I want to get and those would have to come first. Basically, Marvel doesn’t fit in my budget. I wish I had a better answer for why I read one and not the other, but I don’t.
 
tomarin said:
The two companies hit their stride at different periods of time, reflecting different eras of popular culture. The DC characters were a throwback to an earlier era, so that they always seemed to me more one-dimensional and standard issue broad-shouldered hero types. They had alter-egos but these were essentially charades. They had love interests but these urges remained largely deferred. By contrast, the point of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Marvel characters that they invented in the early 1960’s seemed to be to present life in all of its messy glory, so that the “heroes” were flawed, perhaps relatable human beings who to a greater or lesser degree were dysfunctional, and their dysfunction bled into their “superhero” persona. Some were even anti-heroes, like the original Hulk or the revived Submariner (or the Thing from the Fantastic Four, for that matter).

By the early 1970’s a lot of these characters had become domesticated, and Marvel got into a cosmic phase in which the stories had a lot to do with other dimensions and long sagas involving postponing apocalyptic outcomes. Stan Lee and his successors had perfected the art of “creating the illusion of change.”

I think the Marvel way proved so popular that sooner or later the other companies who published superhero comics had to imitate it or perish, and by the 1970’s when I began reading comics the DC titles seemed a pale imitation of Marvel ones.
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Dysfunctional? Gotta disagree there. The Marvel characters had, in general, some personal problems aside from defeating the bad guy, but because they cared. Spider-Man and Aunt May. Superman had a weakness: Kryptonite. But he had friends and acquaintances.

The original Hulk was less intelligent and less thoughtful about who or what he was dealing with. A bit like the original Frankenstein. Hulk smash! OK. That’s one way to solve a problem. The Submariner had arrogance and a big ego. And the Thing? The ever-lovin’ blue-eyed Thing? So he could tear off the side of a building to hurl it against an enemy. So what? He was out to defend people or defeat the bad guy.

The media has perfected the art of “creating the illusion of change” but not in a good way most of the time. The common character template today for TV and movie characters is The Dysfunctionals. Every which way but right.

Peace,
Ed
 
tomarin said:
This is something so fundamental that we take it for granted but it was an idea that had to be developed, in this case by Stan Lee (if I’m not mistaken).
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The other thing Stan Lee pioneered, which made his superheros so different from the others at the time was that they had real life problems. Peter Parker was Spiderman! but he still had trouble getting a date and studying for tests. Another early draw to Marvel was the whole mutant/discrimination thing that allegorized (is that a real word? Oh, wait! This is English, so if it didn’t exist, it now does 🙂 the civil rights movement.

My family didn’t spend money on comics, and when I got my first jobs I spent my money on scifi paperbacks (first one I bought was a novelization of Fantastic Voyage for 60 cents). But I did like reading them when I had the rare chance. And liked the Marvel superheros better than the DC ones (except for the Green Lantern).

Interesting point about the “normal” people in DC mentioned above. Never noticed that.

Tom A.
If anyone wants to listen to the 1930’s Superman radio shows, they are available from the internet archive. Warning, they are not politically correct. Example: “Even though he’s well educated, the Orientals have an innate belief in the supernatural” Something similar was said about the Native Americans.
 
Comic books were for kids. As a boy, the real world didn’t matter much. The alternate reality of comic books was just meant to be fun. Even today, when I read fiction, I’m not looking for allegories to real life. Today, good fiction takes you to strange, new worlds. Things that concern adults generally don’t concern young readers.

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
Dysfunctional? Gotta disagree there. The Marvel characters had, in general, some personal problems aside from defeating the bad guy, but because they cared. Spider-Man and Aunt May. Superman had a weakness: Kryptonite. But he had friends and acquaintances.
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If you look at the earliest issues of Spiderman and the Fantastic Four, the main heroes seem a lot more tortured than the way they would appear when they reached their fullest development. Peter Parker is a snivelling coward, or at least he comes off that way to me. Reed Richards also seems to be riddled by insecurities perhaps related to his giant intellect and consequent inability to relate to ordinary people. Sue Storm seems unsure of how real Reed’s feelings are for her, and implicitly also about how real her feelings are for him, and her brother Johnny is practically a stereotype of the arrogant teenager (strangely, more from an adult’s point of view than a sympathetic kids’) who can’t control his emotions.

Ben Grimm is the worst basket-case of all. He’s all brooding, scowling anti-hero, Lord Byron encased in Frankenstein’s monster’s body. He only seems to take any pleasure in life when it’s clobberin’ time. Stan Lee lays it on thick in these first issues, in order to provide some psychological depth to the characters and to make them seem more interesting and relatable to the audience than the classic broad-shouldered, emotionally uncomplicated superhero, a la the Man of Steel. When you read these first issues after years of being familiar with the characters as they appear fully-developed, it can seem a bit like overkill bordering on emotional hysteria, but I certainly understand what he was up to. He wanted to grab people’s attention with these new characters and assure readers that they had an inner, psychological life. To the point that they need psychological counseling, even.
 
At least you saw the J-shaped searchlight I projected high into the sky above Catholic Answers, and answered the call of duty. For that I salute you.
okay obviously I need to work on this superhero thing. Possibly a less earnest tone for starters.
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'S okay. As the only Irish superhero I know if is Banshee, the bar is set low, my friend. Very low.
 
tomarin said:
If you look at the earliest issues of Spiderman and the Fantastic Four, the main heroes seem a lot more tortured than the way they would appear when they reached their fullest development…
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As an addendum to this post, Ed, I can see how by today’s standards of “dysfunction” their problems probably seem pretty mild. They’re not cannibals or foot fetishists. But I contend that when they were introduced the readers were unfamiliar with the idea of superheroes with this degree of psychological instability.
 
Well b’gorrah. I thought you (rightly) couldn’t stand Banshee for being only a few shades more serious than the Lucky Charms leprechaun. Good to know.

I think being a wee lad when I first encountered him, I naively just thought it was cool that there was an Irish member of X-men, and of course anything and anyone associated with X-men at that time of Claremont and Byrne seemed cool.
 
Maybe Reed is a father figure to Sue. He certainly knows how to smoke a pipe, or used to. Anyway, Sue is very boring and always has been, whereas Reed Richards is “the man” when it comes to solving a problem or fixing a space ship. He’s the one you want on your team, the quarterback, the general, and he has that cool touch of gray on the side of his head. Very mature-looking.
 
A pox on both their houses, eh? I think however you will concede that in the 1970’s if you stacked them side by side the Marvel output was pound for pound just way more happening. It seems to me the first time DC regained a spot of “street cred” was when Alan Moore began writing Swamp Thing.

And a lot of the credit for that energy at Marvel goes to Jack Kirby’s style of artwork. The way it jumped out at you.
 
Denny O’Neill was the guy I was thinking of. Gotta plow through those cobwebs in my brain.
If I remember correctly we didn’t see much (if at all) of Robin in those years. The villians even changed. The Joker became more the serial killer type and Catwoman and the Penquin were nowhere in sight.
 
Truly cringe-worthy, thank you. Yeah their hearts were in the right place but the execution left something to be desired, namely a more subtle touch than that of a sledgehammer. Very familiar tone when the subject came to civil rights and other weighty matters. I seem to remember reading that while black super heroes and heroines at Marvel in the 1970’s were few and far between (and not always tastefully done) on the other hand “Jungle Action” was notable in that it had an all-black, all-African cast of characters. I have the omnibus edition at home but have yet to dive into it. Too wordy.
 
4Squarebaby said:
Perhaps but in part because of Batman and later Wonder Woman depictions on television DC became the kiddie company compared to the more adult David Banner Bill Bixby played. As young teens going towards adulthood most of my friends were into Marvel with only the artist buying from both companies.

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The Bill Bixby Hulk was far more adult than the other “superhero” TV shows of the seventies.
Oddly, the show (and even the theme song) resembled “The Fugitive”.
 
JustaServant said:
The Bill Bixby Hulk was far more adult than the other “superhero” TV shows of the seventies.
Oddly, the show (and even the theme song) resembled “The Fugitive”.
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Those four simple tones that begin the theme song still promise to jerk a tear out of me, even now all these years later.
 
Byrne’s run on the Fantastic Four coincides with when I was moving on to other things in my life and I was on the verge of checking out of superhero comics completely although I did subscribe to that title and remember not liking what he was doing with it (i.e. his obsession with retro style). Frankly I worshiped him as an artist but thought he was out of his depth as a writer. He did put Sue more at the center of things, I vaguely remember.

I have the gray on the side going on, too.
 
If he’s their idea of a good guy, I’d hate to see the bad guys.
 
Is that why Claremont is out of favor with comics fans today, because of his sensitivity? I remember reading not too long ago a statement of his to the effect that he really didn’t care to write fight scenes because he found them boring and juvenile. He’d rather do character development. I thought that was interesting because I myself have wondered as I’ve been revisiting some of this stuff how on earth I would credibly write about the umpteenth face-off between opposed super-powered beings with a measure of freshness to it. I really don’t think I could, actually.

As I read through Alan Moore’s work I do so with an eye to how he handles this problem. There has to be a certain amount of “clobberin’” in any super-hero title but how as an adult can you make it seem interesting and not repetitive?
 
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