RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books When the heck did DC start outselling Marvel?

Here's the top 300 for September

And for October.



A comic shop owner I spoke to said that DC's reboot of all their titles has given a huge boost to their sales. Plus other marketing of their "52" titles is apparently going well.

He said that DC's simplifying their continuity with a reboot makes them friendlier to new readers. And what they lose in pissed-off longtime fans, they make up in new readers.
Maybe at some point Marvel will do the same.

I've said since the early 1990's that you almost need a PhD in comic book continuity to know what's going on.

And that's why for 20 years I've been more drawn to limited series and Elseworlds-type projects.
Crossover events at this point pretty much guarantee I won't be buying.



With October's list, I was doubly surprised that the top seller wasn't Marvel or DC. The Walking Dead being the number one TV series carries over, making it the number one comic book. Although I wonder after 3 years, why this particular issue is number one. It was #19 the month before.

The only time I ever got a little confused about continuity was when Johns was fucking with the Superman titles. I got disgusted enough that I just dropped the titles.

I stopped reading the Superman titles shortly after Byrne left the books, and DC started having an annual meeting of editors and writers to hammer out Superman stories for the year.

And all the Superman titles became one long ongoing crossover, where no story was limited to one creative team. I love writer Roger Stern, and some of the artists involved, but quit reading because: What good is it to read their work if they never complete a story, and I have to read some substandard hack's work for the remaining 3/4 of the story, as the story is spread across 4 different titles a month?

And I stopped even looking at the Superman titles when Superman got a ponytail, and they had those marketing gimmick "Death of Superman" and "Funeral For A Friend" storylines.
My opinion, the worst absolute shit garbage ever published.

But I digress.


Continuity at DC got confusing for me after CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, where they tried to smash down all the multiple earths into one continuity, and they got rid of Earth 2 (golden age) Superman, and many other characters. And even characters like Rip Hunter, the Atomic Knights and Kamandi, instead of each having their own world, became mutually exclusive and had to conform to one "DC universe".

Then in the late 80's and beyond, other writers began to chip away at the single-universe set up by CRISIS and bring back some of the characters and parallel worlds, so it was no longer clear what rules applied.
One example is Morrison/Quitely's JLA: EARTH 2. Which was Earth 3 in the 1956-1986 continuity. And now what had been the Golden Age parallel earth became the Evil JLA earth.

Since then, there have been so many reboots that I no longer know what even still exists.
Legion continuity being the pre-eminent example.

I think Marvel lost it's foothold a while back sales wise. Also surprised that the new 52 is working! I'm not a pissed off fan but I just haven't been interested in the newest reboot. In some respects it wasn't a dramatic cut off for me. My big title was the Legion and that seemed to have been insulated from most of the dramatic changes. The biggest change was the rarely seen XS character vanished. Levitz didn't use her before that so even that wasn't much of a change.

I'm a little surprised to read this too. Marvel have been getting great coverage for their characters through the movies. I would have guessed it was the other way around.

Also, the sample of DC books I'm reading all uniformly exhibit lacklustre writing so I don't see the fuss. Then again, I'm not reading any Bat titles or Superman titles so perhaps I'm missing something.

We tend to think of Marvel as the "new" company. However, Marvel continuity is over 50 years old at this point.

While there have been soft reboots over the years, mostly due to the sliding time scale (ex: Tony Stark being injured 'Nam eventually became Afghanistan or Iraq), Marvel is currently more or less at the point in its history where DC had it's first major "official" reboot



Same here. I want to read a story, not a chapter in a year long serialized novel that doesn't really hold together due to the various writers and artists not being coordinated.



Supposedly, one of the best selling comic books in the world is DC's "Injustice: Gods among us." That's based on a video game, not a movie. I think there's an argument to be made that people who typically buy comics would be more inclined to respond to the coverage created by video games than by movies and, as a corollary, the people who are into video games are more likely to pick up a comic book tied into the game than people who go to movies are.

I would agree with the second part of your statement but not the first. Comic fans would be just as happy for the big screen adaptation of their favorite characters as they would be to play the characters in a video game.

DC has really amped up thier game this past summer. Trinity War and now Forever Evil have reinfused the DCU with some much needed excitement.

Compared with the tepid offerings a Marvel in the same span (Infinity and Battle of the Atom), I can see why fans are rallying behind DC. It's just bigger and more exciting, imho.

I think DC's writing is generally weaker. Bendis and Millar have done a better job at Marvel. Johns is weaksauce and seems to write everything. Simone (yes, Pariah) is formulaic. Robinson is being replaced on Earth 2 by someone named Tom Taylor (never heard of him).

Of the big name writers, Morrison isn't writing for DC anymore (that's right isn't it?). Ellis seems to have gone back to sitting in the jungle waiting to the war to end (and last wrote for Marvel, anyway, in his self-described "year of whoredom") and writing novels. Moore isn't doing commercial comics anymore. Frank Miller has milked DC's creamy white udders and so now he doesn't need to work again.

I'll take Johns over Bendis any day ot the week. I fucking loathe Bendis. He can barely respect his own continuity, much less the larger Marvel Universe.

I think Soule is currently one of the best writers in comics. He's owning it at DC with Superman/Wonder Woman, Swamp Thing and Red Lanterns. He's also managed to lift Marvel's Thunderbolts out of the dregs and shape something amazing out of it.

Ewing is the real stand out right now. Everything he touches is pure magic. His Black Widow story for Age of Ultron (Avengers Assemble #16AU, I think) was one of the best reads all year. Mighty Avengers is easily one of the most entertaining reads on the stands, despite it's obvious niche gimmick.

Morrison is currently penning Multiversity and a Wonder Woman project for DC. Ellis recently put out Endless Wartime for Marvel, as well as co-writing current issues of Avengers Assemble with Kelly-Sue Deconik. He'll be writing Moon Kight, starting next spring.

I'm going to dissagree that the writing for DC is sub-par. It could simply be that I've a stronger affinity to DC characters, though. I find I get more bang for my buck with nearly any DC book, where only a handful of Marvel titles resonate with me. Uncanny Avengers makes up for a slew of Marvel's shortcomings though. That's easily the finest superhero comic on the stands.

Tom Taylor (born 29 November 1978) is an award-winning comic book author, an award-winning playwright and has also written for radio, musicals, film, magazines, and television. He is the creator of The Deep: Here Be Dragons, The Example and Rombies and is well known for his many Star Wars works and his work on the DC Comics series Injustice: Gods Among Us.

He wrote The Deep?!? huh. He's an Australian. The Deep has been a very successful indie comic which is apparently going into production in Europe as a cartoon.