RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books Are you a Marvel man or a DC man?

Marvel, or DC?

I've noticed that tendency among comics fans, that they tend to have a strong loyalty and enthusiasm for one or the other.

Despite that I myself fall into that category, I've always found that tendency rather odd, since many of the same writers, artists and editors have worked for both companies, or even freelanced for both simultaneously.
Even so, I've always been amazed how different the feel is to the work produced by Marvel, vs. that of DC.

So which do you identify with most? What about it resonates for you?
And within whichever you do, what era of work from them do you like the best?

I've always loved DC's titles the best. Mostly because I like that DC is less contained in a single "universe", and instead its titles have a variety of largely self-contained worlds. In that respect, I think DC has more variety in its line. Less so after CRISIS, but still.

My favorite era is from about 1965-1995 at DC, and more so the 1965-1980 period. Particularly for the Batman titles, and the DC Mystery titles, and Kirby's 1970-1975 DC work.
I also think work by Neal Adams, Wrightson, Kaluta and a few others gave a greater sophistication to DC's line in those years, particularly their covers.

DC also had a quieter and more understated storytelling approach that appealed to me. Writers like Dennis O'Neil, Frank Robbins, Len Wein, and later Archie Goodwin. Even Marvel guys like Steve Englehart (DETECTIVE 471-476) had a more sophisticated approach when they crossed over and did work for DC.
Marvel was more "cosmic" with these huge epics, on which hung the fate of the entire universe, with more deadpan melodrama, and stilted overplayed pseudo-Shakespearian dialogue.

I had the pleasure of telling Carmine Infantino at a July 2012 convention how much I enjoyed the titles from the era he was managing the DC line, the variety of stories and art, and how often I've re-read them over the years.
I told him "I read them like they're still current."
"A lot of people tell me that," he told me with some satisfaction.

He died about 8 months later, I'm glad I got to share with him my deep appreciation for the titles he oversaw, before he died.
And that era lives on in back issues, and collected trades and hardcovers.

Lothar is not a man.

I like both.

Judging from his avatar, I'd guess he's Kryptonian.

he's a gay

A gay homosexual!

That could apply to comics or other things!

But seriously... I like comics from both Marvel and DC also. And there's a lot of stuff I love from Marvel. But if I had to choose one, I'd pick DC for the reasons stated above.

But from Marvel, some of my favorites are McGregor/Russell AMAZING ADVENTURES/KILLRAVEN, Starlin's CAPTAIN MARVEL, WARLOCK and DREADSTAR, Englehart/Shooter/Michelinie/Perez/Byrne AVENGERS 141-225, Michelinie/Romita Jr/Layton IRON MAN 115-156, Bruce Jones/Anderson/Frenz KA-ZAR 1-27, Simonson's THOR 337-380, and many other great runs.

I enjoy Marvel too, but Marvel for me was initially more of an acquired taste. Again, it's amazing to me the difference in style between the two, despite that they share many of the same creators.

I'm more of a DC person. In part because of the Superman TV show and Batman craze of the 60s.

But another reason is that, growing up, the nearest comic book stores were 25+ miles away and I couldnt get a steady supply of the same title from month to month. Marvel's books tended to be serialized more than DC's (which typically told an entire story in single issue). I didn't want to buy a comic book where I never got to read the ending so, as a result, I typically stuck with DC books

Yeah, that's another reason I preferred DC. There were some titles I didn't get the concluding issue to until 10 or 15 years later, when I was in high school or college!

I found my first comic store in 1979 (Starship Enterprises, in Fort Lauderdale), right after I turned 16 and got my first car, and it was the only comic shop in South Florida, and similarly, it was about 20 miles away from me, impossible to visit until I had a car. I remember bike-pedaling before that (in 1975-1976) to 7-11's all over my area when I couldn't find an issue I missed, for missing issues of the "Bat-murderer" story in DETECTIVE 444-448, and other series.

There were great series like Starlin's WARLOCK that looked really good to me, but I didn't read until I had access to back issues, where I could finally read them in their entirety. That's actually one reason I've always favored back issues over new books, because then I can go and buy the whole series, vs. buying a whole series issue by issue, and then having it be cancelled before the conclusion is ever published!

At Marvel, Jim Shooter in the early 1980's put pressure on creators to do mostly single-issue stories, to allow more accessibility, and it significantly increased new readership at Marvel. So you definitely weren't alone in being put off by long serialized epics at Marvel.

..which probably helps explains why the Shooter era is the one era where I was reading more Marvel than DC.

You and me both!
I think a majority recognize there was an era of great quality under Shooter, and it turned to shit pretty much the moment he was fired. Most of the classic runs (AVENGERS, X-MEN, SPECTACULAR SPIDERMAN, AMAZING SPIDERMAN, DR STRANGE, THOR, FF, POWER MAN/IRON FIST, DAREDEVIL, MICRONAUTS, KA-ZAR, MOON KNIGHT...) happened on Shooter's watch. I don't think that quantity of consistent quality just magically happened.

http://www.milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/backissue.cgi?action=fullsize&issue=07729452144%20227


A sampling of what made me a DC man early on.
Adams' revised version of the 1940 cover for DETECTIVE COMICS 31.

Adams' covers across the entire DC line, along with his interior work on BRAVE & THE BOLD, BATMAN, DETECTIVE, the Superman titles, the mystery titles, GREEN LANTERN, FLASH, and others really set them apart with a sophistication that set them above what Marvel was doing at the time.

Adams' disproportionate high ratio of work for DC made clear he was a DC man too. I think he did less work for DC between 1972-1974 because he was making more money in advertising and with Continuity graphics, and maybe asked for more compensation from DC, then when he didn't get it just walked away.


Adams came back and did a lot of covers in 1977, and then that seemed to end with the SUPERMAN VS. MUHAMMAD ALI tabloid-size collectors' edition in 1978.

Around the same time, DC under Jeannette Kahn seemed to dumb down much of the DC line from 1976-1979, aiming more at a younger audience for the most part, that briefly pushed me away from DC. But even during that period, you had Dennis O'Neil, Len Wein, Steve Englehart, Dave Michelinie, Keith Giffen, Mike Grell, Marshall Rogers, Michael Golden, Mike Nasser, Jim Sherman, and many other talented writers and artists doing great work.

But DC really began to take off again when Dick Giordano took over as managing editor in 1980. Starting with Wolfman/Perez's TITANS run, and Pasko/Gerber/Giffen's Dr Fate backup series in FLASH, and Levitz/Giffen's LEGION run.
That was the beginning of my second era as a die-hard DC man.

I like both for different reasons, and like neither wholly in any one period. I'm more of a fan of runs on titles. Almost every hero and team has up and down moments.

Shooter was notoriously hard on creators, and overstepped and quashed some of their more inane ideas. Hence the flight to DC by many creators , and then Shooter being fired. But in the end it only showed that if Editors give creators too much freedom it totally destroys the cohesive universe and it's continuity. IMo.

I call that the "artist is everything" period, where Marvel gave total carte blanche to guys like Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane. Guys who can't write, who were suddenly writer/artists with no editorial restraint.

The peak of that period was when it was an apparent "him or me" situation on X-men between Claremont and Lee, and they booted Claremont!
Hey, he was just the guy who turned X-men into the top-selling Marvel title for 15 years, and kept it consistently at the top through multiple creative teams, we don't need him...
And things got even worse through the "Heroes Reborn" period.

Peter David's early years on HULK was the only Marvel title I was still reading through those years. That and GROO, which was technically still a Marvel title. What a contrast to the Shooter years, when I was buying more Marvel than DC for many years.

I missed some of the latter 30 issues of Groo/Epic.

You are speaking of the Harras era at Marvel..the man responsible for Nu52! Boooooooooooooooo.....
and Avengers with jackets...

Yeah, I heard that Bob Harras was removed as editor in chief because he completely bungled the sales opportunity for the Marvel line to market itself during release of the first Spiderman movie.

I'm not thrilled with Quesada's reign either, though I have to admit their cover design is much better and more sophisticated looking. The last title I enjoyed monthly from Marvel was their YOUNG AVENGERS series, for about a year or so. It had a fun early-Marvel feel to it.



I have every issue of the Marvel run of GROO, including the 6-issue sqarebound GROO CHRONICLES series that reprinted the earliest series from Pacific Comics. I still think these are the best issues. I loved the little one-line morals to each story, and joked to my girlfriend at the time that religiously, I was a Groo-ist. She loved GROO too, once I turned her on to it!

I stopped reading about a year into the Image Comics run, after they left Marvel/Epic, at which point for the first time I saw the art and storytelling decline in quality.
I also have the DEATH OF GROO Marvel graphic novel. They also published a harder to find LIFE OF GROO graphic novel that I never managed to locate.

Life of Groo I had to torrent.....

Death of Groo i have and destroyer duck, and the pacific and eclipse books. Sergio drew a Groo in my Death of Groo book...hell of a nice guy!

Yeah, I'd forgotten that Groo's earliest appearances were backups in DESTROYER DUCK and Grell's STARSLAYER. Those were also collected in GROO CHRONICLES.
Beyond the Groo backup appearance, I really liked Gerber's DESTROYER DUCK stories, a particularly inspired run from Gerber, in a heartfelt (but also funny) "rage against the corporate machine" storyline.

I met Sergio Aragones a long time ago at San Diego Con in 1987, and I agree, he's a heck of a nice guy, very friendly. And also very tall, I'd guess at least 6'4". I'm jealous you got a sketch from him in your book! That must make it a prized part of your collection.

I was born in 1963, and Aragones began drawing for MAD magazine a few months before I was born. He's had an incredibly long career in comics.

I started off being a loyal reader of DC, until I found Claremont's X-men in my early teens. First issue I bought was UXM #175, and mostly because there was nothing else left on the newsstand. the first half of the book has Mystique brutally carving through a bunch of Arcade's robot X-men. I was transfixed. The writing was just so much better than anything I had ever read in a DC book.

Nowadays I tend to follow the writers rather than the characters. Discovered Matt Fraction's fun, classy work on Hawkeye a few months' back. Never had any time for Hakweye as a character but this is just tremendous writing. That led me to Fraction's acclaimed indie work on Sex Criminals (I think it is an Image comic?). Finished Rick Remender's run on X-force yesterday and was really moved by Wolverine's killing of Daken, even though I knew what was coming, mostly because of the character's haunted reaction to the loss of what might have been. Really liked Rucka's first arc of Batwoman, explaining the link between Kate and Alice: the rescue of Kate from terrorists where she looks at her mother's and sister's bodies made me curse out loud. Enjoying Bendis' work on All New X-men. Loved Avengers: Arena. Loving Gaiman's return to Sandman with Overture.

So, I'm bouncing around from Marvel to DC to Vertigo to image, lured by the writing, not the publishers' stables of characters.

Amazon has them for about twenty three bucks. I love Groo comics.

Thanks for the heads-up on finding LIFE OF GROO at a reasonable price.

As much GROO as I have (the entire Marvel/Epic run, and a year's worth of the Image run) and DEATH OF GROO, I might as well complete the run with this one (at long last).

Even before I discovered Aragones' work in MAD and GROO, I first loved his work in DC's PLOP series, from 1973-1976. Aragones also designed the entire look of PLOP's format. I always got a chuckle out of the "Table of Plop-tents".

Plus one-page strips in HOUSE OF MYSTERY, HOUSE OF SECRETS, and other DC titles.

So Aragones was another part of what made me prefer DC in the 1968-1980 era at DC.

Re-reading the above, an irony is that while I preferred DC's titles and editorial style in the period from 1980-1985, I was actually buying twice as many Marvel titles over DC titles!

I'd say my favorite DC book in that wera was the Levitz/Giffen LEGION run (LSH 285-306), and at Marvel my favorite was Stern/Romita Jr's AMAZING SPIDERMAN run (issues 224-251). Both companies were doing phenomenal work in that period (as were Epic, Pacific, Eclipse, First nd others) but I always had a special affection for DC, that defied the fact that I actually purchased more Marvel for a long time.

Historically, more of a DC fan. That said, I find myself reading mostly Marvel these days as I much prefer their rather `fuck it` attitude to continuity and the like to DC`s `eat this shit and like it approach` to the Poo-52.

Now Marvel is about to "poo 52" their comics http://www.rkmbs.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1216602

I thought the NOW! imprint was their new 52.

or is it the Point One Age or the Heroic Age?

Bendis has the Beast in All New Xmen with a big long blackboard trying to work out comic book continuity using advanced mathematics. He has scrawled "Age of Apocalypse", "Age of Ultron", and so on into a big scribbly timeline, surrounded by equations, and seems quite baffled.

We learn from a flashforward to 20 years into the future that it eventually drives him insane.

Bit of self-mockery, there.