Do you prefer superhero comics or movies?

[a user]

*Insert minimum required of 3 characters to make a thread*

 

[AlluAllu]

Comics have given us a huge amount of stories, so comics have that advantage. But if I took average rating of all superhero comics and average rating of all superhero movies, movies would probably win by that metric.

I think I prefer movies, because I like seeing these characters in motion and with sound. Also, even when half of it is CGI, films usually look more realistic and immersive.

 

[Flint Marko]

I definitely would've said comics when I was younger and while I certainly still appreciate reading comics when I have the time, I think comic book movies have, on the whole, only gotten leaps and bounds better over the past decade or so. So movies for me.

 

[Greens]

Movies

 

[Mandon Knight]

Completely different mediums to tell or inhabit a story, I think the 'beauty' for me is that transition to accessibility demonstrates my lifetime's own journey in this area, I've gone from a 5/6/7 year old minority in the playground being bullied for something I love to a year in / year out populist behemoth that now rules the world as a major majority following.

Given all that, it's still comics for me.

 

[Chip Chipperson]

I love seeing and following production of the films, but there’s nothing like reading a great comic for the very first time

 

[DACrowe]

Some characters have translated to film better than they ever were in the comics (Iron Man and the Guardians spring to mind, or even simply characters like Bane or Charles Xavier).

However, as a whole the comic book medium that birthed the form is still richer from it. There is more experimentation and diversification in comics. It really does seem like an infinite universe of storytelling possibility. Superhero movies tend to be very similar and rarely enjoy the kind of creative spark that sometimes can make comics weird or emotional, or epic. There are exceptions. I think The Dark Knight is as good as any Batman story ever told. I think the first Avengers and Civil War movie are among the best Avengers stories ever told (certainly better than the Civil War comic). But by and large, they are again exceptions and owe to a medium that can reinvent itself.

For example, Spider-Man works best as a soap opera. His life is a melodrama in which being Spider-Man adds burdens to his love life, personal responsibilities, and desire to be happy. The Raimi movies adapted this in their fashion better than anyone, but you still don't get the chance to grow with him and his supporting cast week to week or month to month like the golden age of Spidey comics (I'd argue the '60s through to the early '90s when writers started regretting growing him to be a married man and started trying to backtrack).

You could get that on a television series, but never in a series of movies, be it a trilogy or an extended universe where Peter's role as a member of the Avengers roster supersedes his personal life.

Looking at Batman again, while I think the TDKT is masterful and shows some sides of Bruce Wayne that the comics never can (like what retirement or giving up the mask would really be like for him, or happiness), they still can't show all the sides of Batman. His being a detective, his smaller stories of just trying to help a neighborhood, his interactions with the supernatural, his love for his adopted family which has still never been realized on the big screen. There is just too much there, there to put in a movie or a series of movies.

... With that said, superhero movies have begun replacing comics as the more important medium for their popularity. I wager most folks under the age of 20 have never read a comic book, so their appreciation for these characters comes solely from the movies. Which is why the DC universe is in trouble.

 

[Shinobi Shaw]

Can't have a movie in the first place without the comics, so I pick comics.


I will say though, it's very exciting and fascinating to see all these decades worth of comic book stories being translated into movies.

 

[Milk Tray Guy]

My very favourite superhero movies rank right up there with my very favourite superhero comics. But overall, the comics (I'm a DC guy). Movies can't come close to the sheer scale of the comics mythology (80 years worth of world-building, characters, timelines). I've been fortunate enough to read/experience every major DC event (CoIE onwards) as they were being published. And I'm as much a fan now as I was then.

 

[Boy Scout]

Movies.

 

[Spider-Aziz]

Comic books. It's guaranteed that I don't have to raise or lower the volume according to my needs.

 

[Spider-Fan]

Pre 2000s, comic books. Post 2000s, movies. Superhero comics used to be great, but in the 2000s, they are just not as good IMO. It comes down to many things: story, pacing, event comic emphasis, etc. While comics have gotten worse, CBMs have gotten better. At this point, your average superhero movie is better than the comic currently is. See Civil War comic vs Civil War movie, and there are many examples just like it.

 

[Mandon Knight]

Nostalgia plays a huge part in answering this question. With that, and again I think it also comes from the angle of how old one is, and what was one's first exposure, I was born before we had any kind of 'handle' on any of this film wise and was able to watch Superman the Movie in the theatres and embrace it, first time at first hand and that is running alongside what I'd read. As has been mentioned, anything written post 2000 has instant comparison and gratification of material, to the point of almost now, the film has superseded the written 'original' word as the 'oracle or template' from which to draw from.

 

[X-Woman]

Watching movies is always great because it's a whole experience. You can get into the action, adventure, drama etc.

But I'm still partial to comics. Reason is, there's a lot more that you can do in them. I've always thought that comics were the best medium for experimentation. Some of the art I see in comic books is pretty wild, and pretty nice. Some concepts are out of this world.

What I like best about comics it that it's a lot easier to be ridiculous in them than in movies. Comics lend themselves to things you could never get away with in live action. Like a blue school bus made out of cotton balls that sucks up supervillains as it flies across the moon. It's absurd. That's what makes comics so much fun. They have no regard for anything that could possibly happen in real life. Movies try to make things realistic. They expect to be taken seriously. That takes away one of the most entertaining aspects of superhero comics for me.

There's just something about a comic book that's so much FUN.

 

[Flint Marko]

No one's brought this up yet so I might be alone here, but I do feel like I've partly aged out of comic books. I still read and enjoy them, but my desire and enjoyment in doing so has subsided. I used to tear through dozens upon dozens of issues in a single day even if the stories and art weren't particularly great. Now I'm much more selective about what I read.

 

[Drizzle]

Pre 2000s, comic books. Post 2000s, movies. Superhero comics used to be great, but in the 2000s, they are just not as good IMO. It comes down to many things: story, pacing, event comic emphasis, etc. While comics have gotten worse, CBMs have gotten better. At this point, your average superhero movie is better than the comic currently is. See Civil War comic vs Civil War movie, and there are many examples just like it.

I agree with this, although I'd be more specific in saying pre-2007ish for comics and after that for movies.

But it also depends on the superhero for me. I'd prefer to read a Batman comic like Year One or The Killing Joke than watch most of his movies outside of TDK. I'd also prefer to watch a Captain America movie rather than read a good deal of comics featuring the character.

 

[Fincher]

I've enjoyed some superhero comics, but I'm not as into them as I am the movies (or the TV shows), no.

More specifically, there are some things that I think comics (in general) can do well, like being funny and fun and having aesthetic appeal with the right art style/design/level of talent, but I don't think as a medium it's well suited to action or to being serious, dramatic fare. So that heavily influences which comics I'm interested in in the first place, and it often deviates from what the highly regarded ones are (i.e. graphic novels like Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns).

In terms of how good of a job the creators do on the comics, well, it can vary. Looking at these big universes like Marvel and DC, though, it's not like I was ever going to start at the beginning of the DC universe and read everything in chronological order. The only way I could even broach it was by treating individual series like their own TV shows rather than as part of a whole, then deciding which of those series I cared to read, then starting at the one that came out first and hoping it makes its own internal sense and doesn't assume knowledge of all the continuity that came before it.

And the results in that sense are mixed. In Birds of Prey, I understood what was happening in general without needing to appeal to some outside knowledge, but it was clunky because it was treated as a piece of a larger thing when by necessity I was treating it as if it were a self-contained thing. Information was "revealed" out of order. Characters would show up like they needed no introduction, not provide any reason why I should care, and then go away. And that same sort of thing can happen in shared TV or movie universes when I'm not watching all of the parts, but it's more extreme in comics because the universe is more massive, never mind that I was starting in the middle of Dinah and Barbara's stories.

I mean, I liked Birds of Prey, but it's easy to attach more hope to a movie version.

 

[2kt09]

At the moment, movies. Definitely want to get back to the publications and titles I enjoyed released earlier this decade...which was essentially Earth 2, Valiant Comics, and getting caught up on Millarworld.

Like others said, it's more engaging to have the story and characters play out in your head with the artist's drawings supplemanting that imagination. Plus, the obvious notion of more development.

 

[Shinobi Shaw]

Pre 2000s, comic books. Post 2000s, movies. Superhero comics used to be great, but in the 2000s, they are just not as good IMO. It comes down to many things: story, pacing, event comic emphasis, etc. While comics have gotten worse, CBMs have gotten better. At this point, your average superhero movie is better than the comic currently is. See Civil War comic vs Civil War movie, and there are many examples just like it.

This I definitely agree with. And to me it's like they all look the same. Before you could tell a X-Men comic from an X-Force comic from a Batman comic. They all have that glossy, cel shaded look now. There was also variety and writers took risks, now it's just click-bait stunts.

 

[Kahran Ramsus]

For the most part, comics. But this changes as quality goes up and down. In recent years, CBMs have been better (especially at Marvel) than the comics have.

 

[Lantern Venom]

Super hero movies are my favorite genre, but even the best ones rarely compare to their comic counterparts. Movies have the advantage of visuals and sound, but their confined nature, as in a 2-2 1/2 hour time block, makes it difficult for them to explore all aspects of a story in the way comics do.

 

[Batmannerism]

Wow. Tough question.

Both mediums have their advantages and disadvantages.

I feel that I grew up during the greatest ever period in comic book history, the 80s.

There are some superhero comic books that are utterly timeless and speak to something deep within us as human beings ( Dark Knight returns, Watchmen, All Star Superman and many more). But then some movies are the same.

Sometimes it's a matter comparing a movie version of a story with the comic e.g. I don't think a Dark Phoenix movie could ever match the emotional impact of the comic, but that's because we had years to get to know Jean and Scott, when I was a kid I felt like the Xmen were a family, so when Jean died it was a momentus and painful loss. I always believed that bringing her back was a huge mistake.

I liked Snyder's Watchmen, I felt it did as well as any big screen adaptation ( and it's ending was less ridiculous than Moore's giant psychic squid) but it never beats reading the comic, which is an intense journey.


Thor Ragnarok is great fun but it doesnt hold up to Simonson's epic stories from his run.

On the other hand films that are masterfully crafted like the Dark Knight and Civil War and Logan strip away a lot of the convoluted narrative that we get with serialized comic book storytelling and get to the essential tale itself - and that can be quite emotional too.

I don't think I could give a definitive answer. Great question though.

 

[Iceman]

Overall comics, but a fair number of CBMs are recreating some of the best stuff in comics very well these days.

 

[The Sand Master]

Both in equal measure.
Sometimes the comics give us a much deeper insight and fleshes out the characters or situations when sometimes a film can gloss over those particular moments.
We are living in a time where the things that the artists drew are now able to be realised to match their vision and imaginations, so that's a good thing too.

 

[marcvader]

No one's brought this up yet so I might be alone here, but I do feel like I've partly aged out of comic books. I still read and enjoy them, but my desire and enjoyment in doing so has subsided. I used to tear through dozens upon dozens of issues in a single day even if the stories and art weren't particularly great. Now I'm much more selective about what I read.

This is pretty much it. I used to have a ravenous appetite for superhero comicbooks from when I started reading them, around 9-10 years old till my early twenties. That's like from 1980 till the mid 90's, the quality was fantastic. My desire to read them just diminished as I got older and the quality got worse, writing and art. I've gone back from time to time and I just can't get in to them like I did. These days I mostly just read books and the random horror or sci-fi graphic novel. The films now just help me capture the nostalgia again and so that's what I gravitate to much more these days.