Why do you prefer DC?

[Tropico]

Originally posted by TheCorpulent1
Oh yeah, Tim's still Robin in the Batman comic as well. The one titled "Batman," I mean. He showed up last issue.

Batman's replaced and it sends ripples throughout nearly every DC comic being published. Robin's replaced and writers other than the Robin and Batgirl ones just ignore it. No respect, I tell ya.

At least Teen Titans will be impacted by it. Wait, I'm saying that liek it's a good thing. It's not. I mean, it's good that the writer's story is getting acknowledged, but it's bad that it's the new Robin. Good. Bad. Liquid. Ice. Which one is it?

 

[The Leaguer]

Originally posted by TheCorpulent1
Oh yeah, Tim's still Robin in the Batman comic as well. The one titled "Batman," I mean. He showed up last issue.

I think at the beginning of the arc, there is an editor's note that says the story take place before the issue of Robin where Tim quits.

 

[NeoSamurai]

I am not trolling just presenting evidence to support my argument.

** Edited for prior hostile content.

 

[Anubis]

I mean really, guy plans out a story and is right in the middle of it, then some guy muks with a character in some other book, so now the writer has to stop his story and talk about some crap he didn't even come up with? It really isn't neccesary. Address the issue after your done with your story, not change something just to fit in with continuity. Continuity is a tool, it should be used when neccesary.

 

[NeoSamurai]

Continuity is a tool, yes, but it's one favored by fans as it shows a fluid, vibrant growth of story. The only problem is like was mentioned, with full continuity, you get the bad with the good.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Originally posted by The Leaguer
I think at the beginning of the arc, there is an editor's note that says the story take place before the issue of Robin where Tim quits.

That works fine for me, then. I don't care if they explain continuity f***-ups away for the sake of a story, but at least let the reader know that you're aware of it. Otherwise it's just confusing.

 

[Darthphere]

Originally posted by NeoSamurai
I am not trolling just presenting evidence to support my argument.

** Edited for prior hostile content.

My response wasnt hostile. I just get pissed when people complain about how much they hate a book but they keep reading it. Theres something for everyone go out and find what you like. I apologize if my post came off as hostile.

 

[MST3K 4ever]

I prefer DC because of the artists and as a general rule the stories are character driven without piling on the angst like Marvel is prone to do from time to time.

 

[DarkKnightJRK]

I prefer DC for many reasons:

1. They were the first.
The first comic character I had ever heard of was Batman. I still remember the first time watching the '89 movie (the first movie I had ever seen that wasn't a cartoon, I might add) and was just in awe. Reading the Batman books just makes me feel like that kid watching the movie for the first time, if only for a few minutes (I read fast.).

2. Continuity.
DC still has it's occasional flubs, don't get me wrong (it's either an editor's mistake or if the stories were written at the same time), but for most of the characters in DC, you just need to get a coaple of TPB's and you're preety much all set. While over on the other side, their history is extremely convulted. Espically to a beginner to comics.

3. Interesting and relatable characters.
While this is what most Marvel-maniacs call this a feature of Marvel, I just never found their characters that interesting (except on the 90's cartoons, those I liked). I can more get Batman or Superman then Spider-Man or The Hulk. When you look past their powers or their Batarangs, you just see the person that they are, and I can identify with them more then Marvel.

Some people may not like what I've said, but their my opinions and my preferences, and if you don't like it, you can kiss my fat ass.

 

[dk]

I prefer DC over Marvel, because DC maintains a more consistent, higher level of quality in their books on average.

Face it - every month, Marvel publishes some real crap. For every She-Hulk, Runaways, Captain Marvel, or Supreme Power there's a dozen comics like Iron Fist, Alpha Flight, Emma Frost, Exiles, Human Torch, Academy X, Venom, Weapon X, etc., etc. I'm sure some of those series have their fans, but at best the books are mediocre. Marvel literally floods the market with this kind of rack-wasting garbage. They also milk everything that sells to the point they can't get another dollar out of it. It's the mentality that killed characters like The Punisher and Ghost Rider, and imprints like 2099 and Midnight Sons in the 90's, except Marvel does this month-in and month-out. Not content to have a couple Spider-Man books, a few X-Men books, etc. - Marvel's got a to have a half-dozen imprints like MAX, Marvel Knights, Ultimates, Marvel Age, etc., etc. - and crank out Spidey and X-Men books for EACH ONE. I don't see DC launching VERTIGO-Superman or WILDSTORM-Batman knock-offs. They have a little more respect for their characters and the imprints they've established.

Let's look at those imprints, shall we? Veritgo kicks MAX's ass ten ways to Sunday. You practically can't find a Vertigo book that isn't worth reading, whereas Supreme Power is virtually the only MAX book worth the paper it's printed on. Maybe Punisher, now that they've switched it to MAX (so they can milk you for another #1 - thanks, Marvel!). Besides Vertigo, DC has the Wildstorm stuff - which I can take or leave, personally - but it's still a better line overall than MAX. Then there's Alan Moore's ABC subsection, which produces some brilliant comics - better than the majority of Marvel's mainstream core titles, IMO.

Another thing DC hasn't done (yet) is re-launch their books over and over. Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash - those series were actually allowed to reach #200 again. It'll be a cold day in hell before Marvel ever allows a title they've launched in the last ten years to make it that far. MUST HAVE ANOTHER #1!! CAN'T SURVIVE WITHOUT CHEAP WAY TO TEMPORARILY SPIKE SALES!! Try getting some quality creators on-board for a change, Marvel. But, no...that might actually cost money, and the House of Idea knows they can just slap "#1" on something and their loyal fans will buy it sight unseen.

DC is an innovator - Marvel is a follower. Adult-oriented comics? DC innovated them with books like Watchmen, Swamp Thing, Animal Man, and eventually Vertigo. Mini-series? DC invented them with World of Krypton back in '79. Trade paperbacks? DC started printing them first - they invented the format. Superheroes in general? Yup, DC again. Not to mention the creators DC discovered, who went on to popularity at Marvel - Morrison, McFarlane, Ennis, Millar, Johns, Milligan, Gaiman, Rucka, etc. It's a huge list.

The one thing I give Marvel credit for over DC is their willingness to publish trades - but again, it's almost to the point they'll print anything as a trade to make a buck. Quality really isn't the concern for Marvel - flood the shelves. DC pisses me off becuase they're so goddamn tentative about publishing trades. ALL of Hellblazer should be available in TPB. Sandman Mystery Theatre should be completely collected in trades. The Question, The Spectre (Ostrander & Mandrake), Suicide Squad, the rest of Hitman, ALL of Morrison's Doom Patrol - DC's got so much great stuff that people might actually discover if they'd print it in a ****ing trade. But they don't. Meanwhile, Marvel is cranking out the 9th collected edition of Extreme X-Men, or some similar birdcage lining.

Across the board, DC maintains a consistent quality level. You can pick up Birds of Prey, or Fallen Angel, or Richard Dragon, or Catwoman, or Aquaman, or Batgirl, or Gotham Central, or Green Arrow, or Hawkman - lots of titles that aren't Superman or Batman, and therefore, don't sell especially well - and the end result is it's usually a pretty good comic. Marvel can't even say that on a regular basis about Thor, Iron Man, or Hulk - let alone the stacks of lesser titles they see fit to print.

 

[NeoSamurai]

Have to agree on the oversaturation. Instead of making new X-Titles that are team books, they could try what they did in the late eighties with X books and late nineties (Havoc and Wolverine limited, Wolverine Unlimited, Cable, Gambit, etc)--make focus books on lesser X-characters or the popular X-characters and devote the series to the development of those titles. They could've made a serious run with an Archangel title, Sandman (Spidey villain).
Heck, Marvel had some great runs with the new characters they introduced during the nineties up until the writers got wonky with them. Darkhawk, Sleepwalker, Ghost Rider, and Slapstick were all great characters. Instead, the characters were not handled well and remain nothing but memories for most fans. During the mid-nineties, Marvel had some great stories with the Punisher and Daredevil before they decided to get way out there with those characters and killed the series (the Amnesiac Murdock run or the Black Punisher story?). Punisher had been pulling in cash from four books and many limited series at the time (Punisher, Punisher War Journal, Punisher Warzone, punisher 2099). Though a number of people cite the population's shift in tastes for the decline of the punisher, I have to say it had more to do with the off the wall situations they put the character through and bad marketing than anything else.

In Marvel's defense about the new Max Punisher series, the Marvel Knight, Punisher series was only intended to go to the number of issues that it did.

Additionally, the problem that Marvel has with the Max line (from what I've seen from the Trades I've picked up) is that they equate adult oriented with violence and swearing and sex more so than with adult themed stories akin to Hellblazer, Sandman and most other Vertigo lines. Marvel has some great potential in the Max line to create limited series to tell stories that illustrate the terror/vileness of the bad guys in their comics. How do you think the Mandarin would appear as in a classic Iron Man story in a Max line without the restraints of the traditional Marvel line? I'd say they could go with a fully decadent, but powerful Chinese lord. Or how about a classic Kingpin story against any Marvel character illustrating how the kingpin has his boys to kill the son of a senator who is pushing legislating infringing on his drug trafficking?
Or better yet...a Doctor Strange comic with full room to use traditional references to magic (Crowley, Druidic practices, Norse scarification, etc.) to deal with struggles against his enemies like Mordo (?), Dormmamu, Mephisto, Fin Fang Foom (maybe that's an Iron Man baddie) who show their full lengths of ambition and determination on what they will do for power.

Instead they focus on excess in the Max line rather than quality (unless they changed that as of early this year).

 

[NeoSamurai]

DC, however, has its shares of rotten egged stories and gimmicks. Despite those failings, DC actually seems to learn from many of those mistakes and is consistently publishing better products as a whole that are varied.

 

[dk]

Originally posted by NeoSamurai
DC, however, has its shares of rotten egged stories and gimmicks. Despite those failings, DC actually seems to learn from many of those mistakes and is consistently publishing better products as a whole that are varied.

I'm not holding DC up as an example of perfection. They've done lots of stupid things with certain characters, come up with horrible storylines and series here and there, and milked a gimmick or two. But not as often as Marvel.

Bottom line, as I said, pick up a random DC Comic and a random Marvel Comic - middle-of-the-line stuff. See which is better. My bet is, if you're honest, it's going to be the DC book.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Good points all, dk. My personal feeling is that Marvel's only recently gone down the s***ter in terms of quality compared to DC. Back in the '80s and '90s, DC had nearly as many gimmicks as Marvel in the form of across-the-board crossovers (Underworld Unleashed, Legends, and a slew of others; some good, most bad). Marvel used to print some real gems amid their typical X-crap and Spider-Man Clone crap during that time: things like Damage Control, What If?, and a bunch of others. Once Marvel went into bankruptcy, they began a mad dash of just trial-and-error marketing. Throw a bunch of comics out, ditch the ones that don't work, and milk the ones that do for all they're worth, then repeat. I'm not trying to slight DC in the least, since I enjoy more of their comics on a weekly basis than Marvel's, but if Marvel had the luxury of one of the world's largest corporations backing it, I imagine the story might've been different.

And Marvel's had a few innovations of its own. It's an overused argument, I know, but it's true: Marvel brought the relatable everyman approach to comics. Also, they brought some new perspectives to the superhero world in the form of the aforementioned Damage Control (a company devoted to cleaning up the messes caused by superheroes), She-Hulk (Byrne broke the fourth wall in, if not the first, then at least the most notable way), and personability to the reader (like Marvel or not, Stan Lee created an atmosphere that made fans really feel at home reading a Marvel comic). DC's got more innovations, obviously, since they've been doing things longer, but Marvel's no slouch.

 

[NeoSamurai]

Unfortunately, the trial and error approach to comics that Marvel is doing post-bancruptcy is what got them in trouble in the first place when bombarded the market with quantity and gimmicsk over quality.

Not to knock Marvel or it's innovations, but Marvel's business side really hurts its creative side (moreso than DC). They tried really hard to push their creative envelope, then they resort to petty jabs at DC such as Marville, Identity Disk (I know it's its own story and not a direct jab, but it is designed to hurt DC by using the title), the new Witches comic coming out the same month as DCs similar title.

Marvel does have some very good characters and lines, its just that they are apparently not focusing on creative quality.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I'll give you Identity Disc title thing, although it's a decent story in its own right, but Witches has nothing to do with The Witching. Deodato had cooked up that story a long time ago but it was put on hold. Marville was utter crap and even Marvel fans know it.

I agree that Marvel's business side is really screwing its creators over now. The fact that they're FORCING writers to write their individual issues for the TPB format is especially bad. I'm sure a lot of titles, Spectacular Spider-Man in particular, would be much better if the writers weren't forced to write arcs over a certain number of issues. It's like Marvel goes out of its way to f*** its creators over and then wonders why they're losing all the best talent to DC. Frankly, I'm surprised Mark Waid even wanted to come back to Fantastic Four after the way Marvel treated him. Same with Christopher Priest on both Black Panther and The Crew. It seems like the only writer they haven't screwed so far is J. Michael Straczynski and that's probably because they know that Supreme Power and Amazing Spider-Man are two of their best books. They need him.

 

[NeoSamurai]

Don't get me wrong. Identity Disc's premise sounds like a kickin' idea. Despite Deodato's concept for Witches probably were in the works for awhile, but the title and release may have been decided to compete directly with DC's title.

I heard that Marvel did a big job on Waid's run on FF and he even openly blasted Marvel for it a the time. MSJ probably has no problem with TPB format books due to the style of story he writes. Remember, Rising Stars and Babylon 5 were essentially one story for their respective titles. I wouldn't be surprised if MSJ is writing Spidey in the same vein with each smaller arch as the bigger part of a whole. So, if Marvel suggested to him to write for TPB format, he'd probably have no problem with it.

BTW, isn't Supreme Power the "adult version" of the DC characters (altered to protect copyrights of course) that Marvel created way back when?

Anywho...I guess my argument for DC is more that DC seems to focus on creativeness and quality (overall) than the business aspect. Marvel should do the same.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

JMS has been writing smaller arcs within larger ones. He just wrapped up his first big arc after about 2 years on the title. Still, I'm sure Marvel would probably (*gasp*) print TPBs of different sizes to suit his arcs, rather than forcing him to create an arc over a set page count. He and Bendis are pretty much Marvel's bread and butter at the moment.

Supreme Power is a re-imagining of the Squadron Supreme concept. Squadron Supreme was basically Marvel's "What if the Justice League took over the world?" All the characters are based on DC's big guns: Hyperion = Superman, Nighthawk = Batman, Blur = Flash (although originally he was called the Whizzer), Princess Zarda = Wonder Woman, Amphibian = Aquaman. It's got enough differences to make it worthwhile though, and it's no different from the Authority or the Crime Syndicate or any number of DC's own projects where they take their characters and try new things with them under different names.

 

[dk]

Originally posted by TheCorpulent1
Good points all, dk. My personal feeling is that Marvel's only recently gone down the s***ter in terms of quality compared to DC. Back in the '80s and '90s, DC had nearly as many gimmicks as Marvel in the form of across-the-board crossovers (Underworld Unleashed, Legends, and a slew of others; some good, most bad).

DC totally owned Marvel in the mid-late 80's, when they were cranking out Swamp Thing, Dark Knight, Year One, Watchmen, all their post-Crisis relaunches...cool **** like Suicide Squad, Animal Man, Captain Atom, Doom Patrol, The Question, etc., etc. During that same time, Marvel chugged along on X-books of varying quality, Wolverine, Punisher, and four Spider-Man titles. Sure, Marvel would put out an occasional good storyline, or a decent series launch, but not very often. When Marvel innovated, you got New Universe. That was their big debut during the 80's - worked out really well for them.

Again, DC pretty much owned Marvel during the 90's. Sandman. Preacher. The Spectre. Transmetropolitan. Sandman Mystery Theatre. Lansdale and Truman's Jonah Hex. Peter David's Aquaman. Waid on Flash. Morrison's JLA. Even during the dark days of the early 90's, DC would still produce interesting stuff like Shade the Changing Man, The Ray, The Demon (the Alan Grant and Garth Ennis runs), Starman, Green Lantern: Mosaic, etc. Not to say DC didn't use their fair share of gimmicks on Superman and Batman books, but Marvel was slapping holo-foil covers on...the entire Heavy Hitters line...Clive Barker's Ectokid...every one of a dozen 2099 books...a bunch of ****e Ghost Rider rip-off "Midnight Sons" books like Darkhold and Spirits of Vengeance...Marvel UK...a slew of Unlimited titles used to dump inventory stories. The sheer volume of absolute crap published by Marvel was what glutted the marketplace in the 90's. Others did it, too - but it was 75% Marvel's fault.

I'll give them New Warriors, Ghost Rider, Quasar, Damage Control, Darkhawk and a few other gems buried in amongst the piles and piles of crap. Hey - if you print enough titles, the law of averages says some of them will be good. Compare the percentage of garbage vs. DC's garbage of the same time period. If DC published a book - like Extreme Justice - that was an absolute waste of trees, it was the exception, not the rule.

DC's got more innovations, obviously, since they've been doing things longer, but Marvel's no slouch.

Really, the only innovation Marvel ever had was the everyman superhero. That was Stan Lee's contribution. That's also a character innovation, not a publishing innovation. Aside from that, Marvel always riffs off what DC tests the water with first. Even the "Marvel Age of Comics" was supposedly a response to the publishing success of DC's JLA. Had JLA not been selling well for DC, Martin Goodman might never have asked Stan to write a superhero book. No JLA - no FF - no Marvel.

 

[Darthphere]

Originally posted by NeoSamurai
Unfortunately, the trial and error approach to comics that Marvel is doing post-bancruptcy is what got them in trouble in the first place when bombarded the market with quantity and gimmicsk over quality.

The trial and error marketing isnt what got them in trouble in the first place. It was having four covers for every comic they had and printing an excess number of comics what got them in trouble. Some books they throw out at us are actually pretty good but fans dont pick up on it and they get cancelled.

 

[LordChaos]

There's only one real thing that DC had done that no other comic industry in history thought of doing, and thus far it still stands to this day as one of the greatest stories of all time. By now you all should know i am talking about The Watchmen. Greatest comic line EVER!

 

[Assassin]

remember what i said about how marvel is for younger ppl?
well david goyer (director of Blade 1 and 3) aggrees with me, i was watching the deleted scens where morbious shows up to set up for part 2 and he said when he was young he used to read marvel and then as he grew older he read DC cuz dc is for more mature ppl while marvel is for a younger audience, thats what i said earlyer

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Why does David Goyer's opinion matter?

 

[Darthphere]

Originally posted by Assassin
remember what i said about how marvel is for younger ppl?
well david goyer (director of Blade 1 and 3) aggrees with me, i was watching the deleted scens where morbious shows up to set up for part 2 and he said when he was young he used to read marvel and then as he grew older he read DC cuz dc is for more mature ppl while marvel is for a younger audience, thats what i said earlyer

Well David Goyer's opinion matters to me as much as yours does.Nothing. Thats his opinion and youre using it as fact. Thats was like 25 years ago he was talking about and comics are different now.

 

[Assassin]

I didnt say it matters, im just sayen some one agrees with me

Why u guys gotta be so damn technical..ohh yea..going through puberty