DC has the Flash.
DC all the way.
DC also nurtured Kirby in his later career, instead of kicking him in the face and taking his toys. I really don’t like Stan Lee.
Plus, DC has sponsored Watchmen, Sandman, the ABC line, and Dark Knght Returns. Movie has had what from the last twenty years?
Captain America, Spidey, and Fantastic Four are cool, anyway.
Marvel has always appealed to me over DC. I like them both but I seem to connect better with Marvel.
Probably because Spider-Man and the X-Men are my favorites. Everybody else just falls into, “I’ll keep tabs on the books and pick them up when something cool comes along.”
Considering a down right brawl between the heroes and villians, Marvel does seem to have a numbers advantage. You could sic Thor AND Hulk on Superman. Mister Fantastic AND Captian America on Batman. Doctor Doom could beat pretty much all the DC villans by his sheer badness (even though this works against a numbers advantage argument). That and the numerous mutants in the X-Men would swamp everybody down.
Advantage Marvel: Numbers, telepaths, and probabilty altering heroes
Advantage DC: Raw Power, speedsters
The winner comes from the battle between the telepaths and the speedsters. Whoever takes the other down first is able to help their side prevail.
Don’t these contradict each other? 
You beat me to it, rjung.
Haven’t read them in a while, but every Marvel comic I’ve ever picked up basicaly sucked. DC’s don’t. DC in a landslide.
It’s occurred to me that while DC has Superman, who’s easily the biggest of all superheros, and Batman, who’s probably second or third, Marvel has a heck of a lot more characters. Even just restricting myself to mutants, I can name about twice as many Marvel superheros as I can of all of DC’s heros.
DC’s central titles always seem much more “camp” and geeky than Marvel’s. Maybe it’s just Plastic Man.
But DC puts out way better high class stuff. The Starman series. Vertigo in general. etc.
Of course, Marvel now has Neil Gaiman writing for them… 
I LIKE Batman as a character (sure, there’s a lot of crap, but also some incredible stuff), and I don’t think Marvel will ever be as iconic as the DC heroes. You just can’t beat Superman/Batman for superheroes.
spiderman and the hulk are pretty close, Apos.
Speaking from the perspective of a mere dabbler, I find DC’s characters more recognizable, in general, but I find that I just like Marvel’s characters more. I’ll take the X-Men, hated by those they fight to protect, over Superman-the-most-visible-celebrity-since-Marilyn anyday.
I could never stand Superman because he is utterly invincible. How much of a story can you make out of a guy who barely needs to expend any effort to beat the entire universe? You know he’s going to win over anybody, so there is no drama.
I’m another one of those who found the DC characters just too damn powerful to be bothered. It’s just a big hassle to keep having to come up with a new way/character that can beat Superman without having to really push. Same with Batman. I used to read X-Men, and Gambit was my least favorite character because he reminded me too much of Batman…no matter what the situation, he could always get out of it. Seemed too perfect. The rest of the team all had their own personal issues, screwed up social lives, and even the best of them (Wolverine in my opinion) has had to rely on their teammates to save their ass every now and again.
Plus, DC screwed up the Authority, which was one of my favorite books…can’t forgive them for that. Although, Kingdom Come almost makes up for it. DC does do some really great alternate storyline books, but The Age of Apocolypse is right up there with the best of them.
AoA was pretty neat, and I was actually going to use Wolverine as an example as well, El Elvis. So many people say “He’s too good,” and “He can’t be beat and never gets hurt,” but that is so not true. In the first five issues of X-Men from back in '90 he was defeated and captured twice. Even as toucgh as he is he has to rely on teammates fairly often.
When a character in the Marvel universe becomes as powerful as Supes, they become a liability. Now, you might say, “Dark Pheonix was so much more powerful and Supes.” Great, I say. Prove it. If the Earth wasn’t in space, Supes could lift it and chuck it into the Sun. I see no difference.
I would go for Marvel. I am not at all enamoured by some of the “adult” titles that D.C. produced and I do feel that they played a part in the comic recession of the the mid-1990’s. I think I can relate more to the Marvel characters. Batman has become a joke and this nonsense that he can beat anyone if he is prepared is laughable at best. I like the detective Batman who handles relatively “mundane” villians. Much more interesting in my opinion. As for Superman, well I think he gets a little of a bad rep (Frank Miller’s pathological hatred of the chracter doesn’t help). He can be a very interesting hero in the right hands.
I think Marvel can come into some criticism over the number of mutant titles. Sort of dilutes the idea in my mind. Lastly, as an aside, when it comes to power I think Thor would obliterate Superman. Thor is without doubt the most powerful normal character in the Marvel Universe. By that I mean someone who is not altered or beefed up for a couple of years due to a special story line. Indeed, Wizzard even ran a nice little piece on who would win between Thor and Superman. Thor won fairly easilly which made sense to me. Sorry to hijack the thread like this!
DC for me. The Vertigo line and Watchmen alone beats anything Marvel has. On top of that, Animal Man is my favorite superhero of all time and he’s DC. I still like Marvel comics though but they’re no match for DC.
I can’t speak to quality of Marvel vs. DC, but I prefer Marvel mainly becuase I latched on to Spidey at a pretty young age. From that point, it probably all came down to being invested in the characters I was most familiar with. I would never badmouth DC, though, it’s just not where I landed.
If you are reading one or the other company’s books and are looking to try some of the other’s titles, as a reader of both, let me make some recomendations. (I’ll recomend TPB’s so you can get a whole story arc.)
If you’re a Marvel reader. you should try DC’s:
JLA: New World Order Grant Morrison and Howard Porter, The JLA confront a nkotb Super Team.
JSA: Return of Hawkman David S. Goyer and Geoff Johns; Art by Stephen Sadowski Steve Yeowell. May not be the best jumping on point for this title, but is the best read from it.
Whoops! Browser bugger out. I shall continue.
Try DC’s:
Flash and Green Lantern: The Brave and the Bold Mark Waid and Tom Peyer; Art by Barry Kitson and Tom Grindberg The lost tales of Barry Allen and Hal Jordan.
If you’re a DC reader, try Marvel’s:
The Ulimates: TPB vol.I Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. The Avengers revamped in the “Ultimate” universe. Good art and characterisation.
Uncanny X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Easily the best mutant story ever told. Made me an X-Fan when I was a kid.
Incredible Hulk: vol. II Boiling Point Bruce Jones and Lee Weeks. This creative team made the Hulk books readable again. They were free online for a while, but are no longer.
Hope that helps.
Disagree with The Ultimates, myself. I found the revamped Avengers to be rather unappealing, bordering on the psychotic.
Now, Ultimate Spider-Man, there’s a quality title.
That’s funny, rjung, I didn’t like Ultimate Spider-Man. I found the characters boring and unoriginal. But I do know that many people like it, so I try not to rag on it too much.
I like the Ultimates for the Strong origin of Captain America, and for the original takes on Bruce Banner and Hank Pym. I loved the Hulk fight in issue 5. It was fan-freaking-tastic.
Depends on the decade, IMO:
In the 1960’s and most of the 1970’s, the House of Ideas smoked DC’s ass.
Marvel put out the Lee-Ditko Spiderman, one of the all-time classics, and the Lee-Buscema Spidey was pretty good through the end of the Spidey vs. half his villains’ gallery over the Petrified Tablet storyline.
The Fantastic Four had that series of great stories beginning with the Frightful Four beating the FF’s collective ass, and ending with Dr. Doom stealing the Silver Surfer’s powers. In between, Ben fought Mr. Fantastic in one of the best battles Marvel ever staged, and Marvel introduced the Inhumans and Galactus.
Lee and Ditko collaborated on the best Dr. Strange ever, Steranko drew Nick Fury, the Silver Silver had a helluva run in his own title, Starlin put out Warlock, Neil Adams did a vastly underrated job on the X-Fools, the Avengers were usually good, especially with Englehardt and Shooter doing the writing, Marvel introduced Shang Chi, and Iron Man and Daredevil were usually good.
Against this, DC could field only the Legion of Super-Heroes, especially the Shooter-written issues, and the Englehardt-Marshall Rogers-Terry Austin Batman. Tho’ to be fair, Flash was usually pretty decent.
In the 1980’s, DC gave us Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s the Watchmen, Neill Gaiman’s Sandman, the incredible run Moore, Rick Veitch, Tottleben and Bissett had on The Swamp Thing, Brian Bolland’s Camelot 3000, and the Levitz-written Legion. George Perez did pretty good work on the first 25 or so issues of his run on Wonder Woman, the New Teen Titans was well-drawn, and Batman was pretty interesting.
Against this, Marvel could only offer Walt Simonson’s Thor and Master of Kung Fu, which Shooter was stupid enough to kill. DC wins the '80’s hands down.
Don’t know about the present, as I pretty much quit reading comics 8 years ago.