That’s half the decision for me–specifically Sandman, which is so much better than any other comic I’ve ever read (including other Vertigo titles) that it’s not even close.
The other half, though–hot take time–is that if it’s only based on movies, I’m still choosing DC. Why? Because they’re worse.
Although I enjoy individual Marvel movies, the way they’ve taken over cinema has not been positive. They’re super-formulaic, and they’ve sucked the oxygen out of the room for a generation of actors, writers, directors, and moviegoers. While other stuff is of course being made, non-Marvel movies have felt at the edges of movies over the past decade or two.
If Marvel went away, with its hugely successful superhero movie formula, I wonder what movies would have been made instead.
More F&F and MI knockoff movies, I should think. I don’t agree with your overall take - I think it’s a change in the movie industry as a whole, and isn’t on Marvel. If they went away, there wouldn’t suddenly be a rush of arthouse movies. Just more of the same.
I finally got there with the latest TV show (Secret Invasion) and the trailer for The Marvels. The MCU is at a point where, if it was comic book, they would put it on hiatus and return with a completely different creative team with a much longer leash as far as continuity is concerned. I’m probably out until they give The Fantastic Four another shot.
Still, Marvel is head and shoulders above the grim and joyless world of DC which hasn’t been fun since about 1966.
I think the success of The Dark Knight/Batman Trilogy with Christian bale gave DC the wrong idea that all their superhero movies had to be dark and brooding.
But no one wants a dark and brooding Superman. Or Wonder Woman. Or Aquaman. The first Shazam movie managed to capture some lightness and fun of the comics but even it had a sense of darkness that really held it back from being great as it could have been.
I was a DC kid: Legion of Superheroes, Supergirl, Batman when he still had the giant penny in the Batcave - back when DC was fun. But endless reboots and Snyder killed that joy for good. Now it’s Marvel and no looking back.
I see that a lot of you young 'uns are counting movies in your assessment. I didn’t do that. So I’d now considering that in the equation I’d like to keep my vote the same. Marvel is still better.
The OP asked about “which franchise will disappear forever” and “never be seen again.” The word “franchise” makes me think of movies, and I interpreted it as applying to all media featuring Marvel or DC characters; but it wasn’t clearly defined.
Also ambiguous is whether the OP meant that just there would be no new releases, or whether all previous appearances of the characters would disappear (but we’d still remember them), or whether even our memories of them would be wiped out.
I bought every single Marvel comic I could find back when they were 12 cents. My favorites were X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Thor (Astonishing Tales) though I bought every other comic. Including Nick Fury and Millie the Model! (I had an embarrassing little crush on Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner. And on both The Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.) I eventually outgrew them, I guess, though I always wondered what happened to Reed and Sue’s kid, Franklin. I had a box 3 feet high full of Marvel comics…I thought Superman was corny, dated, and the stories dumb. Batman did nothing for me.
I thought of all associated media also, but I don’t think much of the movies. The comic books are the art, the movies are just marketing gimmicks that got out of control.
Which was hilarious. DC started with all their guys as upper-class white dudes basically fighting crime for kicks. Green Arrow’s origin story started as him falling of his yacht, for goodness’s sakes. The former industrialist became a pseudo-hippy because his comic wasn’t selling and DC wanted to appeal to the yutes.
I’m 72 and threw away DC within a short time of discovering Marvel with Fantastic Four #8. With some reservations. I thought Spider-Man #1 to be the worst comic in had ever seen. But I came around. I still have a soft spot for the early 1950s Batman, when he was the greatest detective in the world, and not a grim, nighttime psychopath.
Of course I include movies with the franchise. Movies are the franchise today. Movies are seen by 100,000,000 people and comics by maybe 50,000. Superman and Batman got all the great media treatments until recently but Marvel started destroying them. (And is running a good thing into the ground, so maybe in ten years I’ll say something different.) If the roles were switched and DC made the fun, watchable stuff and Marvel dreary stuff about psychopaths I would have voted DC.
I’m in agreement with you here. For the vast majority of Americans, Thanos wanted the Infinity Stones so he could cut the population of the universe in half. In the comics Thanos wanted to impress Death because he had a crush on her. For a lot of kids who watched Teen Titans on Cartoon Network, Starfire was kind of a fish-out-water who just wanted to make friends and be accepted for who she was. But if those same kids picked up a comic book from that same time she was characterized in part by her hypersexuality. Kind of a big change.
