There is no “overall standard” for any comics company the size of Marvel and DC. Quality varies greatly from one book to another, depending upon how good the writer and artist are for the characters they are presenting. Marvel has several good books right now, and has managed to secure the services of many of the top writers to write them. Mark Waid, Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis, Mark Millar, Robert Kirkman, Brian Vaughn, Joss Whedon, and J. Michael Strazynski are all doing good stuff. Others are producing some decidedly average stuff.
Likewise, DC has good writers–Mark Waid, Brian Vaughn, Kurt Busiek, Ed Brubaker, Geoff Johns etc.–and mediocre writers and just plain bad ones. Both companies have a tendancy to hire writers long past their peak primarily based on name recognition (Chris Claremont and John Byrne come to mind), and both inexplicably keep hiring Chuck Austen to write their high profile books.
It isn’t the universe, it’s the creative team and what they do with the character that matters to me. I like the character of Spider-Man, but don’t buy all his titles because I don’t really care for the writing or artwork in Spectacular. The recent Chuck Austen run on JLA was easily the worst storyline to appear in that book since the JLA: Detroit years.
That wasn’t from the Detroit League. That was from the (brilliant in every way) Giffen Justice Leage (soon to become the JLI) that started right after the Detroit League. Issue #3 or #4, I think.
One of the reasons DC has always appealed to me – and this gets back to the idea of DC as a storytelling company – is that DC typically offers more storytelling choices than others. While its broadly true that Marvel did more innovative things with their superheroes and supervillains, DC comics offered the comics medium more types of stories by different kinds of writers and different readers’ tastes, more often.
In the 80s, Marvel had a legitimate diverse line of comics: you had the regular Marvel Universe superhero titles, the creator-owned Epic line, Epic Illustrated magazine, Star Comics, the New Universe line. These different genres/imprints were abruptly phased out and then began that awful 90s speculative market debacle where there was less innovative storytelling then flooding the marketplace with packaging gimmicks like foil covers and Today Marvel has its regular titles, the Ultimate line and… that’s pretty much it. Marvels does superheroes very well, but that’s all it seems committed to doing well.
DC, as part of the Warner corporate entity, has had since the 80s its superhero comics, Pirahna Press, Paradox Press, Impact Comics, the sci-fi Helix imprint. Today it has annexed Wildstorm/Homage, America’s Best Comics, the Vertigo imprint (Vertigo started out as a horror/fantasy imprint but has since branched out to Garth Ennis’ war comics to Vaughn’s the post-apocolyptic Y: The Last Man to the crime drama of Azzarello’s 100 Bullets), its Elseworlds comics, DC Comics Kids and its hardbound Archive Editions format – far more diversity than Marvel and a talent pool of artists and writers ranging from throughout the Americas, Japan and parts of Europe.
Damn. I’d remembered it as that they were still in the cave at the time. But now that I think about it, Batman and the Big Red Cheese wouldn’t have been involved in the Detroit League…
Yep, Batman taking out Guy was part of the Kieth Giffen run. Neither Bats nor Guy were in the Detroit league. The Detroit league was an attempt to do something different with it. The idea was to treat it like the golden age JSA. Characters already appearing in their own strong books were taken out. This can work well if done right. Having a cast of characters that appear only in your team book gives you a lot f freedom to develop and deepen them. Having a team made up of the biggest names in your universe makes the character development subservient to the home books, where the big changes have to happen.
Good idea, but poor execution. First, it’s just not the Justice League without some heavy hitters as members. Second, they didn’t take advantage of their good third string characters to flesh out the team. The new members were not well designed or compelling. Third, it was just badly written. Fourth, Aquaman was the wrong dude to keep from the traditional league.
The Giffen / De Matteis league had roughly the same premise–fill it up with characters not popular enough for their own books. But they did it all right. 1. Include some heavy hitters–Captain Marvel, Green Lantern (Guy Gardner). 2. Use good third stringers to flesh out the team (Captain Marvel, GL, Blue Beetle, Ice). 3. Add some interesting new characters–Booster Gold. 4. Choose a strong character from the traditional league to be the link–Batman. 5. Most important, develop the characters and write stories with energy and humor.
Giffen’s much overlooked L.E.G.I.O.N was also very well done.
If you interpret the OP as corporate entity DC vs. corporate Marvel, this almost entirely true (Marvel does have a kids line, Marvel Age). I interpreted the OP as meaning the core DCU vs. the core Marvel U, ie a comparison of the superhero universes. When I think of a DC book, I think of those books that have the DC logo.
If you include the variant imprints, I’d have to agree that there’s no doubt that the DC family of books is much more diverse and deep.
He was originally introduced as a “serious” villain type, and went up against the Doom Patrol, as I recall. Perhaps in their own title, or the pages of Action or the like. And I don’t know who wrote that issue - may have been Giffen. But Giffen gave us the refined Ambush Bug, of that there can be no question.
I don’t think you can have an accurate discussion on “Who’s Better? Marvel or DC?” without considering the imprints and company histories to some extent, especially since I own issues from every imprint I named (I forgot Marvel’s 2099 comics and Marvel Age because I never bought any). These days, while I lean toward DC, it’s just because a lot of my favorite creators happen to work there. I’ll follow my favorite writers to any company they please, which is why I read Bendis’ POWERS from Image and Warren Ellis’ ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE, ULTIMATE FANTASTIC FOUR and IRON MAN from Marvel, and Alan Moore’s stuff absolutely anywhere.
Keith Giffen was the penciller on the Kurt Schaffenberger-written issue of DC COMICS PRESENTS #59 that introduces Ambush Bug, so he was there right from the beginning. He definitely designed the Ambush Bug and if Schaffenberger hasn’t claimed co-credit in all these years, its probable that Giffen had AB tucked away in his sketchbooks somewhere and pitched AB as a villain for that issue and Kurt just wrote it.
Marvel flirted with bankruptcy (in large part) because it took the lead on producing gimmicky comics for the speculative market in the 1990s instead of making quality comics. It published all those titles trying to squeeze out DC and independents of market share and comic book retail display space. This had a short term effect of revitalizing the industry but when the speculative market collapsed, Marvel (and the industry) lost a chunk of readers.
If I had to say which universe I thought was “better”, I would say DC for one simple reason: Origin Stories.
It always seemed to me that DC’s characters all had unique origins, while Marvel’s were all granted superpowers by virtue of being exposed to one sort of radiation or another. That’s oversimplifying, of course, but it’s the way I saw it for a long time. So I’ve always preferred DC’s titles.
Ironically, during my old collecting years (1987 - 1996) I accumulated more Marvel than DC comics. Part of the reason is that most of the Marvel titles I collected were uninterrupted during those years (Spider-Man books, Avengers, The Punisher, Uncanny X-Men, Silver Surfer etc.), while DC kept starting titles that I really enjoyed and then cancelling them after 25-30 issues (Starman, Power of the Atom, Hawk & Dove etc.) Marvel’s massive crossovers (Inferno, Acts of Vengeance) contributed as well.