Not sure how to explain this so I’m going to use and example instead. You can use any comic company, too.
Marvel:
Character’s power levels vary significantly from week to week. one issue Rogue is shot by and ordinary gun and is severely wounded. The next she is punched part the moon and comes back in the same fight. This is particularly true of magic using characters, who may have vastly different abilities from week to week.
DC:
Characters power never varies - its just ludicrously high. Examples include Batman, where the old “Batman wins - if he’s prepared” has a tendency to get taken to insane heights. It may be a joke, but not by much. Likewise Superman, who brings new meaning to the word “Invincible”, and who is only kept interesting because he simply forgets to use half his awesome powers.
Let’s not even mention Golden Age Flash and J’on J’onzz.
As recently as 1980, the difference between the companies was that DC had the great characters and Marvel had the great writers. With the passage of time, the major Marvel characters have become as established as the DC ones, and all the writers for both companies are freelancers. There’s not much distinction between the companies, and both of them are spending too much time grooming properties for Hollywood.
Marvel’s whole “rampant anti-mutant bigotry” thing seems pretty forced, in a world where most super-powered people are beloved and idolized. We’re expected to believe that crowds of people cheer the Thing and beg him for autographs, but curse and hurl rotten fruit at Jean Grey?
Normal Citizen: “Gee, thanks for saving my life, Good-Looking
Super-Powered Person… but before I say
anything else, let me ask you… did you
OBTAIN your powers, or were you born
this way?”
GLSPP: “Born this way. Why do you ask?”
Normal Citizen: “EEEEK! Monster!! Get your stinkin’ paws
offa me, you damn dirty MUTANT!”
Seriously, the whole bunch of them could apparently solve their problem just by making up fake origin stories!
Nah, even the non-mutant Marvel heroes have been pelted with fruit (literally and figuratively) at one time or another. The Thing regularly gets people running away from him in revulsion, IIRC, and the Fantastic Four were evicted out of their apartment in an early Stan-n-Jack story, IIRC. Hell, being pelted by an ungrateful public was a major problem for Spider-Man…
On power levels: are you kidding? Superman is the most inconsistent character ever. One moment he is diverting the course of entire asteroids, the next he’s struggling to lift a mere rock.
I agree: Marvel’s obsession with the Mutant thing just… it’s doesn’t work all that great. It actually works better in the movies, where the few mutants just now appearing are the only major difference from our world.
Mutant heroes have almost always been less in the limelight, though, and their sworld-saving adventures rarely get publicized so much as the other supers.
On the other hand, that storyline is more or less ended as an active role, anyway. And it worked very well and was an interesting idea, something that hadn’t really been tried before.
In the Marvelverse, the X-men (and mutants in general) seem to almost occupy their own pocket universe compared to Captain America and the Avengers. Keeping that in mind - and ignoring the occasional crossovers - anti-mutant hysteria makes a hell of a lot of sense, especially when you consider most of the X-adventures aren’t quite as prominent as a Fantastic Four escapade.
I think that’s why it works so well in the movies, actually… the story of the X-men is isolated from that of other super-beings.
I was hoping that when they launched Ultimate X-Men, it would be completly removed from the “universe” of Ultimate Spiderman.
But to the original topic, I think it is certainly editorial. There is no such thing as a “Marvel Writer” or a “DC Writer.” They switch companies all the time.
Actually, Marvel and DC are currently signing all the writers they can to exclusive contracts. This is only over the last year or so, but the days of big-name freelancers may be limited.
Brian Michael Bendis is really the only A-list writer exclusive to Marvel. Kevin Smith and J. Michael Straczynski are too, but they have commitments to their other media projects and as such, their books often run late or come out sporadically.
DC, on the other hand, has Warren Ellis, Geoff Johns, Judd Winick, Ed Brubaker, and I believe they just signed Greg Rucka, Grant Morrison, and Mark Waid to exclusive contracts.
DC comics include oridary people, & the heroes try to meet their needs. i.e.–Batman saves bag lady from sadistic hoods, Superman gets schoolbus off railroad tracks, heroes respond to natural disasters in JLA, et al. Heroes try to evac regular folks from battle zone.
Marvel comics all but omit normal people, or portray them as anti-mutant bigots. Heroes enter conflicts with vast cosmic beings, but the needs of the people they are supposedly protecting are glossed over. Heroes do not try to evac normal people, as conflicts always take place in abandoned building or mysteriously deserted Downtown New York streets (as if!).
This exentds to the art–DC artists add faces to people in crowds, Marvel often makes them a faceless mass.
There are, of course, some minor exceptions, butr as a broad rule of thumb, this is true.
DC heroes are Public Defenders, Marvel’s come across as celebrities.
Actually, recent Avengers books have touched on anti-mutant hysteria in dealing with it’s members Justice and Firestar. They dealt with it differntly than the X-Men did, by talking to the press and having advisors and spin doctors and such, but it wasn’t ignored by the writers…
…I seem to recall hearing it noted that Marvel superheroes are often more evenly matched with Marvel supervillains, in contrast to most DC superheroes.