Why has Marvel Comics gotten so shitty and DC so much better?

Cafe Society
1

I’m not really looking for a big debate or anything, because this isn’t even really an opinion. In the seventies and eighties, it was just always sort of a given that Marvel was the superior company to DC - they had better writers, better artists, and so on. Their books even looked better - there was a really pronounced difference in overall quality between the two publishers.

Something has happened since, and Marvel seems to be playing second fiddle, while DC is (arguably) the best that it’s ever been.

What happened?

2

I tend to disagree, even though I quit buying monthly comics two years ago. I was all excited about DC with Countdown to Infinite Crisis in 2005, featuring a fitting, respectful sendoff to my favorite superhero, Blue Beetle. I also loved the Villains United miniseries that followed, but found the Infinite Crisis event itself incomprehensible and not much fun. Then DC got me psyched again with 52, the weekly series featuring some of my favorite second-banana characters like Booster Gold, the Question, Elongated Man, and Animal Man. But due to the snails-pace storytelling, I lost interest in 52 fairly quickly… and I hear that read like Shakespeare compared to the current Countdown series.

I have to admit, the only DC book that interests me in the least nowadays is Geoff Johns’ Booster Gold series, and while I haven’t actually read it, I am eagerly awaiting the first TPB. I’m also a huge Wildstorm fanboy, but after the Grant Morrison-written relaunches of Authority (with Gene Ha) and Wildcats (with Jim Lee) fizzled and died, it’s clear to me that DC has no interest in keeping the Wildstorm imprint strong, interesting, or even alive.

Meanwhile, I am more intrigued by Marvel’s series than I have been in over a decade. Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men has been terrific, and now I’m looking forward to the last TPB that wraps up his run. Dan Slott’s She-Hulk was hilarious and fun more often than not, and Warren Ellis’ “Extremis” storyline that relaunched Iron Man was the best IM story I’ve ever read, and a perfect fit for Ellis’ obsessions with technology, futurism, body modification, and flawed, substance-abusing heroes.

Now Marvel has one of my favorite writers, Ed Brubaker, plugging away on Daredevil and Captain America, and apparently he’s writing the best Cap in decades. (I read the first TPB, and hope to pick up the giant-sized Omnibus so I can catch up). Brubaker is the ideal choice to have followed Brian Bendis’ noir take on Daredevil, and that’s another run I look forward to getting into via the TPBs. Now he and Matt Fraction have revitalized Iron Fist, and I hear that’s another fantastic series… and Brubaker also has his own noir book Criminal under Marvel’s Icon imprint. Does the man ever sleep?

Peter David’s current run on X-Factor (and the Madrox miniseries that led into it) just came onto my radar, so now I’m intrigued by his dark, revisionist take on a bunch of mutant jobbers I never cared about before, even when David was last writing them in the early '90s. I’m a sucker for completely reimagining C-list heroes and placing them in more realistic settings, like what I’m hearing about Madrox’s new detective agency.

While the whole “One More Day”/“Brand New Day” with Spider-Man does sound pretty crummy, I think Marvel shouldn’t be counted out yet. Like I said, I haven’t been reading many comics over the last two years, and I’m usually the last one to discover cool new things, but it sounds like Marvel is publishing the lion’s share of superhero comics that appeal to my sensibilities.

3

While Marvel does have a few exceptional writers-Whedon (Astonishing X-Men), Brubaker (Daredevil, Captain America), Straczynski (formerly Amazing Spider Man, currently Thor), Pak (Incredible Hulk), Ennis (Punisher), Ellis (Thunderbolts and iirc soon Fantastic Four)-it’s titles don’t seem to be as cohesive as DC’s. The mutants practically have their own little universe. Spider Man is practically in his own continuity now. There’s whatever the hell Bendis is up to in the Avengers. They kind of come together briefly in whatever “event” they are selling us. Take the recent crossover of World War Hulk. All of the Avengers titles and the Fantastic Four were not involved despite their characters being heavily involved. She Hulk was a no-show despite heavy ties to the character. Iron Man had one issue. Spider Man and Daredevil had none despite being NYC heroes where all of the action took place. Not to mention some titles were referencing events after World War Hulk before the main story had even ended.

On the whole, DC doesn’t seem to have many must buy titles. Countdown just recently started picking up steam. Justice League is kind of a mess now. Teen Titans, Blue Beetle, and Booster Gold don’t feel as episodic as most of the titles do, and Green Lantern is kicking all kinds of ass on their side of the universe. Overall, the DC universe seems to be moving in one solid direction as a line of titles with Countdown leading the way towards their next major event.

IMHO, the best comics seem like they are going somewhere beyond a three issue storyline. Brubaker’s Captain America reads like it was leading up to and beyond the death of Steve Rogers. Paks’ Hulk also had a pretty good arc leading up to World War Hulk. In DC’s case, the whole universe seems to be marching to the next event and beyond. Not to mention (again) Green Lantern which seems to be on some epic multi-year plan of ringing the entire spectrum. The titles may be individually weak, but there is that sense of direction.

4

Quesada.

5

Please elaborate.

6

It’s all cheese?

I got nothin’.

7

Editor in chief Joe Quesada. The most recent outrage (Spidey’s Satanic divorce) was all him, a pretty transparent ploy to make the comics more like they were when he was a kid. It was also executed terribly.

The answer the OP: Over the years, DC has learned what worked for Marvel, and how to apply it to their own characters. Talent skipping from one company to another (or more commonly, doing freelance for both simultaneously) has long since destroyed any real artistic differences between the two companies. If one company seems better than the other at any given time, then it’s simply because you prefer the stories of one editor and his favorite writers over the other.

At the moment, Marvel has had a string of EARTH SHATTERING EVENTS that seem calculated to offend as many people as they please. DC has had a similar number of EARTH SHATTERING EVENTS, but, while they’ve been of uneven quality (IMO good: Infinite Crisis, 52, Sinestro Corps War; Bad: Countdown (to Final Crisis), Amazons Attack, Death of the New Gods), they don’t seem to inflame the passions of their detractors the same way making Iron Man into a fascist and then having him win did.

8

On the whole it seems that DC has been better at keeping its characterization consistent lately, that DC has had a few very good major events (e.g., 52, Sinestro Corps War), and that Marvel has been re-setting their continuity to the status quo ante (e.g., mutant decimation, Spider-Man).

Really, while both companies have had a few clunkers (DC’s Amazons Attack was pretty dire), I think that DC has had more high-profile good stuff (GL), while Marvel seems to have had high-profile fan annoyances (Civil War). DC has word-of-mouth working in their favor.

9

I’d point the finger at Quesada. DC’s Dan Didio has committed a number of mistakes as well, but their overall impact is lessened. My Marvel pull-list has dwindled over the last two years… right now, I’m getting two Marvel titles*, and after the next issue of Fantastic Four comes out, I’m dropping it in advance of Mark Millar taking on the writing chores. Then I’ll have only a single Marvel title.

  • I dropped She-Hulk and X-Factor last week - She Hulk because the new direction failed to interest me after three issues, and X-Factor because of the stupid X-Family crossover ruining everything I like about the title.

I like interconnected titles, with continuity. I like consistent characterization. I like just a touch of Silver-Age shine. Mostly, I like books that are fun.

Marvel gives me none of that, and DC gives me all of that. Which is why my DC pull-list is “everything they publish, except four titles”.

10

Agreed. And, out of curiosity, what -is- the ‘new direction’ for She-Hulk?

11

DC comics are, at the moment, a giant cesspool of awful comics and even worse ideas for comics. Creatively, the company is in worse shape than it has been in at least fifteen years, and I consider most of its big-name creators to be completely creatively bankrupt and hacks of the highest order.

In the last few years, the sheer widespread awfulness of DC comics has driven me from buying a number of DC titles every month to only buying a few select titles (All-Star Superman, Gail Simone’s Wonder Woman) and reprints.

Marvel is publishing a lot of comics worth reading, however, even if a lot of the really good ones (Irredeemable Ant-Man, The Thing) do wind up getting cancelled.

I don’t think I can find any common ground on which to discuss the OP, but it just goes to show - different strokes and all that.

12

See, I gave up on Marvel years ago. Honestly I am about to give up on DC. When a company starts killing of the red shirt characters on a monthly basis (see Mighty Marvel Mutant Massacre, and the recent Titans East slaughterfest), It usually means they are starting to run out of ideas.

 These multi-issue-company-spanning-reality-altering, series are really starting to get quite silly. Civil war was so bad that as soon as one of the major events (Spiderman unmasking) happened, I found myself thinking "so how are they going to retcon this", I think we all know what happened there.

DC is really starting to get into a the same rut. Wasn't the original Infinite Crisis designed to clean up continuity? Now it has gotten so convoluted that I wonder how someone in the DC-verse even gets their mail. "Well lets see, I lived on earth-2 years ago, but them it was absorbed into one universe, but then after the second crisis, I got moved to earth-z, now my house is on earth-15 but I find out my job got outsourced to earth-p, and is that Superman, Captain Marvel or the Tick flying by the window."

So I guess I'm saying that I am not on either the Marvel of DC side of this issue.
13

When we say “DC,” are we including the Vertigo line?

Because if DC is better than Marvel on its own, then the current Vertigo books raise the bar that much higher; I don’t think the imprint has ever been better, not even during the Sandman years.

Fables, Jack of Fables, Crossing Midnight, Y: The Last Man, and Hellblazer are my cites. And Marvel has nothing to compare with Vertigo; wasn’t the “Max” imprint a failed attempt to compete?

14

Not really. I’d say the closest Marvel has to Vertigo is their Icon imprint.

15

Good Marvel, IMHO: Thunderbolts, Initiative, sometimes Mighty and New Avengers, Thor. I understand Whedon’s X-Men was quite good. Oh and the Twelve, but that’s likely a personal pick.

Good DC: Robin (I’ll wait and see on the new guy), Detective, Green Lantern, Manhunter, Checkmate.

It does seem uneven to me.

16

I can’t really say why I think DC is “better” than Marvel. In my early collecting days before I stopped for financial reasons (1987-1991), I purchased far more Marvel titles than DC titles. Part of that was the fact that my then-favorite Marvel characters — The Punisher and Spider-Man — had something like seven monthly titles between them, and I bought them all. Also, at only $1.00 an issue, it was easier to get sucked into continuing to collect various titles after I’d purchased them as part of one of the near-constant crossover events, which meant I ended up buying every X-title every month.

At the same time, DC came out with a lot of new titles I really enjoyed, but for whatever reason the ones I liked kept getting cancelled after relatively short runs. (Of course this still happens - witness Manhunter, a great title that was cancelled after just 25 issues, then was saved by a letter-writing campaign … for two more issues.) The result was I had fewer long-running DC titles on my pull list than Marvel titles. By the time I stopped collecting in 1991, my collection contained probably 500 more Marvel issues than DC issues.

Even back then, despite collecting so many more Marvel titles, I liked DC characters better in general. My biggest argument in that direction was that it seemed to me that every DC superhero had a unique origin story - every character got his or her powers in a different manner. Marvel characters, OTOH, all seemed to have acquired their powers through accidental exposure to some form of radiation (for the non-mutants) or were born with them (the mutants). In both cases, of course, I’m ignoring characters who are deities or aliens.

I resumed collecting in 2004, and since then the gap between Marvel and DC in my collection has shrunk to maybe 300 issues as my DC issue count slowly catches up. My current pull list is the shortest it’s ever been, but it’s heavily weighted in favor of DC at the moment:

DC:
Batman and the Outsiders (replaces old Outsiders title)
Blue Beetle (one of the best titles out there at the moment)
Green Lantern (my all-time favorite character, and very well-written right now)
Green Lantern Corps
Justice League of America
Supergirl (I may drop this if the art doesn’t improve dramatically, and soon)
Legion of Superheroes

Marvel:
New Avengers (which I’m close to dropping thanks to the almost painful-to-look-at art)
Runaways (excellent title, but very behind schedule lately)
X-Factor (great writing, though I’m a bit annoyed with the current crossover story, because I’m refusing to get sucked into buying the other related titles this time)

The thing is that lately, I’ve just had a really hard time finding Marvel characters that I care about enough to buy. When I do, there’s often some other factor that turns me off, like crappy (IMO) art. I’ll compare this to Buscema’s run on Daredevil in the late '80s - early '90s. I heard so many rave reviews of the writing on DD at that time, but I found Buscema’s art so unappealing that I just couldn’t bring myself to buy it.

I feel that Marvel is trying too hard to make it’s characters more “human” by giving them personal problems. That’s all good … at least it used to be when those personal problems were merely a part of the characters. But it’s gotten to the point where the characters’ personal problems have become the focus of too many stories - see the recent events in Spider-Man’s life. When I read superhero comics, it’s because I want superheroics. Even in Marvel’s “earth-shattering” events, the main thrust of the stories is that Villain X is causing trouble for Hero Y and must be stopped - all of the actual “earth-shattering” is merely collateral damage. What’s happened to Villain X trying to destroy/take over the world and Hero Y stops him? It reminds me of why I never really enjoyed Saturday Morning/After School cartoons - GI Joe, Transformers, Superfriends, etc.: every episode featured the group of heroes fighting the exact same group of villains, and those villains apparently existed only to attack this specific group of heroes. The whole thing lends much credence to the idea that supervillains exist only as a result of the superheroes.

17

IMO, Marvel and DC need to sign a contract with each other, aimed at benefitting the fans. The main clause:

“Each company may retcon a story line. Whenever it does, the competition has free rein to hire away a staffer of their own choice, and no employer/employee contract may block such hiring.”

You turkeys painted yourself into a corner? Write yourself out of it!

To answer the OP, Spidey and the FF introduced something that DC was missing: characters that were real people, with lives other than their superheroics and silly-ass “I must hide my secret identity” plots. That, and Stan Lee giving room for creativity not available to most DC writers, made Marvel produce comics of real merit.

DC learned their lesson, and capitalized on it, overtaking Marvel.

Then someone got the supposedly bright idea of resetting the goalposts, eliminating years of character develiopment and backstory that was sometimes internally contradictory. And both companies jumped on that bandwagon.

18

–whatever will be, will be;
The future’s not ours to see…

19

A lot of people have gone on about what is happening right this moment but it doesn’t really answer the OP.

The real answer to the OP question of why Marvel was the big man in the 70’s and 80’s and then things seem to have flipped in 90’s is that Marvel failed to learn the lessons of the industry while DC did.

In the 1970’s DC was being crushed by Marvel. DC’s concentration on a younger market than Marvel alienated a lot of the kids buying Marvel comics and so even DC’s higher quality stuff tended to get overlooked. Marvel concentrated on building brand loyalty and as a rule had better writers and artists (obviously there are exceptions but we could discuss those all day).

The first break out Marvel style hit for DC was Wolfman and Perez’s New Teen Titans. It was more mature than most DC titles (“OH MY GOD! ROBIN IS HAVING SEX!!”) and the effects started leaking out across the line. Throughout the 1980’s things changed at DC and they got people like Moore, Millar, and Gaiman to write for them. Marvel’s line of mature comics had just about vanished in a cloud of lack of editorial support but DC’s was exploding.

And then the 90’s hit. The dark age. The point at which I’m shocked the whole industry didn’t just collapse in on itself. Marvel had an artist exodus over some very foolish things while at the same time Marvel expanded their line far beyond their capability of supporting. Their artist stable became followers of the hyper-detailed figure but incapable of drawing details or narrative flow known as the “Image style”. Then they dumped their core line and restarted them. All of the Marvel fans became severely alienated.

DC meanwhile had for the most part continued the climb that they started in the 80’s. They did get a bit of 90’s silliness (killing and replacing every single major character, for example) but not anything near as bad as Marvel. At some point in the 90’s DC realized their single biggest strength: they’re iconic. Everyone “knows” them. Working with that structure rather than fighting against it attracted more fans.

And now Marvel has worked to dig themselves out of the 90’s hole. Quesada for all of his faults is no where near as bad as the past few editorial regimes. (Really guys, do you want me to cover the horrors that those people inflicted?) Quesada at least thinks big and goes for attention but DC is general is in a better position editorially at the moment (though I’m past the point of event burnout there).

20

That’s almost exactly the opposite of why I prefer DC’s characters - DC has a History, built around legacy and family.

The Robins and Batgirls fit both - they’re part of the Batman family, and are legacy IDs.

The connection between generations, and within the generations make DC a much more compelling universe to me.