Hokeyboy

The way I see it, you grow up reading comics, and since they co-exist in some kind of idiotic continuity (that never really works), you want to read as much of the line as you can to get the "big picture". As a kid you don't have much disposable income, so you generally choose generally one publisher or the other.

I was a bonafide DC guy growing up; that was 90% of my pull list. But I still read Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Captain America and Avengers faithfully. I was never much into X-Men (still to this day, although I did read some and enjoy the movies) and kind of hated Spider-Man. I was more into the Avengers/FF side of the house, as well as the cosmic stuff like Adam Strange, Captain Marvel, Silver Surfer, etc.

I don't read comics anymore but over time I ended up despising "continuity" and just wanted to read good books, period. By then I was reading equal amounts of Marvel, DC, Image, CrossGen (remember them?), and a ton of indie books. I find the "choosing sides" mentality utterly idiotic, but some people can't break out of that paradigm for poop or bags.

The Valeyard

Growing up during the "Bronze Age," DC and Marvel were the same to me. I'd grab whatever books looked interesting at a local liquor store. Sometimes, I'd never pick up the second part of a story because I couldn't find it. In the late 70s, I started collecting titles on a more frequent basis (with Star Wars & The Micronauts) but even then I was neither DC nor Marvel.

It wasn't until I started reading All-Star Squadron, Captain Carrot and Adventure Comics with Dial H For Hero that I leaned more toward DC. I became a bonafide DC boy after the Crisis. The new DCU was my new drug. I picked up all the titles and rarely grabbed anything Marvel from the mid to late 80s. And when I did, it was either What If or Star Brand after Byrne took it over. It wasn't that I shunned them or was anti-Marvel at the time. They just didn't have anything I was interested in. The rest of my non-DC money went to Eclipse.

When the 90s boom happened, I started grabbing Marvel books again. I still prefer DC more but I would never poo-poo Marvel just because they're Marvel. Looking at my current pull list, I see that even now, the only regular Marvel book I'm picking up is Miracleman. At DC, I'm picking up Superman, Justice League, Batman & Robin and Secret Origins. Everything else are limited series.

majorjoe23

As a kid, I was more into DC. Superman and Batman were my favorites. In the early 90s it was Marvel that caught my eye (but not most of the "big" artists like Lee, Liefeld and McFarlane). By the late 90s I swung back toward DC thanks to Morrison's JLA and Marvel books being kind of dulls before the Marvel Knights line spiced things up.

I've been pretty down on DC every since Identity Crisis. Thanks started to get too rapey/appendage-removaly.

Paul_SD

Yeah. Same here.
I was born during the middle of the Batman shows original broadcast, but I'm sure I only became aware of it during syndication a couple years later- at which point I became a HUGE Batman fan and by extension, an avid comic book fan.
I feel fortunate that my comic book habit was kick started during Neal Adams run on Batman, and around that same time DC started an experiment designed to hedge the too frequent inflationary price increases



At the time a regular comic was 20¢. The 100 page books contained a shorter "new" story, and filled the rest of the book up with reprints of archive material- anywhere from the earliest Golden age stories to mid 60's Silver. Without realizing it, at the age of 7 I was getting an education and developing an appreciation for comics history. And in the hands of a first grader, these things were as big as phone books. Just a couple of these were good for hours of riding in the backseat on a road trip.

I wasn't averse to picking up Spider-man or Captain America- I even vividly remember buying the Gwen Stacey/GG death issue off the newstand- But the cross media exposure of the DC characters via the TV shows and cartoons (Superfriends was huge) made those the go-to characters.

Eventually in the early 80's I started to get into Marvel in a big way with X-men and the end of the first Miller run on DD, but Secret Wars turned me off big time and stopped reading any monthlies soon after that.

Right now my iPad is loaded up with GITs and scans of a ton of Silver age DC runs and it's been interesting to flip back and forth between what was being published concurrently between the two companies. DC's are obviously much more simplistic and episodic, and the Marvel's generally offer a little more substance for an older reader- but at the same time, reading a run of Marvel books in a short period just points out how limited everything was back then. For all the character development and relational soap operatics they congratulate themselves on, each issue still devolves into a standard, de rigueur fight scene with metronomic inevitability.
The DC's actually work good as a palate cleanser since they offer sometimes a little more imagination at the expense of character development and continuity.

duff beer

That is interesting that you say this. I too wondered for along while of others always saying Marvel was more relatable characters, but there is always a tradeoff, and was interested in DC excelling in the imagination spectrum.

Trevor

These thoughts echo mine quite well. I loved those DC 100 pagers and enjoyed the "old" stories almost as much as the "new". Those, combined with my love of the Superfriends TV show and the Filmation cartoons that preceded it, cemented me as a lifelong DC fan.

And it was Miller's Daredevil that brought me more into Marvel for a time.

kodave

Maybe this is a "newer" way of thinking or maybe it's not, but I'm much more interested in writers and artists than I am company loyalty or character loyalty. I was a kid during the bubble burst of DC vs. Marvel in the 90s and I bought up all of those books and the Amalgam stuff, but never felt loyalty to either company. There are certain characters I'm always interested in: Daredevil, Punisher & Batman, but if the writing is poor I'm going to pass on those books. I'll support quality titles regardless of what company they come out of.

PhantomStranger

Growing up I enjoyed both companies pretty equally, though I was aware of fans that strongly preferred one company over the other. Especially the Marvel zombies that thought DC's heroes were corny for some reason.

As I have gotten older, I've drifted away from Marvel. Their gimmick-driven brand of storytelling and dumb publicity stunts have largely killed my interest in regularly reading their new comics. I think it was the introduction of the Ultimate Universe that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. They did produce some good stories in the Ultimate Universe's early years but I realized I wasn't in their intended demo anymore.

fumanstan

Seems typical these days of any industry with only a handful of players, like iPhone/Android. The volatility of internet folk doesn't help.

Paul_SD

I was thinking of this in relation to the Guardians film and the Edgar Wright situation. Marvel, even more so than DC, very much had a "house style" early on and carried it forward for a lot longer.
If you've ever perused How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way, you can see it in action.

Over at DC, the young Turks of the late 60's/early 70's, Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams (followed by guys like Wrightson, Rogers, Englehart etc) shook up the status Quo and began producing content that was of another level of quality and...intention. They weren't content to just produce entertaining popcorn material ala Broome or Haney or Gardner. They were striving to put out a top shelf product that had illustration and thematic relevancy worthy of the 'slicks' (the more expensive, adult periodicals like Time or Sat Evening Post, etc).

Marvel, OTOH, had fired a shot across the bow years earlier with its (for the time) more sophisticated use of continuity and soap opera elements. But going into the 70's, the paradigm over there changed very little. They had a few stand out talents that were utterly unique (Gerber and Don McGregor for writing, Ploog and BSW for art amongst others) but what they looked for were people to segue seamlessly into the shadows of Kirby and Buscema and Lee and Thomas.

Until Shooter came along as the new ed-in-chief in the late 70's early 80's. He recognized talent that was outside the box and nurtured it and give it a wide berth- like Frank Miller.

And that leads into the 80's where that attitude + the rise of the direct market and quickening irrelevance of the newstand brought about an age of auteurs. Books were no longer green-lit based on the assumed viability of the character. They were now being sold on the basis of the talent involved- Miller with Ronin, Moore with Watchmen.
The end of the decade saw the formation of Vertigo which was another way that the artist creating were just as if not more important than the property they were working on.

All that is just a long winded way of saying that your experience was typical of the kids of your generation. You guys grew up in the wake of the auteur/celebrity creators and direct market driven business models. The culmination was probably Image.

And the culmination of that was seeing those guys move back to the big two in vastly more powerful positions. No longer work-for-hire page rate slaves, they were now running the show.

PhantomStranger

The two characters that really branded Marvel in the 80s were Wolverine and the Punisher, and to a lesser extent, Miller's Daredevil. DC never really had any type of popular anti-hero character before the 90s, which led to big differences in their respective audiences.

Paul_SD

Yeah, that's a big factor too.

Since I never read Punisher or had that big a fanboy hard on for angry anti-heroes, I tend to gloss over their impact. But you're right. Big distinction there. TDKR channeled a little of that as did Rorschach, but those were basically self contained one shot stories.

majorjoe23

I'd say Lobo probably also fit that role a bit.

Lastdaysofrain

Lobo is a weird case though where a parody character ended up appealing to the audience it was being critical of in the first place.

rocket1312

When I was a kid, I read Marvel and only Marvel (well, until Image came along what can I say, I was a Jim Lee fanboy.). It had almost everything to do with the fact that Marvel was what I was exposed to first. That and the fact that my funds were severely limited, so I couldn't afford more than a couple of books a month. X-Men was the only series I "collected". Everything else I just bought off the spinners based on what appealed to me on a given day.

The thing that really hooked me on Marvel, was the giant shared universe/continuity. When I first discovered Marvel, there was 25 years of stories for me to catch up on. And for the most part, I knew every one of those stories mattered in the grand scheme of things. I was never going to be able to actually read all of them, but I would fill in the gaps with the odd back issue here and there and the write-ups on trading cards. I also used to spend hours looking through the price guides in the back of Wizard and looking at which issues featured important first appearances/origins/deaths/etc. In some ways, the mythology I built up in my imagination was better than the actual stories when I finally did get to read them.

D.C. never had that same appeal. Their continuity was all over the place and constantly being tinkered with. There were isolated stories that were great, but it was never the larger than life soap-opera that I craved. As I got older and embraced the ridiculous complexity (and started following my favorite writers wherever they happened to go), I got more interested. Once the 21st century rolled around, I was definitely buying more DC than Marvel. Marvel was still putting out some good stuff, but I was in awe of the way someone like Geoff Johns could make modern sense of DC's past in a title like JSA. DC's universe all of a sudden felt much more cohesive, thus catering to my particular tastes. Of course it all got to be too much and I bailed after Infinite Crisis. The New 52 pretty much guarantees that I will never go back.

I'm strictly a Marvel Unlimited/classic reprints guy now. If DC had a similar online service and/or reprint program, I'd consider giving them a look, but until then I'm back to being a Marvel guy through and through.

Ky-Fi

I liked both growing up, but it was probably 60-40 in favor of Marvel. I'm just a casual reader as an adult, but I guess it's probably about the same percentage. Right now I subscribe to Marvel Unlimited Digital (although I don't ever seem to find the time to access it), and I subscribe to the print version of Aquaman. For me, I like the Marvel universe better in general, and I feel that Marvel has generally had better villains over the years.

fujishig

Here's a great interview with Bob McLeod I linked to some time ago, where he talks about Marvel house style, McFarlane and some of the new guard throwing in scribbling and putting a lot of detail instead of working on anatomy and backgrounds, and Romita Sr. in the old days redrawing heads if you didn't get it right:

http://www.comicbookbin.com/bobmcleod002.html

Supermallet

I never thought the rivalry was anything more than two competing companies ribbing each other. While there were slogans like "Make mine Marvel!" I never noticed any serious animosity between Marvel and DC. I think for most people, one universe was simply more compelling than the other for whatever reason, and that's what they ended up sticking with.

Iron_Giant

Loved DC from 1972 on. My sister gave me $5 to go buy some anything at the Drug Store down the street because I was bored at her apartment.
-DC Adventure Comic with Aquaman (somehow I remember the comic and the cover)
-Bought others but don't remember the names
***Been hooked ever since on DC.

Marvel seemed to convoluted to me as a 10 year old, DC was cleaner and straight forward.

LOVE Marvel/Disney movies, they have been a ton of fun. Like their comics, they have a long term plan for their movies.

DC Movie have also been great, but they are the family movies Marvel/Disney are. DC movies are more mature/adult kind of movies. Which is not good nor bad, just different, which is a good thing I think.
-But, it looks like DC has a plan for the future, but seems to be a slow process. WB does not seem to need as many movies as Disney does to make back their investment.

Anyway, we are living in the Golden Area of Super Hero movies.

Iron_Giant

LOVED those 100 page "Books". Man I really miss those day, DC somehow had more of innocents to it.

I too loved reading about the history about comics through those 100 Comics, only took me about a year to really get a fell for the Golden age of DC.

To me the 70s were like the Wonder Year for comics to me.

Hokeyboy

My first comic. A Treasury Edition, oversized comic which I got in 1976 when I was 5. Featured 2 Superman/Flash race stories, puzzles, Fortress of Solitude schematics, and more. Turned me into a Superman (and DCU) fan for life:



I still have it.

Christmas 1976 my cousin gave me this hardbound treasure:



This thick book featured Superman stories from every decade. I poured through it like it was Holy Writ. Mostly black and white, but with some color pages. Think of every possible Superman iteration of that time, from the Siegel/Shuster social crusader of the 30s to the grand goofy sci-fi of Mort Weisenger/Curt Swan and the Denny O'Neil 70s era. AMAZING STUFF.

My brother had the Batman version which was just as addictive as well.

slop101

Saw this, below, and thought it was cute.

Some of their points have to do with the movies, and some points are strawmen, and of course they're dealing with DC vs Marvel, now (in which if we're being honest, Marvel is killing DC), rather than their histories.

[size]

Supermallet

Hokeyboy

Awesome!

But to be fair, DC's Muslim Green Lantern pre-dates Marvel's Muslim Ms. Marvel by several years

Why So Blu?

The Latina Ghost Rider bit was stupid but everything else is lolz.