B5Erik

I started buying comics when I was a kid. The first comic I bought was in early 1975, an issue of Spidey Super Stories. I loved Spider-Man, and immediately graduated to The Amazing Spider-Man the next month with issue #144. I was hooked. I added The Incredible Hulk and Fantastic Four to my regular titles. (I didn't buy every issue, but I did buy every issue that caught my eye when I had the money to buy them.)

Marvel was my comic book company of choice. The Marvel Comics Group stripe/strip at the top of each issue was like a beacon guiding me to great comic book entertainment!

DC?? I wasn't anti-DC, per se. They were just... different. Even as a 7 year old kid I could tell the difference in the writing and art between the two companies. When I flipped through the Superman issues on the spinner the art by Curt Swan just seemed so... bland. There was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't Romita or John Buscema (with Joe Sinnott's inks). It wasn't as dynamic or exciting as the art by Ross Andru with Mike Esposito or Frank Giacoia inking. It wasn't as good as George Perez' work on Fantastic Four.

But every now and then I saw something interesting. Like The Brave and the Bold #119...




...now THAT looked interesting! And the art! Jim Aparo knocked it out of the park! So I bought it. And another issue of Brave and the Bold later on. And I liked them. Haney's stories with Aparo's art were (and still are) compelling and entertaining.

But my money was reserved for Marvel. DC purchases were relegated to my leftover money IF I had any after the Marvel purchases.

As a result, I never fully got into DC. In the 70's and early 80's I saw DC as kind of exotic. It was different - a different world, a different universe with a different style, and I preferred Marvel. I didn't really become anti-DC until the mid 80's (when I was in my late teens), which, in hindsight, was a mistake. Had I given Batman and the Outsiders a chance I would have loved it. As it was I loved The New Teen Titans (and bought most issues up to #25 or so before losing track). I probably would have liked the Gerry Conway run on Batman and Detective Comics.

But in the 70's and early 80's DC really did seem exotic to me. Different, a little strange in some ways (the tone just seemed off to me), but still somewhat compelling.

I just didn't have the money to buy all the Marvel titles I wanted AND all the DC titles that appealed to me, so I mostly stuck with Marvel.

And then, at some point in the mid 80's (just before John Byrne took over Superman), I developed a mindset that became very biased against DC. They were the inferior company, and they were the competitors to Marvel, so they were the bad guys. It was like following sports teams. If you were a New York Giants fan or a Washington Redskins fan you kind of had to hate the Dallas Cowboys. If you were a San Diego Charges fan you had to hate the Oakland Raiders (it was easy to do, too). And, in my mind (and, I suspect, in the minds of many Marvel fans in the 70's and 80's) if you were a Marvel fan you had to hate DC.

Decades later I remembered The Brave and the Bold #119. One of the Man-Bat issues. I wondered, was it as good as I remembered. So I looked for it online and found it. Sure enough, it was every bit as good as I remembered. So I bought the Brave and the Bold Omnibus that had that issue. I found that I had really missed out on a lot of stuff. At the same time I got all three Omnibi ( ) of The New Teen Titans, and found that the writing on those comics was fantastic. And George Perez was, well, George Perez! (I'm not a huge fan of Romeo Tanghal's inks, but he didn't ruin anything...)

So from there I've been jumping on to a bunch of DC titles in trade paperbacks and hardcover collections. Superman The Man Of Steel TPB's (if anyone has a copy of TPB Vol 4 that you'd be willing to part with let me know), Green Lantern/Green Arrow (the O'Neill/Adams run), the two Gerry Conway Batman HC collections, the Batman Illustrated by Neal Adams HC collections, etc. It's all been really good stuff. And I missed out the first time around on most (but not all) of it.

I still think Marvel is the superior comics company, and they have been for most of the last 58 years, but DC has definitely put out some really good stuff in that time.

But I find it interesting how the rivalry between Marvel and the Distinguished Competition impacted me (and, I'd bet, lots of others) as a comic buyer and reader, and skewed my perception of DC.

Trevor

Kind of the opposite for me, always preferred DC. Similar time frame, I started slightly earlier.

Still love and collect both, but luckily discovered non big-two comics in the 80s and much more enjoy now non-soap opera fare from the independents.

Trevor

I can echo very similar thoughts on my marvel vs DC thinking back in my childhood and teenage years. Marvel wasn’t awful, just different. I know there were a lot of people that liked both equally from the get-go, but I bet that most people were like us, and preferred one.

I’m sure it’s mostly whichever company first set it’s hooks in you, and made you feel the line and universe-wide continuity, was the one that you preferred.

Hokeyboy

I was 80% DC, 20% Marvel as a kid/teen. DC was my main love, but I faithfully followed Fantastic Four, Avengers, Iron Man, and Captain America (in that order). I hated X-Men and Spider-Man. My favorites were Superman, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Flash, Teen Titans, Batman, Justice League (America, International, Europe, etc), and especially Legion of Super-Heroes. I loved the entire DCU, played the Mayfair RPG, painted the miniatures, and bought every sourcebook I could get my hands on.

I even had a near-complete collection of the Kenner Super Powers action figures... and then in 1987 the entire collection were stolen from the trunk of my car

But I still loved and respected Marvel. The David Micheline/Bob Layton Iron Man, Roger Stern/Mark Gruenwald Captain America, and John Byrne/Walt Simonson Fantastic Four are some of my favorite runs of all time.

Bronkster

This is fun! I was the same in that I started with DC at a young age, and Marvel just seemed ... different. A friend had Marvel stuff, and I'd flip through them and wasn't drawn into it. I think I gravitated to the safer/blander/familiar stuff that DC was at the time. Plus, it seemed like Marvel comics had ads every other page!

In high school, a different friend convinced me that Spider-man was worth trying. I tried it and liked it! Became a Marvel junkie right away, but continued with my passion for Superman. Eventually, I determined that Marvel had the superior heroes and stories, but never turned my back on DC. Just had a new preference, as if they needed to be ranked.

Ten years ago, I quit collecting completely. Partly due to costs, and mostly due to Spider-man: One More Day. (ha ha?) I kept a minimal interest in following what both companies were doing - concluding that they both became so engrossed in revamping/rebooting/confusing their respective worlds/universes/multiverses that it would be too much effort to ever try and get back on board.

But ... my love for Superman has sparked again. I am now "collecting" again - but only Superman stuff. Even with all the reboots/New 52s/Rebirths I can still follow the character easily enough to enjoy it again. Going back to comic stores after all this time convinces me that my feelings on the confusion factor is still valid. At one time, I had every issue of Amazing Spider-man - and all the other titles that followed. But seeing the stuff on the shelf now - damn! I wouldn't know where to start, if I were so inclined! Marvel is out of reach for me, which is sad. I loved the old 1960s Thors and Fantastic Fours. It's not the same.

What was the question? Oh yeah - fifty-plus years into it, DC wins for me.

B5Erik

It's funny, but even as a kid in the 70's I recognized that Marvel did a better job of showing their superheroes as people. They focused on the personal lives of the characters as much as, if not more than, their superhero lives. The characters were more sophisticated and real. I could relate to Peter Parker. I couldn't relate to Bruce Wayne (a multi-millionaire whose public persona as BW was less real to him than his persona as Batman). Clark Kent was artificially goofy and awkward to hide the fact that he was Superman. Clark was the false identity, whereas Peter was who Spider-Man really was at the end of the day - and he really was goofy and awkward!

Now, there were some exceptions. Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams did some amazing work fleshing out Hal Jordan and Oliver Queen. But at the very same time they were doing that, Superman's comic was still fairly simplistic and hadn't moved on a whole lot from the 1950's in storytelling style (writing or art). The Teen Titans first incarnation was simplistic when it came to characterization, and was still aimed at a pre-teen audience (something that would radically change come The NEW Teen Titans a decade later).

So even as a kid I recognized those differences, and I gravitated to Marvel because of it.

DC did grow, they did adopt a storytelling style that gave their characters more depth and sophistication - but they were a decade or more behind Marvel, and they hired key Marvel talent (Marv Wolfman, George Perez, John Byrne) to try and get them caught up. And it was right as they were doing that that I took a side and more or less closed my mind to DC. I looked at what they had been a decade earlier and took that to mean that they would never be as good as Marvel with characterization and coming up with superheroes that seemed like real people behind those powers, hiding below the public image on the surface.

And then Marvel pissed me off in the late 90's when they started retconning key storylines. Changing the fundamentals of what happened and who the characters were (Peter's clone died in issue 149, and that was it - and Peter found out for himself that he really was the original in #150). Follow that up with crossovers twice a year into titles that I didn't really want to buy (but had to in order to have the complete stories) and I finally said, "ENOUGH!" I bought maybe 3 comics and a handful of trades between 1999 or so and 2018. I'm still not interested in modern Marvel comics simply because I don't have the time or money to get caught up on 20 years of stories that would be hit or miss with me.

Having said that, I just bought the Amazing Spider-Man omnibus collecting the J. Michael Straczynski run on the title. I love Babylon 5 (duh), and I love Spider-Man. I was just still pissed off when JMS was actively writing those issues, so I skipped them. My loss. Good stuff.

But now, in 2019, I've finally embraced DC. I still firmly believe that Marvel was the superior company from 1960-2000 or so, but I'm open to the possibility that DC caught Marvel in the 90's (I really don't know - the era I'm collecting is mostly late 60's to the late 80's). I do know this - I love what I've been reading (Batman Illustrated by Neal Adams, Superman The Man of Steel, New Teen Titans, Batman and the Outsiders, Green Lantern/Green Arrow, etc).

I do also know that DC has screwed things up in the last 25 years, too. Too many reboots and retcons. How hard is it, really, to maintain most continuity and still put out great stories? It can't be that hard. I suspect it's like people where I work - they feel the need to change things to put their own stamp on it. Their way is better than the old way.

Whatever. DC did get it right with multiple titles, and Marvel got it right far more than they got it wrong from 1961 to 1990. Both companies put out good stuff during that time.

ddrknghtrtns

My loyalty is evenly split. Being a blind fanboy, is depriving oneself the opportunity to explore what other comic publishers have to offer.
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B5Erik

Very true. Of course, as a kid you can only spend so much on comics, so for me it was a matter of prioritizing Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, and the Fantastic Four over anything from DC. Like I mentioned before, I bought the occasional DC comic, but the characters just didn't win me over the way Marvel's did. Later, when I had the money to buy both I took sides after years of buying 95% Marvel. It really was like being a Redskins fan and rooting against the Cowboys (or vice versa). Marvel was my team, DC was the opponent.

And yet, I still wanted to like DC - the term I used for their titles was, "Exotic," and that's what they seemed like at the time. Exotic, exciting, but just slightly inferior.

But now I'm finding a lot of good stuff from DC that I never read, and while I do still firmly believe that Marvel had the better real life true identity characters, I'm really enjoying the DC books I've bought. (Except Superman in the Seventies. That book kind of sucks. The stories were told in an outdated style and had very little of the sophistication and real life character types that was the strength of Marvel.)


Of course, all this begs the question - was your loyalty always evenly divided? Even when you were younger?

rw2516

As a kid I loved the phrase "to be continued". Whether it was comics, Lost in Space, or a two part Man From U.N.C.L.E. or Get Smart. I had a thing for serialization. Even in the newspaper comics. So I preferred Marvel. I loved the way Marvel would have a couple of teaser panels setting up a story that was several issues away. Going back later and reading all the issues between clean breaks in the various plotlines going on.
With DC I gravitated toward the lesser known heroes like Spectre and Deadman. I also was into stuff like Star Spangled War Stories with the WWII G.I.s fighting dinosaurs and Tomahawk with monsters and such on the frontier.

ddrknghtrtns

Before I could speak or walk, I was already a big fan of Superman and Robin. Probably due to watching Superfriends. As I was learning to read, my Dad had two trunks, full of silver age comics (mostly Marvel). He would let me borrow a stack to read and when I was finished and returned them, (in fine condition) he would loan me another stack. This was how I learned about the Marvel universe. To get my DC universe fix, I would go to my local comic book store or flea market and rummage thru the bargain bins.

In my opinion, both had a very unique and interesting take on the superhero genre.

Obi-Wanma

I didn't read many comics as a kid. Sure I picked up the occasional one from the newsstand at the drugstore, but it was never a regular thing. I did watch a lot of cartoons though, and while I remember Super-Friends and Batman's appearances on Scooby Doo, the character I always connected the most with was Spider-Man, I identified him as my favorite hero from a very young age. I vividly remember watching Spider-Man cartoons every Saturday morning. Still didn't start collecting comics though. Then in the 90's, my younger brother began watching the X-Men cartoons, and I watched them with him. At some point he got a subscription to Uncanny, and I ended up reading them more than he did. Through those comics, I began to realize that there were a lot more X-Men comics out there, and often I was not getting the complete story just reading Uncanny, so in my high school years, I began venturing to comic book stores to pick up the other X-books. Then of course Onslaught came along, which made me branch out even further than the mutants, and before I knew it I was collecting almost every comic that Marvel published.

Then when I was in college, Marvel did a crossover with the Top Cow imprint of Image, and soon I was collecting Witchblade and the Darkness too. It all spiraled out of control from there, but I really didn't start collecting any DC books until after that. Identifying Garth Ennis from the Darkness, I started picking up Hitman (mainline DC) and Preacher (Vertigo). I ended up collecting a lot more Vertigo titles, but not a lot of mainstream DC stuff. I started Green Arrow when Kevin Smith took it over, and I think I started picking up Superman/Batman mainly because of Michael Turner's artwork. I think I also hopped on Wonder Woman for a while when Adam Hughes was drawing it, and JLA when Grant Morrison was writing it, but I can't think of many other mainline DC titles that I ever picked up. I just never connected with them like I did with Marvel. I was never a regular on a Batman or Superman solo title, and I never really connected with either hero personally.

I stopped collecting comics all together 9-10 years ago, not long after my kids were born. My habit cost anywhere from $30-60 per week at that point, and I couldn't afford it anymore. I found it easier to just go cold turkey than to try to pare it down. I still see just about every comic book movie that comes out, and I want them all to be good, but I can admit that I have biases.

PhantomStranger

I grew up completely as a fan of both companies. I never really understood those people that had intense feelings for one company or the other. I'd peg my interests as a 50/50 split. But I grew increasingly unhappy with the direction Marvel took starting in the mid to late 1990s, particularly for characters like the X-Men and Spider-Man. I'm all DC these days, with only a mild curiousity in Marvel's current affairs. I still read their classic stuff, but that is mostly it.

The decision to have Peter Parker's marriage annulled through a deal with Mephisto more or less ended my Marvel fandom. I still consider it the dumbest editorial decision in comic book history. It was so bad it's even spilled over into my feelings about Marvel characters in other mediums.

brayzie

I started out as a comic book reader through Spider-man, around the time that McFarlane and Michelinie were on Amazing. Through comics featuring Spider-man I became aware of Beta Ray Bill, the Punisher, Captain America, The Thing, Power Pack and others. I got a good sense of the Marvel Universe. It seemed colorful, fun, and featured cool-looking superheroes who lived in the "real" world. I wasn't a complete Marvel zombie yet.

Then Batmania II hit in 1989 and I took a break from Marvel's Spider-man. I started reading Detective Comics when Breyfogle and Grant were on the title. I started reading up on Batman and it seemed like his history alone rivaled the entirety of the Marvel Universe. Batman at the time seem pretty self-contained though, and when I took a glance at the other comics from DC they seemed foreign yet boring. LEGION '89, Teen Titans, The Outsiders, Elongated Man, a guy in green with a Three Stooges hair cut? Who were these characters? And Superman was dullsville. The only other good character they had was Wonder Woman, but her comics had awesome covers yet horrible art that featured a non-goddess-like Wonder Woman working at taco bell.

Uncanny X-Men, Spider-man #1 and ultimately X-Men #1 is what sealed the deal for me as a Marvel fan. Marvel just had better characters and art. Anyone remember Les Daniels' Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics? That book made me an even bigger fan of Marvel. I enjoyed just about any Marvel comic I got my hands on. Even a character I had no interest in like Dr. Strange ended up being a good read just because it was a loose tie-in to The Infinity Gauntlet. The interconnected universe was a like a vast soap opera for kids.
I didn't even think of buying DC anymore and would even draw pictures of Marvel characters beating up DC characters. It was like what would happen with Sega vs Nintendo.

I only became a DC fan after I gave up on Marvel and after Image's own creators stopped drawing their own comics.
Zero Hour, Kelley Jones/Doug Moench's Batman, and Flash #0 is what got me hooked on DC Comics. Batman was brought back to his early atmospheric horror Detective Comics roots, and The Flash had this entire mythology I didn't even know existed. Plus, I always loved Golden Age comics and I thought that was DC's strength as they had the Justice Society of America, and most of the core, iconic characters came from that period. They had their own little Marvel-like universe with the history and legacy of the Speedsters. Apparently the Golden Age Sandman dreamed of Morpheus. I ended up appreciating the more iconic and archetypal aspects of DC's superheroes. Once I hit high school I drifted away from comics. I came back when it was announced that Jim Lee would be illustrating Batman every month. All-Star Superman, Harley Quinn, I Can't Believe It's Not the Justice League...DC was the best.

But then I went back to Marvel again with Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, Mark Texeira on Ghost Rider again, and some odd and wonderful thing called X-Statix.

So as an adult, I like both publishers equally.
Marvel has the shared universe thing down, and seems more modern and contemporary.
DC has the self-contained, iconic characters, and feels more classic.

But for some reason I tend not to buy from both publishers at the same time. Weird.

B5Erik

OK, so a year later and I'm still biased in favor of Marvel, but embracing DC.

For the first time I got the Deathstroke comics (which I started a thread about not too long ago), and I'm getting into Vigilante. I picked up some more recent (ie: from the last 25 years) titles like JLA (the TPB done mostly by Claremont & Byrne instantly got my money), Superman: Panic in the Sky, Green Lantern: Hal Jordan (Emerald Dawn & Emerald Dawn II collected), The Death of Superman, Superman/Doomsday, etc. I loved all of them.

While my collection is still an 80/20 split between Marvel and DC, I'm really open to DC titles.

Red Hood

I grew up being 50/50 with the big two and have stayed that way throughout my whole life. As a kid as was a huge X-Men, Spider-Man and Hulk fan for Marvel and for DC loved Batman, Superman and Flash. As I grew older, I kept expanding my reading throughout both companies, and to this day I can't say I favor one more than the other.

PhantomStranger

Obviously the big hole in your reading sounds like Batman. Batman probably has more good trades out than all the other DC characters combined.

Go read Justice League International and its spin-off, Justice League Europe. One of the most beloved DC runs in history. So much of it has been ripped off by more recent comics and television.

B5Erik

Do you know which TPB's would cover those titles for that era?

PhantomStranger

This is the collection that starts it all:

https://www.instocktrades.com/TP/DC/...GAIN/OCT190677

Collects Justice League #1-6, Justice League International #7-17, Justice League Annual #1, Justice League International Annual #2

There's a much larger omnibus that goes far deeper into the run if you want to drop more serious money.

B5Erik

Thanks! If I like that and there are futher TPB's in that series I'll definitely get them!

tonyc3742

Long story short - primarily DC for me, with a tossup between Marvel and "everyone else" for the remainder. Probably 50/25/25.

I didn't get into comics till probably sometime between 1984 and 1986 - I remember getting Watchmen as it came out and that started in 86, and I recall Comics Buyer's Guides that talked about it as an upcoming series.
I think I actually started with a focus on Marvel - Dr Strange, XMen, Spider-Man - but possibly became overwhelmed trying to "start" collection series that had existed for decades. Web of Spider-Man let me start from the beginning. I followed some DC titles - Batman, Superman - and became more of a fan of DC books - I think they restarted/rebooted a lot of titles around then so that helped. DC books just seemed more "fun" to me than many of the Marvel books. And I already had more of a familiarity with DC characters so discovering/rediscovering them in print was cool.
I was probably 65/35 DC/Marvel, then discovered independents and it maybe went to 50/25/25. On the DC side, Batman, Green Lantern, Superman, and Justice League titles primarily. On the indie, I liked horror (Deadworld, Twisted Tales), superheroes (Elementals), and comedy/parody (Normalman, Ralph Snart).
Speaking of indie - doesn't get much more indie than minicomics - I ordered a bunch of Cynicalman mini comics and two collections from Matt Feazell a couple weeks ago. Way back when, in CBG or maybe the Westfield catalog, he had an ad, "Send SASE for a free minicomic!" I did, got it, enjoyed it, forgot about it. Saw a discussion of stick figure comics and remembered Cynicalman. Turns out it became much less "mini" than it was back then so I ordered pretty much everything currently in print. Still fun and silly.

The Giffen Justice League/JLI/JLE are actually some of my favorite series - super heroes, sure, with world- or worlds-spanning conflict, many relevant to the current real-life political arena, but also just a heck of a lot of fun with very distinct characterizations. i definitely third or fourth the recommendation on those titles.
Who can forget


There was a mini-series reboot/sequel I found on Comixology or DCU that came out 8, 10 years ago (actually 16, holy crap)? "Formerly Known as the Justice League". Very silly, very funny, a lot of callbacks to the old series.
Picked up a bunch of JLI/JLE from a Comixology sale a month or so ago, I haven't started reading them yet.
Sometimes I pick the wrong horse - I actually liked a few of the titles from Marvel's New Universe. DP7 was my favorite, then a tossup between Star Brand and Justice. I tolerated Psi Force but couldn't really get into Merc or Spitfire. I think there were two more? Anyway...

On the one hand, I know this is a horrible time for comics and comics shops, especially print. On the other hand, it's a great time for comics readers, because of TPBs, Comixology, Humble Bundles, etc. I miss Comics Bento, I encountered some cool books I never would have otherwise through them.
In the modern era, I like titles from many publishers. I don't buy much in print anymore, other than the occasional Kickstarter, deal from Ollie's, or sale at Barnes and Noble.
(Ron Randall has been running Kickstarters for the past year or so for new Trekker storylines and his most recent one for a reprint of the original series. I've dug up my issues 1-4 of the series but never finished collecting it.)
I will admit that Marvel knocks it out of the park with live action movies, but DC has better (more enjoyable) TV shows. I still watch the DC live action movies though because i like and have faith in the characters, though that faith has not been 100% returned.

One of the more enjoyable yet time consuming tasks I had before moving in with my wife a couple years ago was going through my comics collection. I had to throw away maybe half a dozen issues that had gotten very damaged (they were stored in the attic - not great), but the rest (four longboxes) I re-bagged if needed, boarded many, reorganized/realphabetized, put into 7 shortboxes, and oh yeah, re-read a bunch of titles. Fun stuff.

Side note - I am not by any means an expert. It is possible I'm part of the problem that the comics industry is facing now, I'll admit that. But - A lot of what I read, in print or online, are TPBs/Collections. In them they often have bonus sections - collections of covers, sketch art storyboards, etc. What is the deal with so many variant covers? I have seen some issues with, seriously, 8 or 10 or 12 variant covers. Some are SFCC covers or special venue covers, ok, fine. But if I were collecting print comics steadily over the past thirty years, I think two things that might have seriously changed my habits are the variant covers (and yes, no one has to get them all), and the fact that cover prices for single issues can go up to 2.99-4.99 if not more. "In my day" that was the price for a Prestige Format collection. I know, everything's going up, and comics are by definition a luxury, and there are reasons for why pricing is as it is, but those would be two large obstacles in the way of my collecting, if I still collected.

fujishig

I loved "Formerly Known as the Justice League." They got Maguire back together with DeMatteis and Giffen and despite the changing times and the Justice League of heavy hitters, it was great. They then did a follow up called "I can't believe it's not the Justice League"

Unfortunately for whatever reason they decided shortly after that to completely crap on basically every single one of the characters involved:

Elongated Man and Sue Dibny: basically irrevocably damaged by Identity Crisis
Maxwell Lord: turned evil mastermind
Blue Beetle: killed by Maxwell Lord
Skeets: Mister Mind in disguise (reversed)
Mary Marvel: turned dark in that crappy Countdown series (luckily that didn't stick)
Rocket Red: dead

Then the team's reunion against an evil Max Lord in JL: Generation Lost was pretty joyless.

milo bloom

I collected some Marvel Tales feat. Spider-Man and some West Coast Avengres back in the day, but my tastes leaned more towards titles like Star Wars, Star Trek, GI Joe, Transformers, TMNT.
I guess I never paid attention to the whole DC vs Marvel thing, they were just different brands.

PhantomStranger

Marvel and DC use rare variant covers as bait for comic book shops to order more copies. There's no other reason why so many variants are produced today. The variants often end up as far more collectible than regular issues.

brayzie

I didn't give it a chance when it first came out but I got some back issues and eventually the TPBs. What a great series. Everything about the interior art down to the lettering was perfect. And Giffen and DeMatteis are a great team.

I ended up becoming a big fan of Maguire, Giffen and DeMatteis. Just about everything they work on is great.

That was the worst. I still can't believe that even in 2004, DC's big event and "serious" approach to the superhero genre revolved around a heroes wife getting raped, killed, and her body mutilated. It's ironic that DC had Gail Simone was working there at the time considering she coined the phrase "Women in Refrigerators" to criticize that type of writing.

And I remember they were trying to make Superboy Prime a big threat by making him Kid Miracleman, and having him punch off the head of a female character. I mean, it's okay though because she was a b-lister.

B5Erik

My latest haul (coming in the mail)...








I've already got Volumes 7 & 8 of JLA, but the price was so low I couldn't pass that lot up!

I definitely LOVED Volume 8 (Claremont & Byrne), and I liked Volume 7, so I'm likely going to get the entire run of TPB's.


As for the Green Arrow titles, they were cheap, too, and I like what I've read of Grell's work with GA so far, so I just jumped at that lot!