Tuesday Column - Marvel or DC? Why not both?

So you may have heard that there are two big comic book companies, Marvel and DC. The folks at Image or Dark Horse might take issue with that, but to the casual observer, those two names are the gold standard.

You may also have noticed that those two companies tend to attract, for lack of a better word, fanboys. The stereotypical "Marvel zombie" reads Marvel and nothing but Marvel, knows that Wolverine could beat up Batman, and that Superman is lame. DC fans, contrariwise, believe the exact opposite.

The point is, "brand loyalty" seems to hit a certain extreme at some point when it comes to comics fans. Unsurprisingly, this is encouraged by the comics companies themselves - they know that a particularly loyal fan is more likely to buy whatever sort of dreck they happen to publish, be it Yet Another Wolverine One-Shot or Bart Allen's Storied Career As The Flash. They can use loyal fans - or, more precisely, their wallets. The two companies take potshots at one another from time to time, though things tend to be (for the most part - there are exceptions, most of which in recent memory seem to involve Joe Quesada in one form or another) cordial.

The problem is... it's kinda crap, innit?

There used to be serious stylistic differences between DC and Marvel. Marvel was much more grounded in the "real world," with Spider-Man dealing with romantic entanglements and financial issues familiar to most any young person, or the X-Men dealing with the same sort of hatred and predjudice that so many groups deal with even today. DC didn't ignore those issues, so to speak, but they were never focal - discounting the wonderful "Hard-Traveling Heroes" storyline from Green Lantern/Green Arrow, which is still hailed as a milestone today but which, you'll note, didn't exactly sell a ton.

DC's stories were more iconic, more primal - Superman wasn't just a superhero, he was an icon, a symbol. DC's history of characters reaching back to World War II meant that they had a legacy to draw on, a standard to keep to - in short, that the oft-repeated mantra that comics creators are "stewards" of these beloved characters set in earlier for them. Marvel could take a few more chances simply because their characters were newer - it's easier to make Spider-Man a friendless geek when he doesn't have thirty years of history behind him!

So yes, once upon a time there was a serious tonal difference between the two companies. Note the use of the past tense. These days, creators go from one company to another the way free agents switch sports teams; I suspect it's only a matter of time before they start trading creators in the same way ("Okay, Brian Michael Bendis has two years left on his exclusive contract; I'll trade you him for the last year of Grant Morrison's exclusive and three Kurt Buseik freelance issues").And while the two companies maintain distinct tones, the industry itself has gotten a bit more... homogeonized.

DC's Blue Beetle, after all, hits almost all the same high notes that early Spider-Man stories did... Manhunter is every bit as gritty as early Punisher stories... and as for Marvel, they even pulled a history-rewriting cosmic event (after all the remarks about how "we don't have Crises") to bring Spider-Man back to an iconic, well-known status quo. DC, with their long history of treating their characters as icons and cultural treasures, is learning to take more chances, to inject a little more realism... and Marvel, the risk-taking, realistic company, has been around long enough that they're learning the value of an iconic cultural treasure.

So what's my point? My point is, there used to be some value in sticking with one comic company over another. By proclaiming yourself a "Marvel zombie" - as I did, back in the day - you weren't just saying 'I like Marvel comics,' you were also stating a preference for tone and content. You were saying 'I like my comics stories to be a little more relatable, my superheroes to be a little more human, a little more flawed.' But those statements are no longer all-encompassing - my 16-year old Marvel zombie self would have loved the heck out of a number of titles that DC is publishing these days.

Broaden the horizons, fanboys. It'll do you some good. That's all I'm saying.