Topic: DC or Marvel?

[Mackie]

so which comic would it be, just out of interst

[Ravok]

 I have allways ben a Marvel man my self. The Incredible Hulk The Avengers, and the MIghty Thor were must haves, when i was growing up.

[Chris SI]

Depends on the title and eras, actually.

My particular favs were Fantastic Four in the 1960s, and again in the 1980s, as weell as the X-Men from 1977-1984 or so.

[Sirgod]

Exactly, It's hard to Nail just one Company down as the best, as the Genre's have both good and bad points. Early DC was For me a Kids Book, where you knew the good guys would win. Marvel was abit more Introspective, in that they developed there characters Personal Pains quite well.

Stephen

[Chris SI]

Both publishers have had great moments, and memorable characters.

The Avergers was good its entire run, and there are eras of Batman that are fantastic.

[E_Look]

DC had great titles for the crowd around ten to twelve years old, like Superman, Batman, and the other Justice League heroes.

But no one ever mentions some very super stuff for kiddies from fourteen to twenty years old, like The Phantom Stranger, The Challengers of the Unknown (kind of Trek like if you ask me), and then the superexcellent Jack Kirby stuff (no, guys, not OMAC, or any of that newer stuff) like The Forever People, Jimmy Olsen (yes!  He did a great job of that mag... you should see his Superman in it!), The New Gods, Mister Miracle, and then the OLD, NOT NEW Jonah Hex (the DEFINITIVE cowboy comic) which later featured some of the excellent Latin American artists coupled with strong writing, and the Neal Adams/Denny O'Neal Green Lantern/Green Arrow series which may have been some of the best storywriting-artwork coupling ever to come out of DC...

... then I forgot about comics...

... until Batman as The Dark Knight was brought to my attention.  Miller did a masterwork with that, though I think he Adams art in the Green/Green series was much better...

... and then I forgot about comics and still haven't remembered them yet, for boy, have they ever gotten sucky...

[J. Carney]

I liked some of both.

Marvel had the best gimicks for their heros- especially the fact that their 'real lives' were as important to the story as their time in costume. For some (like Spidey constantly struggling with being Spiderman and keeping MJ from leaving him) 'real life' actually became MORE important than being in costume.

With DC, i always liked the few caracters without powers- Batman especially... and mostly the '40's era Batman. Back then none of the characters were opposed to a little gratuitous violence in the course of accomplishing the mission!

[Ravok]

I liked the old Batman as well. What allot of people don't realize is that Bruce Wayne is not all together there. He is ever so close to becoming a serial killer and a flat out vigilante. He could give a flying hoot about Good and Justice just so long as they don't get in his way.
 Thats one of the main reasons Superman doesn't like him.

  That was before they got all PC and screwed it up.

[J. Carney]

I liked the old Batman as well. What allot of people don't realize is that Bruce Wayne is not all together there. He is ever so close to becoming a serial killer and a flat out vigilante. He could give a flying hoot about Good and Justice just so long as they don't get in his way.
 Thats one of the main reasons Superman doesn't like him.

  That was before they got all PC and screwed it up.

Yeah- the old "Action Comics"  Bruce Wayne is a very disturbed individual... and FAR more concerned with the ends than the means or any collateral damage that he inflicts upon those associated with the people he perceives as guilty. He never really goes out of his way to determine how correct those presumptions of guilt or innocence are, either.

Batman was originally "Shoot first, shoot some more, then save one SOB to question before you execute him."

[Sirgod]

DC had great titles for the crowd around ten to twelve years old, like Superman, Batman, and the other Justice League heroes.

But no one ever mentions some very super stuff for kiddies from fourteen to twenty years old, like The Phantom Stranger, The Challengers of the Unknown (kind of Trek like if you ask me), and then the superexcellent Jack Kirby stuff (no, guys, not OMAC, or any of that newer stuff) like The Forever People, Jimmy Olsen (yes! He did a great job of that mag...

OMAC was a Very old Title IIRC. Like 30's era Old .

Stephen the maybe Confused about One Man Army Corps.

[Clark Kent]

Superman all the way...
Don't mess with the S

[Chris SI]

When talking Kirby DC, you have to mention Kamandi, the last boy on earth. This comic went far beyound the 'Planet of the apes' rip-off it started as.

Also, DC should be mentioned from the best war comics on the 60s-70s. Russ heath's Sgt Rock was never a glory war book, it was a human look into war, that usually ended badly for the secondary characters added to the stories. The Haunted Tank series was also good in that regard, as were the unknown soldier stories.

[Sirgod]

BTW, I hardly hear Gold Key mentioned anymore in Comic Circles. I used to have quite a few of there Star Trek, and Six Million Dollar man Comics in the Early 70's or so.

A few other old Favorites where Metal Men, and Sgt. Rock.

Stephen

edit I see Chris just mentioned Sgt. Rock as I typed this.

[Chris SI]

Rock was cancelled in the early 1980s, people just got tired of WWII.

I remember the gold key treks, they were pretty bad.

DC did a nice Star Trek in the late 80s-90s, that was quite excellent.

[Don Karnage]

Marvel for me in the 80's and early 90's, amazing spider man, pp the ssm (peter parker the spectacular siper man), web of spider man, the avenger, thor, iron man (mostly war machine) g.i.joe,x-men and other that i don't remember, i din't like DC cause there was too many super hero by accident or weird evend and the teen titant where not interesting, now i no longer collection them, i did get a few iron man because of war machine, i have view a few war machine and find it stupid because of like an army of war machine loose, don't know where it came from, marvel have screw it since the armagedon (end of the world) and every one who die in the past have come back, plus new super vilan, the old super hero seem to have lost the identity like cap america who lost his shield, tony stark no  longer have armor and seem to have a problem making new one, a spidre woman or spider girls who seem to be peter's daughter and he and she don't know plus a lot ot stupid stuf that make it no longer interesting to read.

in the DC well i don't have any but what you sayd about batman remind me of the punisher.

[madelf]

Have to go with Marvel for the characters, though DC had some great heroes, and has made up ground in storyline over the last decade.

[E_Look]

Stephen, OMAC, Kamandi, The Demon, etc., were Kirby's second wave (third really, if you count his younger days that briefly were at DC) with DC.

He had a falling out with Stan Lee over at Marvel and DC welcomed him with open arms.  He went straight to work with some of the BEST comic concepts in decades.

You mean none of you guys recall The New Gods, The Forever People, (Jack Kirby's version of) Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen, and Mister Miracle???!!!

This is where Lucas probably got the Luke vs. Armored Daddy idea: Orion the (only true) New Genesis warrior (kinda like a super-Worf in a superwimpy Starfleet) vs. Darkseid (whom Jim Starlin later probably picked up the Mar-Vel vs. Thanos idea for Captain Marvel, which in itself was a superb series until Starlin left it to do some even more New Agey stuff with superb artwork but weak writing and ideas) with Scott Free (Mr. Miracle) the exchanged son so as to get Orion over to Highfather and end the war with Apokolips???

Am I the only golden oldie fart on these boards??????  (Are you guys really such wet-eared babes???)

[Don Karnage]

nope, i stop buying comics before the armagedon in marvel and never ben interested in DC, i time to time check some comics but the only one i like is war machine, not the bad comics but when ironman have to deal with war machine, in marvel when bruce was the grey hulk it was interesting cause the hulk was not dum and smaching everything around, the grey one was thinking and not smaching everything, the fantastic for was not bad its just that doc doom was always thinking he was the smartest of them all and have an ego the size of the moon, for cap america he wanted to be pure in everyway not mechanical help no new strenght, ironman was weird in the last before the armagedon, the x-men well not sure and for spider man well he never got money and he should find a way to make some money so he can pay his bill.

[AlienLXIX]

Ahh I wish you had an option for both publishers!

I started collecting when I was in elementary school back in the late 70's and early 80's.  Marvel's X-Men (131?) was my first.  I think that was the one with the Dark Phoenix distroying a planet on the cover?  I stayed with that title till just after Storm got her powers back.

I also was heavly into ElfQuest!  Wendy Pini ROCKS!  Then again I've always had a thing for elves . . .

Out of DC I collected Sandman.  Loved the stories.  VERY adult themes and story lines in that series.

Of course I also collected X rated comics like Cherry and XXenophile.

Damn does this make me a geek?  As it stands the only comic I pick up is Liberty Medows and that's a few and far between because raising a family takes a lot out of the budget. 

[S'Raek]

I've always been more of a Marvel comic kind of guy.  Spiderman, X-men and Iron Man are my favorites.  I like Spiderman and Iron Man because they are not the perfect people that folks like Superman are made out to be.  I used to read Green Lantern but then the made it Green Lantern Corps or some crap and Hal Jordan (?) went way.  Lost interest after that. 

[Chris SI]

Am I the only golden oldie fart on these boards?????? (Are you guys really such wet-eared babes???)

I think you missed my lead post about FF.

Also deserving of special mention, the Lee/Kirby Thors (115-179), Stan and Jazzy Johnny Romita's Spideys (47-100), Stan and Jack's Captain America (In Tales of Suspense), Strenko's Nick Fury, Agent of Shield, the short lived Lee/Buscema Silver Surfer 1-18, and tons of others.

I loved Marvel in the 60-80s, DC would do an occasional good book, but it never lasted. For example, DC revamped the Teen Titans as an X-Men rip off, and it well for about 5 years, before they ruined  it.

DC was best at off-beat stuff.

BTW, Kirby quickly grew tired of DC in the 70s, and returned to marvel in 76, but the magic was gone. There was also another problem with Jack's DC stuff, he had to be the world's worst at coming up with super hero names. Kirby never recaptured the brilliance of his mid 1960s-early 1970s work.

[E_Look]

Ah... Jim Steranko...

... Steve Ditko...

... Yeah, that's classic stuff.  I must have overlooked your post!

I'll give Marvel this edge, until Kirby came along to DC in the '70s,  Marvel had better fighting and battle sequences.

I wonder why Kirby petered out; I mean he was going sooo strong, until, I think he tried that Captain Kirk ripoff... Captain something or another... you know, if he died, he could switch his soul out into a cloned body.  It got boring after issue 1.

Hey, Mike, remember an artist by the name of Wayne Boring?  He did lots of Superman and Captain Marvel.

[Chris SI]

I remember Boring, he died a few years back.

[E_Look]

I didn't care for his renditions of people, particularly men, but he had some out-of-this-world (for a '40s & 50s style artist) sci-fi background designs, spaceships and rockets, ray guns, robots, etc.

Too bad (or so I heard on fan letter pages) that whenever he got on a comic book in the '60s, he drove all the readers and buyers away!  I think his style might be good for some posters and ads, these days, though.

[Chris SI]

What was considered good in the 40s was out by the late 60s.

A lot of artisits just couldn't handle the desire for more realism in comics.

[Don Karnage]

I liked the old Batman as well. What allot of people don't realize is that Bruce Wayne is not all together there. He is ever so close to becoming a serial killer and a flat out vigilante. He could give a flying hoot about Good and Justice just so long as they don't get in his way.
 Thats one of the main reasons Superman doesn't like him.

  That was before they got all PC and screwed it up.

i was wondering who is batman attacking?, since the punisher is attacking drug dealer drug lord and mafia, i was wondering who's batman attacking, the punisher is killing them but for batman i was wondering what he is doing to kinda stop the crime in is city?.

[E_Look]

Anybody remember Detective Comics?

More specifically, anybody remember the period that DC supersized their mags so as to charge more, and to charge more, they threw in some filler.

But in Detective Comics, there was a back of magazine filler feature called The Manhunter, a.k.a. Paul Kirk (every bit as superheroish as our intrepid and enterprising James Kirk).  It was well scripted, well drawn, and the themes and plot were a bit darker and superior (though that wasn't the reason) to the front of mag Batman feature.  (I recall my brother and I waiting anxiously for each installment... of the back feature!)

And toward the end, it kind of made its way to the front, so to speak, as Bats himself wound up being in it.  But would anyone agree that this might have really planted the seeds of making "The Dark Knight" a reality and such a hit?

It had intriguing intrigue, far-out (for its time) martial arts fighting, biotech themes, world order conspiracy themes, a way cool costume, and the guy wasn't afraid to do a bad guy in.

At the end, I think DC had the hero get killed.  My brother and I were waiting for a full-blown series with Paul Kirk (maybe even command a sta... nah!)

If I recall correctly, the artist/writer was one talented guy by the name of Walter Simonson, with a distinctive sig (... whatever these characters' real names are... ).

[J. Carney]

I liked the old Batman as well. What allot of people don't realize is that Bruce Wayne is not all together there. He is ever so close to becoming a serial killer and a flat out vigilante. He could give a flying hoot about Good and Justice just so long as they don't get in his way.
 Thats one of the main reasons Superman doesn't like him.

  That was before they got all PC and screwed it up.

i was wondering who is batman attacking?, since the punisher is attacking drug dealer drug lord and mafia, i was wondering who's batman attacking, the punisher is killing them but for batman i was wondering what he is doing to kinda stop the crime in is city?.

The original Batman was a sociopath and suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to the loss of his parents in a back-alley robbery while he was a child.

He was out to 'end crime' in Gotham City to keep the same thing from happening to another kid. Of course, the 'ending crime' was greatly aided by a pair of Colt .45's and a lot of things that went *BOOM* in the night. Batman originally didn't worry about the body count- he just killed untill the crime stopped for a while, then reloaded his mags, built some more booby traps and waited for things to start up again.

[Chris SI]

I vaguely remember that series, he was sort of a outer-space bounty hunter.

Simonsen is well known of course, as the man who made Thor hot in the 1980s, by using portions of Norse Myth and compelling story lines and back-up characters that had long been missing from Thor, who, oddly enough, had some of teh best Sci-Fi stories of the 1960s.

It was in Thor that the concept of the 'New Men' was born, animals that were advanced by the god-like high Evolutionary, on his Wundagore moutain, into man-like knights who were to be the fore-front of an Army of light. This was before planet of the apes, with the talking monkees. Thos also met the Colonizers of Rigel, a super advanced race who don't really colonize, but take over planets using advanced Rigellian technology. Thos even discovered the orgin of the World devouring Galactis, who was the last survivor of the PREVIOUS universe, before in contracted and the 'Big Bang' created the universe we know.

[Lono]

Batman is by far my favorite superhero - but I have to go with the Marvel Universe here.

Especially after watching this season of Justice League Unlimited - almost all the new heros being introduced are really rather moronic, childish creations...

Now the Batman and Superman Animated Series of a few years back - they were pretty slick!

[Ravok]

Batman is by far my favorite superhero - but I have to go with the Marvel Universe here.



Now the Batman and Superman Animated Series of a few years back - they were pretty slick!

 Yes it was!!!! I never missed an episode. Its too bad, they went to the kiddy crud,
Even the story lines are lame. 

[Abfalter]

Marvel, all the way.  They always seemed more believable to me.  (This is based on 20 year old comics experience, I do not read them much lately).

I always loved the Fantastic Four.  I was also fanatic about a short-lived series called "Nova".

[Chris SI]

Nova made a comeback in the 90s, and was again short lived.

He did find a home in the New Warriors, a marvel team book of teen super heroes.

[Clark Kent]

Batman is by far my favorite superhero - but I have to go with the Marvel Universe here.

Especially after watching this season of Justice League Unlimited - almost all the new heros being introduced are really rather moronic, childish creations...

Now the Batman and Superman Animated Series of a few years back - they were pretty slick!

I'll agree with you that JLU isn't as good as it's predacessor, but maybe it'll shape up a bit.  The martian Manhunter rocked, and I'd like to see him back in action again, and while there are other cool superheroes in the DC universe, JLU seems to focus on loser ones.  Also, the older batman and superman cartoons really did rock, didn't they?  Wish they had kept them going more.