The Difference Between Marvel and DC

Being willing to root for over the hero does not automatically make a better villain (though how anyone can root for Doom is a mystery to me). Luthor is a villain you love to hate and plays that role well.

Arthur has a well developed supporting cast and mythology built around him and a longer history as a main lead instead of foil than Namor.

The Xmen might have been able to claim they were better than the Titans once.

Edited by windleopard on Jun 17th 2019 at 1:15:39 AM

Something that I've kinda noted, is that it would be a lot harder to do something like Batman: The Brave and the Bold, with Marvel characters.

The biggest luxury that DC has, is how diverse and varied its history and legacy is. All of there characters, stories, and constantly being reinterpreted and reinvented. Batman '66 is just as valid a take on Batman as Micheal Keaton, and the history encompasses everything from the legion of Super-pets, and Superman randomly being a dick for no reason just as much as the Dark Knight Returns or any other modern story.

Marvel really never had that kind of constant reinterpretation, since so much of the core concepts and characters can largely be attributed to just three people.

Edited by megaeliz on Jun 17th 2019 at 7:12:32 AM

That USM series was more or less that, just not very good and very earnestly done. Brave and the Bold was a great cartoon series. IN general, Marvel's animation is far inferior to DC. About the only Marvel Animation I'd put on par is Weisman's The Spectacular Spider-Man and X-Men: Evolution, the former was mady by Sony, and the latter by...Kids WB! Yeah Warner Brothers made a Marvel cartoon in the Pre-Disney era.

That's more indicative of DC changing emphasis to new markets as time advanced than real diversity IMO. To me what DC did better than Marvel was in the 80s with Vertigo under Karen Berger and making successes out of properties like Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, The Sandman, and then Preacher. Marvel's adult graphic novel market was never as good. And it's not the case that all reinterpretations have worked. Batman has been successful but Superman not so much. Like the Superman of the Post-Crisis era never did as well as the Pre-Crisis Superman. And Superman's big success Post-Crisis is the Death of Superman story which well that's a mixed blessing. Wonder Woman likewise has had peaks in the 40s through 60s and then in the George Perez era but not much after that.

But seriously, Marvel had Venus the goddess before it had Thor the god. Why they didn't bring her back? Well, Jack Kirby thought Norse Mythology would be more interesting but when it was time to replace Thor, I don't know why they chose Hercules over Venus...other than Hercules being a Suspiciously Similar Substitute(he's manly, he carries a hammerclub, his daddy is king of the gods and he's a legendary heroic figure who fights giants. See, Thor's not really gone!)

But on the Canadian teams the local superhero divinity is Snowbird, the daughter of Nelvanna.(Why you don't just use Nelvanna is beyond me, but then again the other resident Canadian deity is Thor derivative Beta Ray Bill, so maybe's it's just a Marvel Canada thing. The legendary gods people have actually heard about are too good for you! Your most famous hero will forever be Wolverine!)

Oh, and Captain Marvel. She was Miss Marvel for decades. Miss Marvel had several books. I guess she's not that well known because she's best known as that lady Rogue threw off a bridge before Rom Space Knight turned Rogue good, that lady in the X-men who wasn't a mutant, the side kick of the guy who died of cancer and the other Avenger with alcoholism. Nonetheless, Miss Marvel was around for awhile doing a lot of things.

Oh, Captain Marvel! While the first Captain Marvel of Marvel Comics was an alien male, the second was a woman who had the rank of Captain in the New Orleans Harbor Patrol(don't worry, she'd make many inexplicable appearances in New York). See, Marvel is much more likely to make legacy characters that have nothing to do with the "original", which again goes back to Jack Kirby. The second Human Torch is only connected to the original in that the original was his hero growing up so he named himself after said hero. Gray Hulk/Joe Fixit/Green Hulk are only related to the original Hulk in that the new rampaging monster just so happens to be rampaging in a manner similar to an older rampaging monster. In fact the two "new" Miss Marvels had nothing to do with "original" Miss Marvel Carol Danvers. While Kamala was "inspired" by Danvers, the one before her was simply "Miss Marvel" because no one else was using the name at the time.(oh yeah, I know you want say something about The Flash, but he's the exception that proves the rule. DC clumsily tried to make them related before giving up, in 2012).

And I haven't really gotten into X-Men yet. Jean Grey, aka Marvel Girl, aka Phoenix. An X-Men original! Central to the Dark Phoenix and Age Of Apocalypse story arcs. Scarlet Witch, Magneto's daughter except Disney didn't have the rights to X-Men so not really anymore. Readers will be confused if we call her a mutant in the comics! Anyway, evil sister in The Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants, but defected to the Avengers. Said "No More Mutants" in attempted genocide. Still considered a superhero.

Oh, Storm! One of the few black characters introduced in her era of comics people consistently remember(mainly because Monica was part of the larger Captain Marvel debacle and Marvel was content with letting X-Men be more popular than The Avengers back then). Storm who has on more than one occasion lead the X-Men. Rogue, who effectively replaced Miss Marvel in the X-men so they could have an actual mutant with better versions of her powers. Shadow Cat, she of The Days Of Future Past arc. Jubilee(the second one, another unrelated legacy), the Chinese girl who can make bright lights and loud noises(really, Marvel? You were offended by the parody that made her the illegitimate daughter of Bret Hart?), effective main character of Generation X. Monet/Monty/M, the one Marvel keeps forgetting is supposed to be a black woman with good hair, Jubilee's Minnesota Fats, effective main character of the X-Corps. X-2...never mind, let's not discuss that.

Even ignoring X-Men(because if it wasn't one of their best sellers we know Marvel would), Marvel's first superhero team, The Fantastic Four, had the Invisible Girl. And yes, for an improbably young astronaut she was pretty useless. But as she grew into the Invisible Woman she became the most powerful member of the team(shame Marvel would also rather ignore Fantastic Four. Disney didn't have the movie rights, so clearly there's no other way to make money with the property!). Keep in mind one of those members(the aforementioned second Human Torch) is powerful enough to light the whole planet's atmosphere on fire and kill all life on the surface of the Earth(damned subterranean microbes, you'll get yours!), powerful enough to down Ultron in a single shot. His Invisible sister prevents him from vaporizing everything in sight and makes him sit in the corner while she and her husband do the real work.

No wait, Marvel did start caring about Guardians Of The Galaxy again didn't they(non Avengers teams can sell, who knew?). Moon Dragon, the most powerful telepath Earth has possibly produce and definitely more skilled than that guy in the wheelchair. Gamora, the most dangerous woman in the universe(because of course she is, Thanos conditioned her to kill Adam Warlock).

Yeah no, Marvel doesn't have less females than DC. They spent most of the golden age drawing romance comics about unsatisfied young women and monster comics about imperiled women. What Marvel doesn't have is a Birds Of Prey to showcase it's various female super types. What Marvel doesn't have is anyone as particularly well known as Wonder Woman(see, this is what happens when you bury things like X-Men and Fantastic Four). Marvel had awesome books like Annihilation and Nextwave, which had women like Monica(not Captain Marvel anymore, no one remembers she lead the Avengers) and Gamora(well if she's equal to Adam Warlock clearly no mere herald of Galactus can slow her advance) as major players, but clearly promoting tripe like Civil War was more important.(Miss Marvel was in that, but again she was next to Ironman, which reminded everyone she was a drunk...Storm was there too. She defeated the Clone!Thor not even Black Goliath and Hercules could...by creating an EMP with lightning)

And fine, Miss/Captain Marvel is a legacy. But so is Zatanna. If Supergirl, Hawkgirl and Batgirl count, so do She-Hulk, the various offshoots of Spider-Woman, and that.

How is Zatanna a legacy?

Zatanna is the daughter of a previous character, Zatara, IIRC, but we know who made it big.

I'm still not sure how that qualifies given she's using her own name not her dad's. This isn't like Jane Foster calling herself Thor.

A lot of the X ladies being important doesn’t disprove my point. In fact it confirms it since who happens to be the biggest X man, face of the brand, and longest solo breakout? That’s right, the super macho Wolverine.

Monica Rambeau is pretty cool but her push ended when her creator Roger Stern got fired for refusing to make her look incompetent so that Cal could return as leader of the Avengers at her expense. In the case of Carol Danvers, after a push in the ‘70s, Avengers 200 happened and she became an alcoholic lush until Bendis and then Deconnick happened.

For all the praise the X women get, there has always been some questionable to outright squicky aspects to them, especially when they were written by Claremont.

The fetishizing of Storm, the implications of the Phoenix story (which influenced Marvel to try similar stories with Sue, Polaris and Wanda), Psylocke and her decades long Yellowfaxe phase, the way Kitty can infantilized, Rogue and her powers etc.

And God help you if you're a love interest in a Wolverine story.

It seems like the super hero genre still needs to a lot of work when it comes to female representation and diversity. Although in some minor cases I think things are improving, I enjoyed the first 12 issues of Khamala Ms.Marvel and look forward to more. To bring things a bit more on topic can anyone recommend a DC series similar to Khamala Khan’s?

I agree with that. I tend to think that Claremont was at best Fair for Its Day and that he tends to get overpraised because he did more with female characters than other Marvel writers but that's not saying so much. At the end of the day, Claremont's most lasting contribution was Wolverine displacing Cyclops, Jean Grey, and others to become the central figure in the X-Mythos. Claremont contributed to that with his Wolverine miniseries with Frank Miller which established Logan as a solo story. And Claremont's writing had creepy stuff, with the Jean/Mastermind and even Storm in the Hellfire bondage stuff (like one panel implies that one of the Hellfiristas raped her which obviously has been downplayed later on). Let's not forget that Claremont wanted to make teenage Kitty and older Colossus a thing which Jim Shooter happily went, "Nope, not happening" and used Zsaji in Secret Wars (1984) to sink that stat. And I don't know if The Dark Phoenix Saga deserves this exalted place anymore, especially since Shooter's original idea, for Jean Grey to go bad and stay bad, and be a female Doctor Doom, seems more radical and interesting than what Claremont did, which is essentially fridging Jean to make Cyclops have some manpain, and then that got undone and with it Cyclops' moral authority when Jean, admittedly against Claremont's intentions, got resurrected again, and virtually became unusable as a character.

Stan Lee himself pushed for the creation of Ms. Marvel because he realized belatedly that Marvel was woefully behind DC when it came to characters for female readers. Lee didn't help given that he was generally not good with writing female characters. Far and away the best female character Lee wrote was Mary Jane, and the fact that MJ was intended by Lee as a joke character who had major Misaimed Fandom kind of proves how little his understanding was of his audience and female characters. I mean that's a fact, and Marvel's devotion to being the house that "Stan, Jack, and Steve built" keeps their mistakes in place much in the same way constitutional originalism tends to preserve the unequal conditions in which the founders constructed the constitution and its norms. So this whole "Marvel is more relatable and realistic than DC" yeah...it's time to basically get over that. Because what it amounts to in practise, and let's fact it what the marvel revolution really did amount to, was essentially create a bunch of male anti-heroes who could be jerks, womanizers, flawed and still be heroic and that created this enabling culture of male entitlement.

It's a fact that the longest lasting series with a female character in marvel history is Spider-Girl with Tom Defalco and that doesn't take place in the main universe. In 616, John Byrne's She-Hulk holds that title and she didn't make it to 100 issues.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Jun 17th 2019 at 9:34:51 AM

The original Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle run by Keith Giffen.

Here's Gerry Conway: “I was working at Marvel and had a contract which required them to give me X number of titles to write, but we were also looking to expand our reach to a wider audience, and to reach young women and young girls as potential audience […] Marvel had, historically, not had very many solo female lead books. DC [Comics] had a few, but Marvel had not very many at all.”

I agree that saying "Marvel is more realistic and relateable than DC" is a "meme" that doesn't have a lot of ground nowadays, not just because saying Cynicism equals realism is a mistake that annoys me (I remember when the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism was just called the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Realism).

On the other hand, I think that measuring characters solely on how "relateable" they are is kind of limiting. A lot of great characters aren't relateable, but they're fascinating because you get an idea of how something completely alien to you might behave - and I think that's a great area for superhero stories to explore. Even The Spirit, which is a comic I worship, is often impossible to relate to.

The difference is more in balancing stuff in a different way - Since we're talking about female characters, for instance, The Question is more "realistic" than Jessica Jones, even if she has a cookie costume, because wearing a costume is physically possible, and having super-strength isn't.

No offense to anyone, but I'm sensing a lot of DC worship here. Particularly at Marvel's expense. Though maybe that's just me.

Anyone who keeps blathering about how "realistic" Marvel is over DC is the one guilty of Marvel worship at the expense of actually realistically scrutinizing what that means today, and in a total context. Both DC and Marvel have done great comics, and Marvel did introduce the idea of more shaded characterization in both villains and heroes, and that's fine but that also ultimately didn't go so far. And if we come down on Marvel, well that's because Marvel back in the '60s in Stan's Soapbox and by later EIC especially Joe Quesada who seemed to really buy into "Marvel was radical once, for a few years before Steve and Jack quit, that means we can be entitled" Kool-Aid...made those claims for themselves. DC has never once done that.

Sure DC takes place in fictional cities like Gotham/Metropolis but Marvel takes place in a New York city that doesn't exist anymore. And in any case, these days everyone's favorite Marvel setting is the Constitutional Monarchy of Wakanda, which is you know a Fictional Country. Marvel's attitude that America has real cities and settings but other countries like Europe can be represented by say, Latveria, or Atlantis and so on, that kind of adds to a certain American-centric attitude whereas DC is like "we're fake, other countries are equally fake". And how revolutionary can Marvel be over DC, if at the end of the day, DC put out more female superheroes over its publ. history? If DC put out more adult-centric and more successful adult-centric stuff (Sandman, Swamp Thing, freakin' Watchmen) than Marvel did?

"Why you don't just use Nelvanna is beyond me" Because they don't have the rights to Nelvana? She's not public domain. Marvel couldn't use Nelvana. (According to Wikipedia, the rights are jointly owned by Library & Archives Canada and Nelvana Animation, and I think that's kinda cool. Though I would love it if we got some new Nelvana stories.) If Marvel wants to use Nelvana, they need to get permission from both a major animation studio and a branch of the Canadian government.

As for the difference between Marvel and DC, it's actually pretty simple: DC has characters like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Teen Titans. Marvel has characters like the Avengers, the X-Men, Spider-Man. Additional difference: Marvel is owned by Disney, DC is owned by Warner Bros.

I'm not putting the same thing in the quote blocks again. The only point I was refuting was that DC had more female superheroes than Marvel, which is just false. I was arguing that Marvel's female superheroes were as prominent as DC's, that they were better or even as well used. Just that they existed. That was the only refutation. I strengthened that refutation by elaborating on why these names were not simply C-list nothings but actually held significant places in Marvel history. You can dislike Jean Grey's stories for whatever reason, that's not what I was arguing. In Association Footy we call that moving the goal posts.

I wasn't implying Batgirl is inherently bad because she's part of Batman's legacy, I started primarily with females that weren't part of any male's legacy or only tangentially related because in my mind those should be hardest to ignore when talking about females in a setting. Venus had her own book before Thor. The Daughters Of The Dragon may mostly be in other people's books now, but they had their own. Shadow Cat and Jean Grey have starred in their own high profile and regularly referenced story arcs. And yes, Zantanna is a legacy in the same way Stature is a part of the Ant-man\Wast legacy. She doesn't have the same name, but she has the same role and powers as her predecessor.

Most of the Spider-woman variants, despite the name are less legacies than Batgirl or Zantanna. One Spider-woman is an experiment let loose on the world by The High Evolutionary. One was created by a quasi governmental agency. One is part of an ancient European conflict that moved to South America and then North(New York) America. One is a supernatural predator and villain. There are at least seven and only one directly descends from Spider-man...well there are eight if you count Silk. But even though she debuted in his book Silk more coincidental than intentionally following Spider-man In-Universe, unlike say, Miles Morales.

In fact, Spider-man's black suit, and by extension Venom, come from Arachne(as said, Marvel's legacies tend to be more disjointed than DC's, sometimes to the point of drainage backup. Unlike Jay Garrik-Barry Allen, Spider-man<->Arachne->Venom wasn't the result of retroactive continuity). Further still, given that X-Man Nate Grey was created to be Jean Grey with the power of the Summer's bloodline(whatever that happens to be), X-Man is technically part of Marvel Girl's legacy. And given that Cable and Strife are in turn part of X-Man's legacy, there's a rare example in superhero comic book of a female starting an extensive line of male inheritors.

But you know who is a direct knockoff of a male in the most obvious way? Even more so than Zantanna or that? She-hulk. It was well into her run that they even tried to give She-hulk anything distinct from her male predecessor. Nonetheless, She-hulk is a silly one to ignore, or disregard. She's had several books, she has her own legacy characters, her own Rogues Gallery(even other female superheroes In-Universe think it's a joke but said gallery exists nonetheless), her own sidekicks, she holds a victory over a cosmic being(a minor one, An Elder Of The Universe without its infinity gem, but She-hulk outsmarted The Champion she couldn't smash). Is it heresy to suggest She-hulk might be as important to her setting as Hawk Girl is to hers? If that's where you want to play, if we must talk about how DC's female superheroes are better, or better used, or what not, why not start there?

Who is this "that" you keep referring to?

Seems like he has some problem with Laura Kinney. Even though she's fucking awesome.

Who he, me? I'd rather not discuss Wolverine, is that so wrong?

Well, I guess the fact Wolverine is female disputes the notion that Wolverine being the biggest thing to come out of X-Men disqualifies all the standout female characters who have been featured in that line of books. But given I was just educated, that I learned exactly why Marvel created Snowbird, I figured that was enough Wolverine for one page.(in hindsight, I should have assumed someone with their own comic book was not in public domain. I see now Snowbird is a workaround not unlike Shang Chi...or The Fox)

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Jun 18th 2019 at 3:43:44 AM

Snowbird is not a work-around for Nelvana. They're different characters. Byrne just made Snowbird the daughter of "Nelvanna" as an homage to Nelvana.

Shang Chi is not Fu Manchu and The Fox is not Zorro. I may have been wrong, but I assumed Nelvanna was the kind of character Marvel would have liked to have book about, since they did use Venus already. I was looking at things by company rather than individual.

And I admit, I was wrong. A Canadian patriot, working on a team representing Canada doing a tribute to one of its best known comic book superheroes makes enough sense. Those are dots I never connected, because I didn't realize she wasn't in the public domain.

Edited by IndirectActiveTransport on Jun 21st 2019 at 5:48:45 AM

Another difference is that Marvel is more team based than DC.

Reading through the stuff on female heroes, well, Marvel has tons... but they're all in teams apart from Captain Marvel getting a solo push.

While there are exceptions like her and Spider-Man, even the biggest characters are more associated with their teams. Wolverine: X-Men Cap: Avengers

Whereas with DC, while there are teams like JLA, the heroes are more associated with their solo work.

In Marvel, there are teams who's members can have their own adventures, in DC there are heroes who can team up.

Marvel does have long running solo heroes whose titles go to 200-300 issues at the very least — Spider-Man (obviously, first, longest-running and so on), The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, Daredevil, The Punisher The Hulk (whose current run is in fact the benchmark for the entire industry). Wolverine is an X-Man but his solo issues are 300 issues plus. So we can consider him a solo hero. Black Panther for instance hasn't seen 300 issues (I don't think he's reached 200 but then I don't think Dr. Strange has either) and he's definitely a major solo hero.

In 616 Continuity, She-Hulk is the heroine with the most issues when John Byrne's run reached 60 issues. Overall, it's Mayday Parker with Spider-Girl in an AU.

So that's why I think attempts to excuse Marvel for not having prominent solo heroines by going "Marvel has more teams" is bunk.