Marvel vs DC

 

I still go with Marvel- I think they have a better stable of characters than DC. (DC has my single favourite character, Batman, but they have loads of others that don't interest me.) But I began to waver for a minute there because DC does its events SO much better than Marvel.

 

Just compare the brilliance of Blackest Night, just about the best executed event ever, with the total turd that was Fear Itself. And it's not just that one event, in general DCs events are much better managed. With Marvel in particular being so relentlessly event oriented ever since Disassembled, this is a major point. Basically every Marvel event since (and including) Disassembled has taken a really exciting premise, started really well and then fizzles out with a narrative that becomes increasingly diluted and patchy. Throw in big changes to the status quo that are quickly undone and the obligatory deaths that are always undone if it's a character anyone cares about and that's all Marvel events.

 

But DC on the other hand, if you read something like Final Crisis, (as long as you read the tie-ins too) comes togethers like a symphony.

 

Speaking of tie-ins, that's another thing. Blackest Night had nine core issues and a total of 82 related comics. (Of these you could be satisfied with the nine Blackest Night, ten Green Lantern and nine Green Lantern corps issues, the rest just add details, though the 18 Black Lantern Corps issues were pretty handy.)

 

So that's still a lot of comics, far too many for anyone to buy.

 

But Fear itself, had 186 issues. Seven core issues, 179 tie-ins. Now the problem with this is not just that it is absolutely unreasonable to expect anyone to get their hands on 186 comics (it shouldn't be a life's work to follow an event) but that Fear Itself despite having 100 issues more than Blackest Night, told much less of a story and had much less impact. It was just pants from an editorial perspective. Also if you got the core books of Blackest Night you would be OK- the core books of Fear Itself simply didn't tell the story, you HAD to get tie-ins. But which ones, there's 179 of them! A lot of people just despaired and walked away and they were right because Fear Itself turned out be a turkey. (However, the post Fear Itself title, The Fearless was much better than the main event).

 

Oh and don't get me even started on how Spiderman has been handled in the past few years.

 

And I don't think we have enough monthly Avengers titles.

 

So it's Marvel still but with a sour taste in my mouth. A few more episodes like that and I could be a DC fan after all.

What the hell does that make me? I could never financially handle collecting comic books, so I've been content with using CDisplay and lots of images. It hurts my heart to recall that I once parted with 8 USD for a copy of Moore's The Killing Joke. I could never see myself paying more than a quarter for any single comic issue at this point. 

I'd really like to get into the Sandman series because of the things I've heard, but I'm not ever going to pay hundreds of dollars for a handful of graphic novels. The local stores don't have it and the nearest store that does is charging 20 dollars per graphic novel or more. 

 

Over at DC though, they did have the Ambush Bug comics. Almost as funny as Howard The Duck, but HTD had more of a philosophical point.

 

The other thing is that Marvel has the lion's share of the classic pencillers. Gene Colan, John Buscema, Jack Kirby, John Romita, Bill Sienkiewicz*, Charles Vess and more.

 

However, today DC has Doug Mahnke whose stuff I really dig.

 

 

*You know you're talking to the elite/hardcore when they can spell Sienkiewicz.