Marvel or DC Comics?

[XaiakuX]

Which titan comic book franchise do you prefer more? I can definitely understand either perspective, but I just like doing this specific poll. It's always cool to hear things from other peoples' perspectives. Especially fellow comic book lovers.

Honorable mentions to Image and Dark Horse.

I'm personally a Marvel dude. I guess it helps that my favorite hero is Spider-Man.
I'm also really sad to hear about Stan Lee's health declining. But he's getting up there in the years, so I guess it's to be expected.

[Shruikan]

The only superhero comic I've read is Silk,(a spin off to Spiderman,) which is Marvel, but I watch a lot of the cartoons of both sides. In general, DC has better TV shows, like Teen Titans (the original, not the reboot,) Young Justice, Smallville, etc. But I prefer the Marvel movies and characters overall. They manage to be more lighthearted while still being serious, which DC seems to have lost with it's endless dark and gritty humorless stories. So yeah, despite my favorite superhero (Blue Beetle) being a DC character, I'm gonna have to go with Marvel.

[Neo Emolga]

I tend to bend more toward Marvel, but DC has plenty of great quality stuff. It's just that Marvel has Deadpool. That's a big deciding factor.

[1709mart]

So in my short time that I've been here, I'm sure people who have seen my posts see that I'm a huge comic nerd. And for the longest time I've been a Marvel Fanboy. Their early comics got me excited and their cartoons always kept me engaged. DC characters have always been interesting to me, the Bat-Family and Flash being particularly and their rouge gallery being cool in my mind, and I enjoyed most of their cartoons as well.

Then come 2008, and the smash hit Iron Man hits the theaters. Enter the MCU, one of the most ambitious projects done by any movie studio or comic company alike. And it paid off well. To this day, the MCU kills at the box office and always generates massive hype among the fans. Its the reason most people answer "Marvel" when asked which company is better.

But here's where the issue comes in.

The Marvel comics as a whole... have kinda become a mess. With the success of the MCU, skyrocketing their company even farther in popularity, they realized they should make their comics reflect their films. That's why, we see characters like the Guardians of the Galaxy, being VASTLY different characters than who they were say a decade ago. The Guardians movies are still fantastic and remain to be probably the best films in the MCU in my opinion, but its hard to deny that they've made some massive changes to their comic counter parts, for no reason beyond 'We like money so we need to make this book sell more' DESPITE the fact that movie exclusive viewers are less likely to pick up these books considering that by the time the movie comes out, hype has died down a bit. There's also the issue with 'Legacy Characters" They've pretty much made every one of their hit characters have a younger 'hipper' counter-part. Now some of these work well, like Miles Morales Spider-Man, or Kamala Khan as Ms. Marvel, but there are also character like Riri Williams who is a terribly written character that took over the Iron Man title, and is just nowhere near as fun to read as Tony Stark.

Going along with this 'we need to be like the movies' trend, they seem to want to make plots that they may be able to use in the MCU in future installments. Cue the infamous "Hail Hydra" from American icon, Steve Rogers. Captain America secretly working for Hydra is a cool twist. If this was a movie that has this plot line get solved in roughly 2 hours. But this huge twist is not something you drop in a comic book that you have to wait literal years to find out the answer to.

DC, on the other hand, has been doing something interesting with their comics. So DC put in a twist as well when they did their recent relaunch. The introduction of the Watchmen into the DC universe. This is a brilliant twist that is not only done well, but is distinctively comic booky. Dr. Manhattan messing with the universe as we know it, and Batman and the Flash discovering the secrets of the Comedian's button, and Superman learning the true identity of Mr. Oz has been fun, interesting, and laid out in such a way that it has kept readers like myself invested since day 1 of Rebirth. Geoff Johns, the creative director at DC as been killing it for years and his work with Rebirth may be his finest yet. And thats not to mention the incredible creative talent behind each single book at DC. I'm reading 24 of the titles they are putting out and I don't think any of them can be called bad. Some of these runs are the best they have ever been, like Nightwing and Deathstroke.

Of course, I have to talk about DC films as well though. Since there are far fewer films than the MCU right now, I feel more comfortable talking about them each individually. Man of Steel was boring, Batman v Superman was so bad its hilarious, Suicide Squad is the worst cinematic experience I've had since the Disaster Movie, Wonder Woman was actually a lot of fun, and Justice League was passable. Basically everywhere that Marvel has succeed in making their films, DC has slipped up. They have yet to really establish a strong over arching story like Marvel has.

Okay, so to put everything together, I'll say this: I think Marvel has the better films, while DC is doing great in the comics. And when it comes down to it, I'm going to say that I enjoy DC better because of this. I actually put out a poll recently asking the public their opinion on this topic, and if anyone is interested I'd love to share the results. I really didn't intend for this to be as long as it came out to be, I'm just....really passionate about these characters and stories.