It’s not for children, it’s for people who can’t concentrate on the story unless there are constant visuals to keep their minds from wandering while reading the words in their heads.
In general, who feels DC has a better creative team? Marvel basically has Joe Queseda, who I think we can single-handedly credit with most of their good initiatives in the last decade (and maybe Bendis, a little). DC seems to have a much stronger team putting their titles together, but without the unpredictable feel that Marvel has. The result seems to be better quality for DC on the whole, although I’d argue that Marvel has scored some incredible hits and changed the mainstream comics conversation due to Queseda’s vision.
I can’t really speak to DC’s creative team, though there are of course some marquee writers on their roster. The weekly series idea was decent enough, but the fact that they pulled it off at all is incredible. They certainly need to reign it in a bit editorially, but that comment only comes from my perspective of the few titles I read.
But hey, Aquaman’s back, so all is right in the world.
I don’t really look at Marvel having a one man operation. Certainly Quesada calls the shots and Bendis has a good idea from time to time (I’m not a fan at all of Ultimate line). Bendis’ biggest problem seems to be he has this really awesome idea but has no idea at all how to wrap it up. For all the hype of the Secret Invasion event and it’s ridiculously good start, it petered out terribly at the end. The be all end all of anti-climax, except of course for Final Crisis.
The other event I shall not speak of is Spider-Man’s “One More Day”. The less I have to think about that steaming pile of retcon the better.
In any case, as far as I’m concerned Marvel currently has the best writers, though there are luminaries in DC.
Marvel has solid writers, but DC has Geoff Johns, Bill Willingham, Grant Morrison, James Robinson and Paul Dini. I think Marvel has a distinct advantage with artists.
“One More Day” is the 21st century’s “Clone Saga.” I wish they’d just let Spider-Man build on itself, rather than feeling the need to return the character to his “roots” every ten years. Who cares about his roots? I want a good story based around a good character, not to be told the same story over and over again. I’d be less insulted if Spider-Man turned out to be a Skrull.
You don’t hear that about the X-Men, do you? “Hey, let’s get rid of all the cool developments and have Prof. X go back to teaching a bunch of bratty stereotypes how to fight implausible villains!” Or the Avengers, for that matter. The only team that’s even vaguely like its “roots” is Fantastic Four, and I’m not sure that’s a particularly good thing.
Steve, your anti-DC bias is well-known, but you have to allow some leeway for characters created in the 30s and 40s when compared to those created in the nascent anti-establishment 1960s. Of course the heroes from a less cynical time are going to seem simplistic and one-dimensional, especially compared to characters who were meant to be a direct response to the, by then, absurd caricatures of tights-wearing heroes.
That said, the DC of today is not the DC of even the 70s or 80s in terms of heroes with no demons, doubts, personal problems or ethical conflicts. Granted, I stopped buying comics 20 years ago, but I do keep up with recent compilations and trade paperbacks and the story lines for things like 52, Identity Crisis, Villains united, Justice, Crisis of Conscience, etc. make the DC characters involved as flawed and relatable as anything Marvel has going on in Civil War or Secret Invasion.
Superman is a special case, being the very first embodiment of the tights-wearing superhero, he can’t be expected to somehow escape the confines of a genre that he created. DC has retconned his story so much that I’m not even sure where his powers stand on the scale of Golden Age planet juggling and “super-intelligence” cop out to the John Byrne reshuffling of the deck to attempt a less godlike incarnation and the post Death of Superman Doomsday Infinite Crisis/Crisis on Infinite Earths continuity mess. I do, however, think Superman should be allowed, above all others to be the most “super” because that is his main selling point. Bright primary colors and unironic boy scout motivations may now seem anachronistic and not nearly as “cool” as the muted tones and dark impulses of the rule-bending trenchcoat bearers of vengeance, but someone who is allowed to kick everyone’s ass consistently without being a dick about it is still pretty awesome.
To clarify: I don’t dislike Superman or DC, I just don’t—on the whole—enjoy their superhero comics as much as I do Marvel’s. I guess it boils down, as lame as this sounds, to plausibility. I have trouble with the idea of a pure hero, and this isn’t something specific to DC. To invest in a character, I have to know that the character is fallible. I don’t mean to kryptonite, but as a person. A flawed person who acts heroically when the situation calls for it is a lot more interesting to me than a flawless one doing the right thing because that’s what they do. And you see this all the time in DC comics.
