Thursday, April 23, 2015

DC or Marvel (?)

Before I even start describing my view of the matter, I just want to point out that the order of names
in the headline is purely alphabetical.

While there are many conflicts in this world, there is one in particular that will certainly never be resolved. It is an ancient question that sparked countless heated arguments among comic book fans for decades: DC or Marvel?

I have many great childhood memories with heroes of both universes, but which one do I like better?
Well it's a close call, extremely complicated and full of almost unsolvable dilemmas.

Let me start with Marvel:
Marvel brought forth idols and classic comic heroes like Captain America, Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, Iron Man, Thor and many more. Not only are there stories for each of their heroes individually, but they brought them together in different teams, most famous of which are the Avengers. Also they expanded their storylines and character arsenal beyond the familiar planet Earth into the entire universe and even other dimensions and parallel universes. Only recently (relatively speaking) Marvel has made a strategically brilliant move: the creation of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). It's a series of movies and tv shows about different characters of the Marvel universe all connected to each other in a time line telling one big story roughly following the story arc of the comics. This has led to a more general
popularization of Marvel super heroes (yes they are cool now), even of lesser known franchises like The Guardians of the Galaxy. In my opinion the main factor of the MCUs huge success is the high quality, since each single movie is also enjoyable to watch on its own.

Let's now take a look at the competitor DC:
From what I wrote so far it seems hard to compete with such a MARVELous fictional universe (see what I did there?). But then again there is BATMAN! (yes his majesty may only be spelled in capital letters). BATMAN is my favorite hero of all time. I never really liked Superman because he was way too powerful. BATMAN on the other hand is much more relatable. I could never be Superman since he has so many ridiculous super powers stemming from his alien origin. On the contrary I could totally be BATMAN (theoretically speaking). All I need is a shit ton of money, some cool gadgets, a cool personality and lots and lots of training. But BATMAN is not all there is to DC. Or is he...?
As I said I don't really like Superman and other than that I can only think of a couple heroes that are worth mentioning. These include The Green Arrow, The Flash, The Green Lantern, Aquaman and Wonder Woman. Those are all cool and interesting heroes, but compared to Marvels roster not quite as good. Additionally the quality of the DC movies (excluding BATMAN) is also not quite as good and the big connected story line is missing so far.

So for me the question is basically reduced to BATMAN or Marvel? (still alphabetically) and as I said it's a very very close call.
The reason being dilemmas like:
- Cool, interesting and colorful roster of heroes vs. BATMAN
- Incredibly intriguing web of story lines vs. BATMAN
- Awesome Movie universe adaption vs. BATMAN
...
You get the idea.

I had to think about this for a very long time. If I had to choose just one hero the choice would be easy.
You know what it is.
(it's BATMAN)

But considering the complexity and diversity of what Marvel created, my answer to the initial question is: "Marvel".
The key element in my decision was the MCU, which is just fantastic. Otherwise the answer would have been:

BATMAN!

No comments:

Post a Comment