[thechris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CLASSIFIED

I was surprised too, but no, he said even before the new 52.

Keep in mind that he was talking only about his shop and that Marvel still brought in more money (their comics are a buck more), but yeah, DC sold more actual books.

This doesn't surprise me at all. If you compare the quality of storytelling and character consistency, DC definitely gets the nod. Identity Crisis could be one of the best stories I ever read and they're constantly putting out new material that's actually good. I can see DC comics generating a large loyal following, even after the soft reboot. They haven't really sabotaged any characters (aside from the stupid Red/Blue Superman thing) and their giant crossovers have been done extremely well unlike Marvel's, which now looking back, look like any 5 year old hanging out at the LCS could have slapped together. This was even admitted with Secret Wars which was nothing more than a marketing gimmick to sell their Secret Wars line of action figures.

I love Marvel comics, I've been reading for a long time, but storywise, DC definitely gets the win, I think. I loved the Chris Claremont X-Men era stories like the Mutant Massacre and Inferno. Squadron Supreme was awesome. Loved Maximum Carnage. This is by no means an anti-Marvel post. Heading into the 90s, though, even with Maximum Carnage and the Spectacular Spider-man comics, everything started getting kind of cheap and I started to question their inspiration for some of the stuff they were writing and heck, I wasn't even in my teens yet. It's pretty bad when an 11 year old thinks your comics lack substance. I'm not saying they sucked, but storywise, there wasn't anything that moved me from Marvel since finding out that Tom Thumb had cancer but still wouldn't betray Squadron Supreme for the cure to save Nuke's parents and himself.

I think there's a big illusion that Marvel COMICS are more popular than DC COMICS, because Marvel itself is clearly more popular on a casual level than DC. You ask anyone and they'll claim to be a HUUUGE Hulk fan, HUUUGE Spider-man fan or a HUUUGE Wolverine fan and that they LOOOVE the X-Men and as far as they're concerned, the only cool hero DC has is Batman. Then if you ask them if they have any comics, they'll say, "Nope." Do you read comics? "Nope." Wow. Big fan. One of my ex-girlfriends, who hated comics and anything geeky, I was able to get her to read the Killing Joke and she loved it and had a new found respect for comic books. I can name a handful of good Marvel stories, but I could go on and on with DC stories. Especially if we're looking at a post '90s comparison where Marvel resorts to "fashion make-overs" to sell their comics sticking teams in matching jackets and giving long time favourites like Dr. Strange a "bystander" look with a trenchcoat and khakis and calling it a day. I'm just saying, DC's big 7 (Aside from Aquaman) have changed very little over the years in terms of overall design and they still continued to be popular.

*EDIT* One last thing, DC is able to take a seemingly lame character like Elongated Man, Ted Kord's Blue Beetle or even Superman (a grown man in red and blue tights who wears underwear on top of his trousers) and make them cool, interesting and likable by telling great stories. The last time Marvel did that for me was with Squadron Supreme and they were sadly a rip off of DC's Justice League. The Marvel method? Comics aren't doing hot? Let's get put a few random characters together and give them matching leather jackets. Let's put Spiderman in a hoodie. Let's stick Thing in a mask. Let's put Doc Strange in a trenchcoat. Bring on the clooooooones!!!! Good start, but I need more than that.