DISTINGUISHED COMPETITION

I spoke about my appreciation of Marvel comics the other day and how my early exposure to them helped ignite my love of reading. Their stories and characters were a great escape from trying circumstances in my younger years. Thing is that you can't really talk about Marvel without talking about DC (the Distinguished Competition as Stan Lee referred to them).

DC have always had the blue chip characters in Superman & Batman, and to a lesser extent Wonder Woman. Characters that most people know or have heard of.

The thing about Superman for me was that I found the character, well, boring. He could do anything and basically could not be harmed, except by Kryptonite, which I think was probably introduced to bring in a bit of jeopardy. Superman was too much of a Goody Two Shoes for me. I did enjoy the fanciful stories generally involving his girlfriend Lois Lane and his pal Jimmy Olsen.

Batman on the other hand seemed more realistic and I imagined him in the world of Marvel with Chicago replacing Gotham and Falcone forming an alliance with the Kingpin.

Wonder Woman was all about the divine Lynda Carter playing WW on TV as I found the comic book version somewhat drab.

Mind you, perhaps DC's greatest strength has always been it's array of Supernatural/Horror characters. They seem to have attracted the best writers and the most inventive artists and are an untaped source for the DC cinematic universe, which unlike Marvel's slate of films has not really delivered since the halcyon days of Superman The Movie.

DC also boasts it's Vertigo imprint which gave us what, for me, is one of the greatest contributions to sequential art storytelling 100 Bullets. DC also gave us the seminal Watchmen and The Darl Knight Returns. But these came when I was no longer a kid and seemed to fit in with my getting older as the form got older.

Both Marvel and DC, as the dominant publishers of comics, have a vast catalogue and I guess which company one prefers is just a matter of personal taste. I think the best of both speak for themselves and they have allowed many people to be influenced to start the diverse independent Comic Book scene.

The irony is that while the big two are multi million dollar companies, with entertainment and resort interests, now in many ways the independent scene has overtaken them in terms of relevance and creativity. What's clear is that the world has changed considerably since I was a nipper and therefore the Comic book world has changed accordingly. What I might find a bit jaded now about the output of Marvel & DC is there to be discovered by new readers and hopefully inspire them to read, create and open their minds.

I'll end this post with a quote from perhaps DC's greatest achievement Watchmen written by Alan Moore: 

"We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away"-Dr Manhattan