Marvel vs DC

[trashcanman]

IGN is hosting the comic battle to end all battles on their site. Let us join the fray and follow the action.

www.ign.com/face-off/marvel-vs-dc


Here's pretty damn in-depth look at the topic of villains I just ran across from a few years ago. Hard to argue with their results.

comics.ign.com/articles/666/666073p1.html

To be fair to DC, Starro is a cosmic threat, but he's hardly better than Galactus. I enjoyed the pointing out that DC's villains actually have a much higher success rate in spite of their overall lack of universe-altering power. All around, a great article. I'll follow this fight with updates for as long as it continues. Enjoy.

[The Curmudgeon]

Oooh, great find, Trashy. Really well written and presented stuff, too. OK, I'll join in;

Heroes - Marvel.

Superman may be the most famous comic book character in history, but naive writing (no slant on the creators, it was a different time back then) made Superman just TOO powerful. They backed themselves into a corner and so you know Supes will never be beaten. And yes, Batman is a complex, intriguing character but c'mon.. Spidey, Wolverine, Hulk, Cap, Iron Man.. good luck beating THAT stable.

Villains - Marvel.

DC may have arguably the BEST polar opposite villain in the Joker, but Marvel weighs in with way too many great bad guys. And Doom is my favourite villain of all time. So no contest.

Games - Marvel.

Again, Arkham Asylum is possibly my favourite comic book game of all time. But I can't really think of any other DC games I've really enjoyed, but I can think as far back as the Megadrive and the really quite superb Spider-Man game (where you got to take pictures and everything), not to mention the vs Capcom series and, well, pretty much every Spidey game after that too.

TV - DC.

When you scroll through that list it's pretty clear the small screen hasn't exactly been lit-up with great examples of comic book heroes (I watched one episode of Human Target and that was enough. Can't think WHY that was shit-canned). The 50's Superman series was great and the way comics are STILL thought of in the tabloid press is all down to one TV show.



Exactly.

Movies - Marvel.

Again, DC have THE best comic book movie in the Dark Knight, but has enough time passed in Christopher Reeve's death that we can all admit that the 80s Superman movies (whisper) weren't very good? For every scene with Zod, you had Supes flying round the world to make time go backwards, wiping Lois's mind with a kiss and 1000 other really stupid things. Plus, Marvel offer up the first two Spider-Man films, the first two X-Men films (and First Class, if word of mouth is to be believed), some decent Hulk films, Iron Man, Thor.. and let's face it, Captain America could potentially be the best one yet.

I think I have my winner.

[trashcanman]

I'd have to agree on all points. DC usually has the best few examples, but they are very thin on quality past the top few. Marvel has a depth that DC has never been able to match.

[glow=red,2,300]Heroes:[/glow]

The JLA's Big Three beat The Avengers' all day




But throw in Hulk, Spidey, the X-Men, Wolverine, and the FF against the likes of Aquaman, Hawkman, Green Arrow, and the JSA, and it's obvious who wins.

[glow=red,2,300]Villains:[/glow]

Covered. Marvel by a nose.

[glow=red,2,300]Games:[/glow]

Probably the hottest contested. More failures than successes on both sides but here are the recent great ones.



Advantage: Marvel

[glow=red,2,300]TV:[/glow]

Marvel is catching up for sure with amazing shows like Wolverine and the X-Men and Spectacular Spider-Man (which may have even put them in the lead if they hadn't stupidly cancelled both), but they have yet to come anywhere near this in terms of bringing the full Marvel universe to bear


The closest they've come is this:


What a fucking waste. Both sides have awesome straight-to-dvd films that effectively cancel each other out (slight edge to DC, though since they release more consistently).

DC wins.

[glow=red,2,300]Movies:[/glow]

Throw out Christopher Nolan and Time Burton's Batman flicks and the first two classic Superman flicks and all you have is Green Lantern. I'm only counting movies in theaters and not the awesome animated films, mind you. Modern Marvel has consistently put out solid comic book flicks. Before you smash Elektra or the FF films, watch Batman and Robin or Batman Forever again. 'Nuff said.

Marvel. Eff. Tee. Double-you.

[trashcanman]

Alright, the results are in.

www.ign.com/face-off/marvel-vs-dc/heroes

Looks like we are in the majority. Comfy margins of victory for Marvel on all counts except for television. I wish they'd explored the different approaches by each company in each given category a little more rather than just listing a bunch of examples and asking us for our opinion. Gotta wonder how Watchmen gets left off the DC films list in favor of crap like Steel. I suppose you can consider Watchmen more of a Vertigo title since it is an adult graphic novel that is outside of the DC Universe proper, though. Vertigo honestly has better comics than 90% of what Marvel puts out now, even if you count their respective Icon stuff like Kick-Ass. But the fact is that the DCU's overall output is loopy as all hell, annoying for most readers to follow, and is therefore often difficult to adapt to film. Without Bruce Timm's animation brilliance, DC wouldn't even have taken the tv category. The non-animated tv adaptations on the list usually thrived by steering fairly clear of the defining traits of the comics they were based on. Unfortunately for Birds of Prey, the tv show would have been much better if they'd stuck with the source material since somehow the show had more superpowers and sketchy sci-finess than the fucking comic (which was typically more grounded) had in the first place. So yeah, I'm calling it. Marvel Comics by referee stoppage at 1:55 in the first round due to strikes to the head.