DC vs Marvel licensing article

[TP-6597]

Short article today on Yahoo about licensing income between DC and Marvel. Nothing we didn't all already know, nothing terribly surprising, Marvel is juggernaut, etc, etc. As a nearly 50-year Batman nerd, I don't much care for Marvel. That's not a slur, by the way. It's not anything really. I seldom give their characters or films a look because their comics just never spoke to me as a kid.

Anyway, I only brought up the article because I really dig their choice of lead photo. They could have gone with any of literally hundreds of choices. Even when the news is bad, The Real Batman is the coolest.
Well done, Yahoo.

[SprangFan]

Marvel comics never spoke to me as a kid, either, but I'm really enjoying their films. There may be a connection, there: I know just enough about the characters to be interested, so any liberties taken by the films don't rankle me. On the other hand, every little screw-up, alteration and misfire in the DC films ticks me off. Sometimes caring too much ruins things.

There's also the fact that the Marvel films capture something the DC films -- and the comics from BOTH companies -- do not, and that is the sense of FUN that once defined the genre. If superheroes had been as dour, humorless and morose when I was a kid as they are now, I would never have become a fan.

Anyway, Batman versus all of Marvel is hardly a fair fight. It's not his fault he's the only DC character anyone cares about any more.

[Gernot]

Anyway, Batman versus all of Marvel is hardly a fair fight. It's not his fault he's the only DC character anyone cares about any more.

Actually, he's NOT the only DC character anyone cares about. He's the only DC character DC cares about. B-I-G difference.

[makaveli09]

I am a big marvel fan. And batman is pretty much the only dç comic character I like. Besides the justice leave a little.

[SprangFan]

Well, obviously Gernot, I know we're both Superman fans (from our days on the old Superman Through the Ages site, when I was "Nightwing"). I guess what I mean is Batman is the only character DC seems to have figured out how to market in the modern era; his books sell tons better than any other DC character, his movies are the only ones that get any respect and he gets a new cartoon series every other year, it seems.

Personally I think this is because DC has no concept of what makes their characters great, or used to. Even Batman's success seems to come in spite of DC's efforts and not because of them; he's just an incredibly resilient character who can survive wildly variant interpretations, often all at once. That's not true of most characters, comic-based or otherwise.

It's a vicious cycle: Batman sells better, so make more Batman products. And try to make every other character into Batman.

I'm no fan of "Man of Steel," for instance, but it's sure indicator of a lack of faith in the character that he's going to take second billing in his own sequel!