http://comicsalliance.com/dc-comics-mar ... s-history/

Agree with a lot of it but not all.

I wish people like this guy would quit stating that DC decided to publish the New Teen Titans to counter the popularity of the X-Men. The Titans first appeared in DC Comics Presents in July of 1980. DC had begun promoting the book as early as March. The Uncanny X-Men did not become a runaway hit until after the "Dark Phoenix Saga" which ended in June of the same year.

Yeah definitely some issues here and there with the article but the theme is right. For me, DC should be like LOTR or Potter, worlds where there are infinite possibilities and wonder. Marvel should be soap opera, drama and more "reality" type stuff. The illusion of reality.

He has a lot of truth in that article but, in some places, he's looking at history from specific points of view to make it fit his argument. For example, he minimizes the importance of Kirby's impact on DC by focusing on Jimmy Olsen. He goes on to chastise DC for not allowing O'Neill to continue with his depowering of Superman. He can't seem to make up his mind over the Marvelization of DC being a good thing or a bad thing.

Interesting for a bit, but then just seemed to go on and on.

Interesting for a bit, but then just seemed to go on and on.

It did get a bit repetitive.

X-men was a big hit in the fan market prior to Dark Phoenix, even if it was only an average seller on the newsstand. The Comic Reader used to do their monthly nonscientific sales charts (based on polls of comic stores) and I remember that X-Men was always in the #1 spot throughout 1979.

New Teen Titans certainly seemed to follow the X-Men template of taking a few of the old cast and adding several new (and more diverse) members. However, I don't think that they were trying to emulate the X-Men in particular as much as just trying to produce a Marvel-style book. NTT is very consciously Marvelish in approach.

I disagree with some of the other points, however. Green Lantern/Green Arrow and the whole relevancy craze was not DC attempting to be Marvel. It was DC trying to attract new readers because sales were dropping, but DC arguably was first with relevance. Denny O'Neil and Mike Friedrich were writing preachy hippy-dippy stuff long before Harry Osborn dropped acid. If anything, Stan was the follower with that stuff.

I'd also say that DC stopped trying to be Marvel around 1986 and succeeded. There really hasn't been a meaningful distinction between Marvel and DC's styles in the past 30 years, certainly not in the way there was in the 60s or 70s.

I have to agree he gets repetitive. If anything, DC became Marvel-ish when you had writers like Gerry Conway, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Doug Moench and Roy Thomas come over to DC. Having spent most of their careers at Marvel, they just brought that writing style to the books they worked on. I don't think it was a conscious decision to make DC books like Marvel. If anything certain books carried on in that "DC style" such as JLA and the Superman books.

Gerry Conway's Firestorm seemed the most like a Marvel book, yet he wrote the JLA the way it always had been to an extent until his JLA-Detroit revamp.

IIRC Wein was the first to introduce subplots and arcs to the Batman books. I would say Steve Englehart, but his original 'Tec run was meant to be limited while Wein stayed for over 2 years. Conway and Moench just followed his groundwork with their runs.

Maggin and Bates on Superman were still writing stories in the same style as they did in 1971 as they were in 1986.

When it came time to redefine their major characters, here’s who DC got: John Byrne on Superman and Frank Miller on Batman. Perez would come in a few years later to rebuild Wonder Woman, but in 86, those were the guys, and they could not have been more Marvel Comics.

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He's off there as well. MOS # 1 by Byrne was July 1986 cover date, and WW 1 and Batman 404 were Feb 1987 cover date.

Marv Wolfman also created the Lex Luthor tycoon villain. Think he needs to get his research and facts right.

There were specific efforts by DC's editors to make comics that would entice the audience that Marvel was drawing. But you also have the two major companies of an industry that was down to a handful of players planted in the same city. You're going to see creators going back and forth between the two companies. Every instance of a Marvel creator moving to DC wasn't an attempt to absorb Marvel or Marvelize DC. Most of those transfers of talent were to fill a position, help a friend, or build sales by bringing in new creators. Neal Adams going to Marvel wasn't a case of Marvel wanting to be DC. It was a case of Marvel wanting to bring in a talented artist.

Jim Shooter says that those Legion stories back in the day was his younger self trying to write like Stan Lee.

And they were GREAT.

Sims is an idiot.

He's funny. But he's an idiot.

Chicken and egg with Cockrum taking unused Legion designs and going over to Marvel to start up the New X-Men. Then you have the Imperial Guard showing up. Like I said, you've got creators bouncing back and forth between the companies. When you had a Stan Lee overseeing all of the Marvel books and a Weisinger and Schwartz with their separate universes at DC, each company had a more unique look and feel.

Yes, but a Feb 1987 cover date meant that the book came out in either November or December of 1986, so technically, he's right.

And Perez also did his Wonder Woman revamp in 1986 (cover date: February 1987), not "a few years later," as the writer put it.

That's a whole lot of words for what is essentially not an extremely interesting nor particularly insightful point.

"they could not have been more Marvel Comics."

Do you see Man of Steel as a Marvel version of Superman or a John Byrne version? Is Batman Year One more Marvel or more Frank Miller? I think that the "Marvel flavor" of those books is more the flavor of the creators who had brought that same feel to the comics they did at Marvel. If Otto Binder and Curt Swan had moved to Marvel to do a Captain America series it wouldn't be Weisinger's vision that they'd bring with them, it would be their own.

Ah, if only.

My point was that Perez' WW revamp came out at the same time as the Batman one. Not a few years later.

But it should be pointed out that Perez' first issue of WW was cover dated Feb of 87, so it came out in 1986, not "a few years later."