My tastes in comic book heroes are pretty specific, and date, I think from my first televisual love affair - with Batman - when I was two or three years old. For me to enjoy them, a comic book series has to have certain ingredients, and these ingredients are nearly all present in that series: chief among these is the requirement that the hero must have a secret identity and a colourful costume with a mask that hides the face (at least a little). I was never quite as big a fan of the Fantastic Four as of some other heroes because they wore no masks - and of the four, my favourite of them by far was the Human Torch, a) because his powers were cool and b)because he became quite unrecognizable when he 'flamed on'.
This meant (and means, the child being father to the man) that I could never really 'get into' a series that offered different pleasures. Conan, Kamandi, 'Monster' titles like Werewolf By Night - I read them all because I was a Marvel junkie, but I never felt they 'spoke' to me in the same way. Yet at the time when I was properly receptive to such things, in the mid to late seventies, DC comics didn't appeal to me either, because they were, or seemed, too "childish" because their stories were too goofy. (I think this is a fault of my perceptions at the time to some extent, too - "current" DC was hard to come by in the village in which I lived and I was judging things on the strength of older comics I could get hold of which belonged to an uncle who was seven years my senior).
These tastes - prejudices - are still noticeable with me today - I haven't seen Guardians of the Galaxy yet, partly because the heroes aren't 'proper super-heroes' to me so I don't feel an urgency to see the movie as I have done with other, less lauded fare, (like the Phantom for example, which was something I went to see as soon as it came out, way back when)
Does this ring any bells with anyone else?

Oh. I thought this would be an Alan Moore thread.

Impulsively, I want to agree with you, because the parts about DC being "childish" and Marvel being "relevant" resonate with me. But, non-superhero comics like Conan and Kamandi appeal to me greatly these days, where they did not, at ALL when I was younger, so I think that my tastes have become more nuanced over the years. Up until I was in my late 30s, I wouldn't even read/look at comics that didn't fit that narrow description of what comics were supposed to be, to my addled brain. I've spent a lot of enjoyable time catching up on old comics that I missed out on due to my prejudices.

That said, 60s DC is in fact pretty silly and childish as compared to then contemporary Marvel.

Not even a little bit.

I always loved the weirdness of comics - they had stuff going on in them that no TV show or movie ever had (back then). I was never specifically drawn to Superheroes, but just the overall strangeness of comics. I do love Superheroes, but I love Howard the Duck or Devil Dinosaur or Morbius just as much.

Morbius was a funny one for me - he was so nearly 'there', with his super strength, ability to fly and red and blue costume...but then there was the whole 'murdering blood sucker' thing too.

And no mask. Deal breaker.

He said "but true".

Come to think of it, the only Kirby Karacter I liked at DC was Mr Miracle, because of his awesome costume - and even then, I couldn't really get my head around his super powers - as in, figure out what they were. I liked the flying discs at his feet.

Oh, I liked OMAC too.

I didn't read any Alan Moore when he was çoming out' but anything I have read by him - not much beyond Miracleman and Watchmen - has been interesting and well written. And a bit dull. And Killing joke was both beautiful to look at and shit at the same once.

The story of the Watchmen would have worked much better, for me, as a novel.

There, I said it.

Yeah, I thought of that, too, but let it go.

I hear often how 1970s DC comics were "simple" or "childish" and couldn't disagree more. For me, most of Marvel's comics during this period were unstructured stories, rambling from one issue to the next with little more than a battle between heroes and villains or heroes vs. heroes, the latter of which usually began with a misunderstanding that only a moron would fall for . More often or not, DC comics from this period contained shorter stories that rarely went beyond two or three issues at which point they came to end. For some, the Marvel way was more sophisticated, but even at a young age I realized that is was much harder to write with the traditional short story arc than meandering through a Marvel series that usually was just one big fight after another and I preferred a story with a definite resolution. Such a style forced the DC writer to give the bad guys more of a purpose for existing and required the hero to use his brain along with his powers in stopping them. Of course there were exceptions for both companies in this regard, but they seemed rare. Because of the lack of access to comics on a regular basis, the DC model also worked better for a fan like me who had no desire to pick up a Marvel comic such as described above.

I had no real sense, when I was younger, of there being a massive distinction between Marvel and DC, especially since many B&W reprints that contained stories from both were published by the same companies here, so the dividing line was far less distinct for me as a kid of seven or eight. Eventually I noticed that certain characters never appeared in the same stories (as in you never saw a story where Wonder Woman happened to show up in a Spider-Man comic, and none of The Flash's villains ever turned up fighting the FF, etc), but that was the extent of the difference as far as I perceived it.

I didn't see either one as silly or serious - just appealingly weird. People in weird clothing doing spectacularly strange things, with monsters and robots and the like, and hidden cities and people who could perform amazing feats, etc. I honestly think many of these divisions between the big two are purely cosmetic, as both companies produced stories that were equally far-fetched and bizarre, which is what I love(d) about them.

To me, it's an 'apples and oranges' style argument, but having been exposed to this stuff in the form of massive phone-book sized digests that contained a whole bunch of random stories from different decades (all in black and white), it's possible I have a different perspective than people who saw these stories as they were presented by the original publisher.

I didn't even own colour copies of things like Conan or Batman or the FF until I was in my early 20's, and I'd go hunting for them at Minotaur Books, or Alternate Worlds Bookshop, in Melbourne. Pretty much all my spare money would go on comics and guitar strings, back then. Everything was just Marvel and DC all kind of thrown together in a massive jumble, so I've always been a bit mystified by the genuine division that seems to exist between Marvel and DC fans.

And Morbius was awesome, killer or not!

I don't believe DC was simple or childish in the 70s. To me, they pretty much became Marvelized in 1970, with all the books changing pretty radically (for the better, IMO) right about then. In the 60s, many titles were very contrived and silly, with essentially interchangeable leads. You could put Batman in a Green Arrow book, without changing any words in the story but names, and it wouldn't seem any different, for instance. I love 70s DC. I love 60s cheesy DC too, but in a different way.

Separating large blocks of text into paragraphs can be a wonderful thing.

I'm just saying, is all.

OK mate, I'll let everyone know

Thanks, I appreciate it.

I seemed to follow whatever I connected with at any given time.
When I was young I connected more with certain titles, mostly DC
Superman, Batman, Justice League ,Superboy and the Legion..etc.

As I got older I connected more with Marvel at the time: X-men, Daredevil,
Fantastic Four.

Then Dark Knight, Watchmen, Sandman. After that I stopped reading comics for a long time.

I read trade paperbacks from the library from time to time now and haven't bought a comic in years.

The comics I dig the most now are the ones I'm sentimental about- the first ones I read, mostly DC from the 70's

It seems like an odd pronouncement to make, but I think my life and personality were forever changed by Raiders of the Lost Ark. Before Raiders, I did love superhero comics and all the trappings. But that summer Raiders became my favorite thing ever (by that I mean before or since, I don't think I've liked anything more at the time of experiencing it.) And so my tastes forked into a matrix, where the following elements are what did it for me, in various combinations of potency:

1. Visually iconic hero.
2. A sense of a lost era, a nostalgia for a time that was before me, but with timeless values.
3. A presence of war, war machine, Nazi-like enemies
4. A sense of adventure, a quest, a lack of certainty about what is afoot.
5. A sense that the hero is on the side of preserving knowledge and order, and the forces against him are those of chaos and destruction.
6. A type of confidence that is not brash, a humility combined with a spirit that will never give up, which keeps coming back inexplicably, against all odds and even common sense.

And so I'm most sparked by something that feels old and new at the same time, layers of timeless values crashing in on themselves and being reborn. Examples:

-- astronauts applying WWII values and character-hardening to the new challenge of space
-- pulpy muck-monsters that feel strangely urged to act like Batman
-- aging gunfighters who suddenly remember what they first thought was worth fighting for
-- superheroes who believe the world might have lost some part of its character, one which they aim to restore in the form of hope and belief in heroes again.

I grew up when Silver Age Marvel was born and everything associated with them was new. The heroes appeared to be interesting but the stories overlapped, giving the reader a story without a beginning or an end. It was a huge turn-off for my relatives and friends and I. DC had complete stories filled with great characters and covers that were able to draw you in and start a comics conversation. Talking about comics with cousins and friends always quickly went to, "Did you see the one where Lois got fat" or "Do you have the comics with the Superman and Flash race? I've got both of them!" The 80-Page Giants were gold mines. Not only did they have the best and most fun stories from the 40's and 50's, they also gave you a master class in DC history.

My favorite was the Superman family because of the amazing amount of history associated with the characters. Between Krypton and Smallville and Metropolis and the 30th Century and Argo City and Kandor and Atlantis... there was an unlimited amount of events and history for the new fan to encounter. And the writers made sure that new readers never felt like they were coming in too late into the story to enjoy everything. We saw Pete Ross discover Superboy's identity by the light of a storm, saw meteors slice through the protective lead shield that covered Argo City, saw young Luthor lose his hair in that chemical fire... over and over again. But it never got old for the continuing readers. Seeing those panels again just gave us a sense of pride that we were in the club that already had this knowledge.

I sampled Marvel here and there, looking at the first and last page of each comic to make sure I wasn't getting suckered into an ongoing story. There were some stand-alone stories, and some Giants that were self contained. But nothing as satisfying as the Superman universe.

I got to read nearly the first three years of Silver Age Marvels as my starting point.
My dad also had some late 50s and early 60s DC books, which were fun when I was five or so,
but I really didn't want much to do with them as I reached eight or night.

Except for Batman. Even though I had been initially exposed to some of the all-time silliest
Batman stories ever, and was catching Batman TV show reruns where camp was rule #1,
I also started buying Superman and Batman comics in the early 1970s. And while I enjoyed
Swan's artwork on Superman, and the stories no longer seemed silly, he was still too powerful
for my tastes. But the O'Neil/Adams Batman??? Dayum, was I ever drawn to it.

I always continued being a Marvel Junkie… but I was solid into DC comics by the mid 1970s.
And, by then, I was trying everything, not just masked heroes. And loved the old repeats in
the DC Specials and Family books.

The "Family" books were a good way for me to read titles like Lois Lane and Supergirl, which
I had enjoyed reading when I got my hands on my sister's comics, but I wasn't all that keen
to be seen buying them myself. Superman Family helped to hide that.

A lot of my interest in comics was lost when they stopped printing on newsprint. I can't enjoy a comic as much if I can't smell it.