Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

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Jabroniville
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Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Jabroniville »

Thus produced an interesting discussion in my thread that could have run away with things. Basically, I find that certain characters fit best into either Marvel or DC- primarily pre-2000 or so, because there’s now wayyyyyyyyy more overlap.

Mark Waid put it best: “You can tell a story where the Justice League get turned into words. You can’t do that with the Avengers”. Certain things just don’t “fit”, either by concept or intent.

I find that paragon-style, uplifting characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, The Marvel Family, etc, best work in the DCU. Marvel is just a bit too cynical for that. Captain America is one of very few exceptions, but I find he’s still very “Marvel” in execution- living in a world that’s passed him by and often fails to live up to his lofty standards. Also, he kills people, she has no major powers. Most of Marvel’s nicest or noblest characters are often rather riddled with angst, remorse or obsession. This, to me, is honestly more of what keeps Billy Batson “apart” from Marvel, conceptually.

Characters like the X-Men, Punisher, Deathlok, etc, fit better in Marvel. The Legion fits DC. Space Opers is a bit more Marvel (thanks to their 70s stuff), but does okay in both. Oddly, the Doom Patrol has a more “Marvel” feel to me, as do the Wolfman/Pérez Titans- Raven and Cyborg could NOT be more Marvel.

The super villains can be different. Marvel has goofy villains, but most of them are 60s relics, treated like jokes today (Paste Pot Pete), or are freaks (MODOK, Arnim Zola). Only in DC do I see guys like a Captain Cold, Mirror Master or Captain Boomerang being treated as serious recurring threats for a big-name hero.

Sidekicks are a much more DC thing. Legacy characters who were Kid Versions, too. Largely because Stan hated Kid Sidekicks. Groups of “Sketchoad Character” villains are more Marvel.

Sometimes, though, the contrast is a strength. Cap as “a DC character in the Marvel Universe” suits him. Batman and the Titans are often way more “Marvel”, and that works for them.
Last edited by Jabroniville on Thu Jan 24, 2019 11:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Ken »

I don't know... sometimes the presence of Hyperion, Gladiator, Hyperion, Sentry, Hyperion, the Blue Marvel, and Hyperion makes me suspect that someone thinks Superman could fit in over at Marvel.

Captain Marvel, the real one, works best as a Fawcett character. He may be more DC than Marvel. But he was at his best when he was usually isolated from them.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Jabroniville »

Ken wrote: Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:43 am I don't know... sometimes the presence of Hyperion, Gladiator, Hyperion, Sentry, Hyperion, the Blue Marvel, and Hyperion makes me suspect that someone thinks Superman could fit in over at Marvel.

Captain Marvel, the real one, works best as a Fawcett character. He may be more DC than Marvel. But he was at his best when he was usually isolated from them.
AS I SAID, things changed over the past 10-20 years. Marvel's never-ending attempts to rip off Superman or "tell Superman stories" is a major sticking point of mine. Even as late as the '90s, Superman himself would stick out weirdly.

Gladiator mimics Superboy's powers, but hardly has a similar personality or role- he's basically a Military Hitman- an ultra-loyalist to a fault. And in modern times, the shift has been to make him more of a "heavy is the head that wears the crown" kind of guy. Never was he an "uplifting" kind of character- he was usually more a dangerous, violent adversary.

Never mind the fact that most of those characters, in particular the Sentry, are much more full of Marvel's trademark human foibles- The Sentry is virtually a PARODY of how Marvel characters tend to have grim stories or mental problems.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Jack of Spades »

I think it goes deeper. DCs roots are in plot driven stories – Action comics or Detective comics. Their character exist to do things, and their personalities and backstories were, originally, means to that end. Superman was about doing amazing, spectacular things; stopping crooks was just an excuse to leap tall buildings or wrestle archangels. Batman solved crimes. There was no concept of company-wide continuity; in 1945, nobody felt the need to explain where the Flash was while Superman was delivering milk to orphan kids.

DC characters all work best in their own, self-contained families. It took decades for the question of “who’s faster, Superman or the Flash” to be settled in favor of the ostensible Fastest Man Alive. This kind of problem comes up a lot here when people write up Batman – are we talking about the Detective Comics Batman or the Justice League Batman, who’s at least one PL higher if not more? Never mind the Batman: The Animated Series Batman, who gets a hard workout from two unnamed thugs.

Marvel’s entry into superheroes came much later, and was more character driven. And almost from the first, the characters shared a universe. Spider-Man was trying to join the Fantastic Four in Amazing Spider-Man #1! The question of who’s stronger, the Thing or the Hulk, was an early staple of letters pages. And often, the bad guys existed just to give an adventure backdrop to the soap opera of the protagonists’ lives. “Cap’s kooky quartet” consisted of Cap and three former villains – you’d never see a JLA lineup like that.

Which brings us to the Marvel Family. Like most of DC’s characters, I think they work best off on their own, where the question of whether or not Cap is truly the World’s Mightiest Mortal isn’t complicated by the presence of Superman or Captain Atom, and the wizard doesn’t have to explain his relationship to the Amazons or Doctor Fate.

I think characters that are foremost characters work better in the interlocking web of relationships that is the Marvel Universe, where punching your teammate is more common than rescuing someone from a fire and angst is more the currency than virtue. Marvels’ teams are the real heart of the company; the 80s and 90s were the Age of the X-Men, giving way now to the Age of Avengers. Marvel’s never been about Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America as tentpoles the way DC is about Superman and Batman.

DC is the home of the unabashed good guys who do stop criminals and save people from disasters, and who understand that people of good will can and should disagree without coming to blows. DC characters also don’t need to be embedded with teams to play off of; they have their own supporting casts of non-powered people who in a lot of cases are almost as well-known as the lead. (Does anyone think Jean DeWolfe has the name recognition to get her own TV series like Jim Gordon has? Or that MJ & Pete would run for four seasons?) Consciously or not, the DC TV shows have embraced the Dynastic Centerpiece model, and I think that's a lot of why they're working.

In that sense, the SHAZAM! film seems to be leading cinematic DC in the right direction by not tying into Justice League. He can and should stand on his own or with the Marvel Family. And Superman should not be shackled to Batman, or Wonder Woman to the Flash. There’s plenty there for them to stand on their own indefinitely. For Marvel, Avengers was inevitable; for DC, Justice League is very optional.

Reading back over that, it looks like I’m a DC partisan. I’m not. I would rather know Clark Kent than Peter Parker (for one thing, I’m less likely to end up a super-villain), but I set my campaigns in the Marvel Universe.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Jabroniville »

Hey, nice, insightful comment there :). Very true! DC's characters were often "standalone" (to the extent that many early JSA stories were simply the guys telling their solo adventures!), and in many cases, they work better off in their separate worlds, while Marvel's much more intertwined as a rule.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Ken »

Jack of Spades wrote: Thu Jan 24, 2019 9:00 pm I would rather know Clark Kent than Peter Parker (for one thing, I’m less likely to end up a super-villain)
And knowing Clark Kent, you'd have an outside chance of getting minor super powers, and honorary membership in the Legion of Super-Heroes.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

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I think that Jack of Spades nailed it on the head and it's also the reason why Marvel was never able to establish a credible rooster of legacy characters. Starting with Robin the DC works on "clans" of superheroes -- the Bat-Clan, the Arrow Team etc. -- which are often based on a disfunctional family unit (this is very apparent in the post-resurrection Green Arrow, with Ollie and Dinah as the parents, Mia, Roy and Connor as a weird trio of siblings). Of course this model is tailor-made to establish legacies and have a bunch of characters that are ina good spot to fill someone else's shoes.
For the longest time Superman was the glaring exception, being the only character that was apparently irreplaceable. Weirdly enough the Death of Superman storyline, which was supposed to highlight this point, actually provided the first two Post-Crisis characters that were almost there: Steel and Conner.
If we look at the other side of the pond, very few attempts to replace Marvel characters have been successful. This is partly due to the fact that most heroic partnerships in Marvel are built on a more equal footing, making awkward when someone tries to fit into someone else's costume. Cap and Falcon are a primary example of this: when Sam became Captain America in recent years it felt wrong to me because he already had a rather well established identity, he wasn't groomed to replace Steve, they were friends, brothers in arms all the way.

On the other hand Marvel teams have been consistently better because they work on the internal frictions between people that live crazy-ass lives, whereas most DC teams seem to be an excuse to put a number of big guns in the same room. I might be wrong here, but I don't remember an issue of JLA where the team just took a night off and went for a beer or an entire page based on Batman and Green Arrow having a shouting match like Hawkeye and Cap sometimes did.
Once again there were exceptions, the Teen Titans being one of the most notable.

Ken wrote: Thu Jan 24, 2019 3:43 am I don't know... sometimes the presence of Hyperion, Gladiator, Hyperion, Sentry, Hyperion, the Blue Marvel, and Hyperion makes me suspect that someone thinks Superman could fit in over at Marvel.
I would like to contend that the original Squadron Supreme series my the late Mark Gruenwald (bless his soul) was exactly to see how the Justice League would be and fare in a more Marvel-esque universe and the results were pretty damn cool in my book. One of the key point Gruenwald himself highlighted was that of course Hyperion was Superman and Nighthawk was Batman, but they interacted in ways that no DC editor would even allow.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Jack of Spades »

Hawkman and Green Arrow used to yell at each other a lot over politics in the satellite era, and of course Hal and Ollie fight like brothers. But those are the exceptions.

Marvel also had a near-legacy moment with their one surviving golden age hero – if anyone has to take over for Steve, Bucky was the obvious guy to do it. But then, Cap is pretty much a DC character in a Marvel world; he tends to accumulate a group around himself wherever he goes.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Ares »

I'm going to break this up into two parts, because I'm going to be typically long-winded here. But to me, the difference is really negligible at this point.

Part the First

It was different early on, sure. In the 1940s, superheroes were a new thing and more effort was given to figuring out what these costumed crimefighters were all about. At first they were basically just Pulp heroes in more obvious costumes and with bonafide superpowers, and with stories aimed to appeal to all ages (whereas pulps were generally more for teenagers and adults). Since that whole genre was new, more effort was put into the stories and adventures than things like character motivation and personality.

After World War II, interest in superheroes declined, not helped by the "Seduction of the Innocent" book that blamed comic books for corrupting the youth of the nation. This created the Comics Code Authority that limited what could happen in comic books, resulting in the heroes still being published at the time (Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman mainly) to have to become much more squeaky clean, moral paragon types, when their Golden Age exploits had actually more moral ambiguity (Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel all killed at least once during the Golden Age).

When the Silver Age started, DC had a tried and true formula for how superheroes worked, and just injected their re-imagined characters with a new sense of energy and enthusiasm, as well as using tropes more popular of the time, such as science fiction. Since there had been fewer superhero stuff during the 50s, we had also seen an effort to tie the existing characters together, such as World's Finest having Batman and Superman regularly team up, as well as Justice League more firmly establishing that all of DC's heroes existed in the same setting.

When Marvel Comics re-entered the superhero scene in the 60s, Stan and Jack had been working on stuff since the 40s, and wanted to do something different. The formula for superheroes was well established, so they decided to shake things up by making things more character driven. Whereas most Golden Age heroes and DC's Silver Age heroes tended to basically be slight variations of the same personality, Marvel tried to give each character their own voice and focus on interpersonal conflicts. This was revolutionary for the time and definitely cemented the idea of these guys as relateable humans rather than moral paragons.

To make up for the lack of relative personality, Silver Age DC tried to make up for it with raw creativity and imagination. They would up the stakes and power levels of their characters, allowing for casual planet moving or time travel, battles where beings would have to keep entire dimensions from colliding, etc. As Jack said, with DC, it was about the ADVENTURE, while at Marvel, it was about the CHARACTER.

Things basically went that way throughout the 60s and the early 70s, but by the time the Bronze Age of Comics, the divide between the two was already starting to slip. Marvel already had characters like Thor and the Fantastic Four dealing with things like Galactus and Ego, but the Silver Surfer and Dr. Strange also wound up having much more outlandish adventures. When Byrne/Claremont took over the X-Men and Jim Starlin got a hold of Captain Mar-Vel, Marvel began to establish a cosmic and galactic scene that made some degree of sense, and "fate of the universe" stuff became much more common.

Likewise over at DC, characterization became more important. Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams did a lot to make Batman more of a "dark avenger of the night" again and explore the psychology of Batman, as well as the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Green Lantern/Green Arrow run. When Clark Kent moved over to being TV news reporter, the stories started to explore more about Superman's dual identity, his personality, setting the stage for what would happen following the Crisis.

By the 80s, the differences were lessened even further. We got our first Mega-Crossovers with Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths, showing that both settings had really embraced both intricately shared universes and big events. DC's best selling books at the time were The New Titans and Legion of Superheroes, books which focused on Marvel-style character work while still having crazy adventures. Books like the Outsiders also tried to go that route, and even the Justice League focused more on the interpersonal relationships between the heroes (albeit focused more on humor).

Following the Crisis, even Superman got the Marvel treatment by John Byrne, and the dynamic between him and Batman was firmly established: Superman is Clark Kent in a costume, Bruce Wayne is Batman in normal clothes. More efforts were put into giving characters a Peter Parker-like supporting cast, and getting into the hero's heads.

Throughout the late 80s and most of the 90s, there wasn't any real appreciable difference between the two companies.

There was some pushback towards the later end of the 90s. Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns and Jeph Loeb brought back a lot of Silver Age tropes and feel while trying to keep some of the characterization. Brian Michael Bendis worked hard to ground Marvel more. Johns and Bendis, along with their respective editors DiDio and Quesada, would wind up shaping the direction of their companies.

By the early-to-mid 2000's, both companies had again started to feel similar, but in the wrong ways. Events like Civil War, Secret Invasion, World War Hulk, Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Countdown to Final Crisis involved heroes fighting each other, mistrusting each other, heroes being corrupted, etc. Final Crisis tried to subvert this with a Silver Age ending that was lost amongst all of the meta-text. The tone in both companies became all over the place as some folks really embraced all the darkness and angst while others tried to push back.

Then Flashpoint happened, followed by the Nu-52, where DC went full Edgelord with only a few bright spots to counter it. Marvel likewise had their long, long lead up to Secret War, with heroes fighting each other, the universes dying, etc. This was also when the success of the films started to influence creative decisions, such as lessening focus on properties Marvel didn't have the movie rights for, as well as a new batch of creators who decided to use their comics for political activism or dealing with their own personal issues rather than telling compelling stories.

Now, both companies are pretty much indistinguishable from one another because both are kind of a mess. DC's Rebirth initiative has be hampered by DiDio, with Bendis and Tom King actively breaking the heroes under their control. Marvel lost a lot of goodwill with Secret Empire and Civil War 2, neither of which were well received as it made heroes into monsters. At the same time, there's an odd rise in very silly books like Squirrel Girl and Gwenpool. Some creators are legitimately trying to just tell good stories, such as recent runs on Spider-Man and Avengers, but both companies are in desperate need of major course corrections.

So to me, I don't really see a difference between Marvel and DC characters anymore. The differences were already pretty minor by the late 80s, and Kurt Busiek had to somewhat flanderize the differences between the two settings for JLAvengers.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

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Part the Second

I don't really agree that DC is a place of morally perfect paragons while Marvel is a place of relateable heroes. It only seems that way because DC's biggest heroes are folks like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, while Marvel is guys like Spider-Man, Iron Man and Wolverine. You would think that those characters define the morality of their settings, but they really don't. Of the trio, only Superman really comes close to being a moral paragon anymore, and even he has received enough genuine characterization that it's no longer a certainty. Likewise over at Marvel, there are people who qualify as moral paragons while staying true to their personalities.

Because at the end of the day, for as bad as the writing can get, these guys are heroes. Almost all of them will do the right thing in the end, resist temptation, and prove themselves to be good in their core. The only real difference between a "normal" hero and a "perfect paragon" is how much introspection it takes them to make the right decision. Both Superman and Spider-Man will ultimately do the right thing, Peter might just have slightly longer moments of introspection, doubt and temptation before he does it. And even Superman has his own issues these days.

Even if you go with more iconic portrayals, DC really only has Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel as true Moral Paragon material. Over at Marvel, you've got Captain America, the Silver Surfer and Kamala Khan, and maybe a couple others. Everyone other hero is a hero with their own conflicts and character flaws. They both have their nice characters, their brooding characters, their outsiders, their freaks, their psychopaths, etc.

One example someone gave was the Punisher not fitting into DC, but there have been characters at DC that kill fairly frequently. Azrael, Lobo, Black Adam during his anti-hero days, Deathstroke during his anti-hero days, Hitman, etc. The Punisher going around killing criminals wouldn't be any different than Tommy Monaghan literally getting away with murder for all of his run.

Superhero families have also sort of become a universal thing. Spider-Man now has his own Spider-Clan, there are multiple Hulk characters running around, Iron Man has his own little group of power-armored types, etc. Though sadly, DC's own superhero family structures have mostly broken down. Batman is the only guy who really interacts with his "family" all that much. Superman and Wonder Woman rarely do anything with the people sharing their names, the Flash family was pretty much decimated by Flashpoint, etc.

I don't even really see either setting as more fantastical than the others. Both settings have realms filled with gods, both have active supernatural aspects, both have hidden lands filled with superhumans, both have large alien worlds, cosmic entities, etc. Sure, DC has a city of sentient gorillas. Marvel has a mountain populated by animal men in Knight armor. Yes, DC has an island of amazons. Marvel also had an island made up of most of their mutants for a long time. Asgard was once on Earth for a time, and the Inhumans had their home on the moon. For as much as Marvel is often called "the world outside your window", it's just as weird a place as DC.

As for the idea of Legacy characters, I don't really see one universe as being more successful than the other. DC had a bit of a heads up because some of the characters introduced in the Silver Age had the same name as some Golden Age heroes, and when those Golden Age heroes were brought back, both were allowed to exist. In terms of a mantle passing, DC only really has a few successful instances of it: Wally West, Kyle Rayner, Tim Drake and Jaime Reyes.

Kyle and Jaime almost don't count because there was a lot of fan outcry over who they replaced. With Kyle, Hal was brought back, but it worked out because by their nature, there are a ton of Green Lanterns. With Jaime, it helped that he was basically a new character with a different powerset with only a name and some history with Ted, rather than someone in Ted's costume re-using his stuff. And even Ted has returned time and again.

Wally and Tim are arguably the two biggest successes, but even Barry Allen's fans were still asking DC to bring him back a decade after his death, and Barry was so iconic to the Flash mythos that he was eventually returned. Tim is possibly the biggest success because of Robin's importance to the Batman mythos and because of the excellent work done turning Dick Grayson into Nightwing.

Beyond those four, most legacy heroes aren't very successful for a simple reason: people like the character, not just the name and the powers. 99% of the time, if you replace a hero with a new character, it only works as a temporary thing if you plan to bring the original hero back and then spin off the new person in their own series. Replacing Thor with Eric Masterson or Tony Stark with Jim Rhodes was never meant to be a permanent thing: both of the original heroes were meant to return, but now the new guys had the potential to become heroes in their own right. Ditto for Clark and Bruce with the 4 Supermen and Azrael.

DC tried and failed to come up with a new Batgirl because it never felt right having anyone but Barbara Gordon in the role, even though Cassandra Cane does have her fans (myself included). Trying to make Freddy Freeman into Captain Marvel was never going to work because people like Billy Batson. Miles Morales only worked because he was in another universe and you could still read about Peter Parker in his own series. It's why the recent attempts with Sam Wilson, Jane Foster, Amadeus Cho and Riri Williams replacing Steve Rogers, Thor, Bruce Banner and Tony Stark were so poorly received. Conner Hawke never really got the same traction Oliver Queen did because Ollie is Green Arrow. And getting Kara Zor-El back as Supergirl was just a matter of time.

So basically, Legacy Heroes have only ever really worked when the replaced hero returns and both the original and the new guy are allowed to co-exist at the same time in some fashion. Usually the new guy gets a new identity, or in rarer occasions like Nightwing, the older character will get a new identity. Apart from that, trying to permanently replace a character almost never works, as very rarely will the new guy be more popular than the hero being replaced. Ted Kord is one of the only cases I can think of where no one was really asking for Dan Garret to be brought back.

Long story short . . . . well, looking up at all of that we're way past making this short. But basically, to me Marvel and DC's perceived differences really seems to be a matter of perception. Much like how people just assume the Marvel Family must be silly, they assume DC must be the more simple place of moral paragons and Marvel must be the more down to Earth place of relateable heroes. In reality, I feel the only real difference between the two is which characters are in which universe.

Mark Waid apparently once said that in DC, you could write a story about the Justice League being turned into gorillas, while that sort of thing wouldn't work at Marvel. Except we have seen things like that. We've seen an Avengers storyline where all of the Avengers got gamma-irritated and they all turned into Hulks, and we've even seen a Heroes for Hire story where the heroes were literally turned into apes thanks to the High Evolutionary. We've seen stories in DC where heroes and metahumans had to deal with prejudice and exploitation, and we've had Marvel stories where the belief in a hero allowed normal people to overcome incredible obstacles. We've seen stories where Superman was killed and Batman had his spine broken, and we've seen a story where Hawkeye saved the entire universe thanks to a carny slight of hand trick.

So yeah, maybe I'm just the odd man out, but once we got to the 80s, I really didn't see a big difference intrinsic differences between the heroes of Marvel and DC. Because at their core, these were heroes. Some of them in both settings were more conflicted than others, some had more moral certainty than others, but all of them were heroes telling their own stories. You could have the Doom Patrol dealing with a world that fears and hates them and the Titans dealing with drug addiction, while you could have the Fantastic Four fighting a planet eater and Captain America stopping a war with a few well chosen words.

These are fantastical worlds of four colored heroes, both of them big enough to explore any story. The differences between them was largely the scope of the stories and how much personality their heroes had, and those differences have slowly balanced out until we've reached a current equilibrium.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

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As for the Marvel Family fitting into either setting, again, I don't really see their being a problem with them in either setting. Once again, the problem is mostly that of perception. People look at the Marvel Family and assume because they're associated with the Golden Age of Comics, the default assumption is that they're supposed to be silly and cartoonish. In actuality, while their stories were highly imaginative, they weren't really that much more silly than their contemporary heroes. Billy's stories frequently put him in danger, his enemies did kill people, his origin has some darkness to it, etc. He wasn't very conflicted or introspective because it was the Golden Age and no one was.

My personal favorite run of the Marvel Family was Don Newton's run in World's Finest, where the stories did actually have a good blend of the fanciful and the serious. The supernatural and magical elements of the Marvel Family were treated in an early Urban Fantasy sort of way, where you'd get things like Captain Marvel helping mythological creatures facing prejudice and persecution in the modern age integrate into humanity. Billy, Mary and Freddy sometimes got introspective about their responsibilities, their origins, could be a bit bitter about their loses, angry at people who hurt those close to them, etc. It was a solid balance of almost everything I'd want in a Marvel Family story.

The best thing about the Marvel Family, to me, is that you can tell virtually any kind of story with them. You can have Captain Marvel dealing with normal supervillains like any other hero, and many of his opponents were straight up science fiction type menaces, from mad scientists to aliens to atomic robots. Or you could have them delve into the mythical and supernatural, see them travel to other dimensions, interacting with good and evil gods, fight demons, save kids from being kidnapped by wicked faerie, etc. Or you can have the Marvels in their normal forms deal with relevant issues. Shazam: Power of Hope deals with Billy helping a stand in for the Make a Wish Foundation to spend time with sick and dying kids, as well as dealing with the issue of child abuse. If you think Captain Marvel can't get angry, wait until you see him confront an abusive father. If you think he can't pull at your heart strings, watch him sit by the beside of a dying girl and be with her in her last moments.

The Marvel Family, Captain Marvel in particular, combines best elements of many heroes. He can have standard supervillain adventures like Superman or Spider-Man. He can go to fantastic locations and deal with creatures of legend like Thor, Dr. Strange and Harry Dresden. And he can have genuine human moments like the really best superhero stories have.

You only need two things for the Marvel Family to fit into your setting.

The first is the willingness to have them there. The main problem with DC is that some of the writers and editors see the DCU as Superman' and Batman's setting that they just happens to share with other DC heroes. And since DC already has a Superman, at best Captain Marvel is redundant and at worst, he's a threat to Superman's popularity. As long as that attitude exists, at best, DC will try to change Cap into something like Nu-Shazam, something that can't possibly threaten or compete with Clark. What DC needs is to just accept that while Batman and Superman are their two most iconic characters, the two of them do not define the DCU. They might be first amongst equals, but the other heroes of the DCU are just as important, if not more important, to some fans. DC needs to make itself a place where all of their heroes can thrive and not make the setting "Superman and his Semi-Amazing Understudies". If you allow the heroes the freedom to just do their own thing, then there's no issue.

The second, and most important, is a tolerance for wonder and optimism. Because at their core, the Marvel Family is about optimism. Their core tenant is that, despite everything these kids have been through, they still have a sense of optimism about the world. They know how bad things can be, but they believe that things can get better, especially if they do their part to make things better. They see the random acts of kindness, the everyday acts of good and compassion in the world as little victories of good over evil. They see the magic in the mundane.

Its not that the Marvel Family can't ever suffer problems, setbacks, have doubts or the like. As heroes, they have to suffer their low points as well. But the reason Shazam chose Billy, and the reason Billy chose to share his power with Mary and Freddy, is because at the end of the day, no matter what these kids suffer, they will pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and keep going. Sometimes it takes them a little longer to pick themselves up. Sometimes the doubts linger for a little longer. But in the end, each of them sincerely believes that so long as they don't give up, there is hope for a brighter tomorrow.

And as cynical as Marvel and DC can get at times, there is a place for that kind of adventure, acceptance and optimism in both of their universes.
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Woodclaw »

Looking at the whole thing while digesting Ares's response, I'm thinking about what I consider the ultimate company crossover: JLA/Avengers by Busiek & Perez. In more than one way that story nailed many things right on the head about how the perception of superhuman is, perhaps the greatest in-universe difference between DC and Marvel. Although there are massive exceptions on both sides, the general feeling is that there is an underlying stream of mistrust runnin in the MU, whereas the DCU seem to allow for a high level of implicit trust and awe. Some of this actually rubs off to the way heroes behave and actually creates some of the most interesting interactions when these premises are twisted. The JLA would have an extremely hard time to work with their satellite base in the MU. No country would implicitly trust a group of superhumans with a an orbital base, at the very best they would be labelled "outlaws" like the X-Men. At the same time, the Avengers would probably be considered "goverment heroes" in DCU, due to their links with the US goverment or the UN.
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Ares
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Ares »

Carol Danvers actually had a pretty massive satellite base for her Alpha Flight team. During the 90s the Avengers had a UN charter similar to the League, and when they reformed under Busiek they needed government clearance solely to have their base on US soil. They were basically allowed the freedom to travel to any place on Earth that needed help.

JLAvengers is likewise my favorite crossover between Marvel and DC, but it really isn't the ideologies of Marvel and DC on display. It's the ideologies of Superman and Captain America. And ironically, both men have the same fears. They both fear that they might do too much and stifle human achievement or become dictators, or they fear they might not do enough and people will suffer for their failures. And in the other, both saw one aspect of that fear realized. Cap saw someone with great power whose use of that power could lead to abuse, while Supes saw someone who might never be able to do enough. A tyrant versus a failure. And it stung because both worry about the same thing.

Because both men understand that real heroism is a tightrope of what you can do and what you should do. Captain America and Superman have both turned down the presidency because they don't wish to take away humanity's freedom. Both men struggle with where their responsibilities lie. Both men ultimately know what the right thing is as good men.

I'm often critical of Grant Morrison, but he once summed up superheroes beautifully in the opening storyline of JLA. Superheroes exist to give humanity the chance to reach as high as they can on their own, and to catch them if they fall.
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Jabroniville
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Jabroniville »

I feel like people are repeatedly glossing over that I said from the beginning that the differences have been made more neglible over the past 20 years. Reading comprehension, people :P.

Current Marvel is so whimsical and silly that you could unquestionably drop the Golden Age Marvel Fanily in and they’d absolutely fit in with the changing of absolutely nothing. Except Mary would be fat and ugly, and one of the boys would be a brown-skinned sexual minority.

I hate the comparison of Gorilla City to The New Men. The former was a recurring element of one of DC’s biggest heroes, and one of DC’s biggest villains (to the point of being a major guy on JLU) hails from it. That’s a big element of the setting. Wundagore Mountain and the New Men (who I HATE, by the way- I agree that they’re extremely DC and thus they feel wrong to me) are one-off threats that even in their heyday were almost never used in any major book, and even now are basically forgotten.

I’ll comment on the rest when I have time to read it. You talk too much, Ares :P.
Jabroniville
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Re: Characters that fit best into Marvel or DC

Post by Jabroniville »

Woodclaw wrote: Fri Jan 25, 2019 8:15 pm Looking at the whole thing while digesting Ares's response, I'm thinking about what I consider the ultimate company crossover: JLA/Avengers by Busiek & Perez. In more than one way that story nailed many things right on the head about how the perception of superhuman is, perhaps the greatest in-universe difference between DC and Marvel. Although there are massive exceptions on both sides, the general feeling is that there is an underlying stream of mistrust runnin in the MU, whereas the DCU seem to allow for a high level of implicit trust and awe. Some of this actually rubs off to the way heroes behave and actually creates some of the most interesting interactions when these premises are twisted. The JLA would have an extremely hard time to work with their satellite base in the MU. No country would implicitly trust a group of superhumans with a an orbital base, at the very best they would be labelled "outlaws" like the X-Men. At the same time, the Avengers would probably be considered "goverment heroes" in DCU, due to their links with the US goverment or the UN.
Oh yeah, this emphasizes much more effectively the point I made earlier about public perception of heroes. While the Doom Patrol were weird, they never came close to how the X-Men were treated by the populace. Public protests were a big thing Marvel heroes had to deal with.
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