Marvel VS DC Comics

I grew up reading Marvel Comics.  DC Comics were beneath me.  I once read a newspaper article explaining that Marvel was aimed at college students while DC was aimed at high schoolers.  That may have been an understatement.  I could tell the difference when I was 14.  Marvel all the way! 

DC:  Superman was invulnerable unless he was exposed to some dozen forms of Kryptonite.  He learned to fly by floating with balloons.  His opponents were silly people.  He had a supergirl, a superdog and there may have been other superpets too.  As Superman, he had muscles like a pro weightlifter, but as Clark Kent he was "less built".  He had no personal problems other than women who's initials were always L.L.  His eyeglasses deceived everyone...

Aquaman was a joke.  Green Lantern couldn't handle anything yellow.  Batman had promise in his darker aspects.  None of the characters were actually adults and most had children as sidekicks.

Marvel used to be (I think) "Timely Comics".  They had the worst junk I ever spent a dime on.  I recall a giant eraser smoothing the surface on the Earth until some genius threw paint in front of it and revealed a weerd creature damaging the Earth (the eraser could then finally erase it).  How it followed the creature just behind was never explained).  And one where a creature on a planet grew to control the whole thibg glorying in its power until a human turned on the tub faucet and washed it away to drown.  REALLY BAD STUFF!

But then Stan Lee came along with some broke artists.  The owner changed the name to Marvel.  And he had seen a new DC comic book of heroes getting together (Justice League) and told Lee he wanted a team.  In a week.  The group created the Fantastic Four.  And later The Avengers.  They later created Spiderman.

Te cause of their superpowers was kind of lame.  Cosmic Rays for the Fantastic Four, Gamma Rays for the Hulk, a radioactive spider for Spiderman.  Antman had a shrinking/expanding ray. 

But the point was that they had "problems?  And as teenagers, we understood "problems".  The FF were normal except for Ben Grimm (the Thing).  Spiderman had to hide his powers from friends and family and was a dud (early on) with girls.  The Hulk had no self control. 

Iron Man was at least self-created, but a real jerk.  Sub-Mariner and Captain America returned from some old 1940s comics.  New villains and heroes were created, and THEY had personal problems.  EVERYONE in the Marvel world had problems.  Thor was originally lame Dr Blake who struck his cane in a special cave and became Thor and had to go back and forth (the cane was somehow Thor's Hammer).

Both DC and Marvel had a letters page at the end of each comic book early on.  DC spoke to children; Marvel spoke to adults. 

But I partly wrote all that to say this...  The movies of the DC and Marvel characters are relatively equal in quality.  That's mostly because the movie-makers aren't the DC writers.  Give a telented production team, and they can do almost as much with Wonder Woman or Superman as Spiderman or The Avengers.  But "relative" is not "equal".

I liked the Superman movies.  They actually made a fairly real person out of him.  Batman seems the realist of the DC characters.  But Marvel has really done it right.  I can't rewatch the Superman movies (I can rewatch the Batman ones, sometimes), but I can rewatch the Marvel ones.  And that includes the critically-panned FF movies.  *I* liked them!  Though they really did mess up Dr Doom and Galactus a bit. 

I haven't watched the 2 last Avengers movies.  Cable wants too much.  I may check out streaming on my Amazon account...