Temporarily Marvel

I'm a DC Comics fan. Always have been, always will be. And although I've been a huge fan of Marvel Comics as well, I've always had a lot of problems with their stories. They often get too dark for no reason, too soap-opera-ey, and seem to follow the creed of "the crappier we make life for our heroes, the more compelling our stories." It's a misunderstanding of the approach of Stan Lee, who always said "the way to make superhero stories relatable is to give the heroes problems." But there's a difference between creating conflict and simply beating the heroes down. One is compelling, the other is cheap storytelling done to provoke the reader. But I digress.

Simply, I've always preferred DC's stories and heroes over Marvel's. Heck, a small part of me wanted The Avengers to fail as a movie just because I didn't want Marvel to have the victory over DC. And yet, at this moment, I'm finding myself more a fan of Marvel than of DC.

You may recall that over a year ago, I wrote about DC Comics relaunching their entire line of comics. Well, it's been eight months since the relaunch, and things, overall, haven't gone well. Basically, several titles in the relaunch have been astoundingly good (Batman, Animal Man, etc), some have been very good (Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, etc) and the rest have varied between "pretty decent" and "terrible." It probably doesn't help that the handling of my favorite character, Superman, has been horrible. After eight months, there's been little-to-no character development for him, his relationships with his supporting cast like Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and the Kents are nearly non-existent, and I don't even feel like I know who he is as a person yet. It's a far cry from the last DC reboot, where John Byrne completely laid out, in full, the entire world of Superman in the first two issues, including his origin, his motivations, his powers, and his relationships. If you've ever seen the TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, that entire show was based upon John Byrne's Superman story.
The problem with Superman in the new DC universe is the same problem that the entire univers has, to a degree. DC has generally focused on telling action-heavy, in medias res stories, and as a result there's been very little worldbuilding. I can't mentally put myself into the DC universe because I don't really know much about it.

Furthermore, there haven't been too many good DC movies out in a long time. The Dark Knight Rises is coming out this year, which is cool, but aside from that the only other DC movie coming along is Man of Steel (yay!) which won't hit until next year. Actually, the only DC-focused things that are really holding my interest at the moment are the TV shows Young Justice and Green Lantern: The Animated Series, both of which are really well-done. But that's it, basically.

Meanwhile, Marvel has just released maybe the biggest superhero movie of all time, The Avengers, their comics are in a pretty decent place, and they've also got a decent cartoon on the air (Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes. It's on Netflix; go watch it).

And right now, Marvel is just just a more fun place to be. I mean, The Avengers is a really fun movie that doesn't have any of the problems that normally turn me off from Marvel whatsoever. There's no paralyzingly stupid cynicism and no terrible plot twists. There's nothing but a celebration of heroism and fun.

I kind of feel like DC is a family member that's hooked on drugs and isn't making good life decisions. Until they get their act together, I'm gonna go hang at Marvel's place.