Company Lines

Today on Newsarama a new column's debuted: Joe Fridays, or some such. It's a weekly interview with Marvel's Joe Quesada, about whatever comes up. It reminded me why I liked being a comics reader during the early Quesada/Jemas era. They were good at rallying interest, as Quesada is now. Some of the crap that I've seen come out of Marvel recently has been... less than interesting, and even their summer crossover, House of M, has failed to get me too excited. But after hearing Quesada talk, I am almost interested in seeing what it's all about. Almost.

There's an interesting note at the bottom of the page that mentions how a similar offer was given to DC to do a weekly interview, but it was declined. Then a thought appeared in the ether that is my brain concerning the difference in advertising between the Big Two, and how that plays out in the universes, how Marvel and DC are normally at such odds. Marvel can have MAX, or to a lesser extent Marvel Knights, as their answer to Vertigo, but all three of those imprints are vastly different. Characters can be analogous, but still distinctly different. Seeing Marvel's method of advertising being so different from DC's is understandable. I have no idea who DC's Editor-in-Chief is; he's so rarely heard from. I know DC names (DiDio, et al.) but not to the extent to which Joe Q. is known.

After thinking about this all for a while I realized that I don't consider DC and Marvel to really be competition. Competition generally implies two entities that have similar attributes that are at odds to determine (or let others determine) which is the best. The only real similarity I can presently see between Marvel and DC is that they both make comics. There should be no competition as people will choose one company over another not because one is better than the other, but because one is more in line with what they prefer.

(The argument could be made that they both do super-hero comics, but the difference between DC and Marvel superheroics is, I feel, obvious at this point. If this is untrue I'll do a different post on it sometime.)

The premature conclusion I come up with based on this non-competitor relationship is that one of the main reasons comics goes through its up and downs is because people will align with one company over another, then choose to leave comics over jumping ship to a different company. If you were a Marvel reader in the 90s and you hated Marvel in the 90s, my guess is you would be more likely to stop reading comics then look and see what DC was doing. I think this because when I began collecting comics for the second (third?) time in 2000, my reading list was overwhelmingly Marvel. As I look at my list of monthly comics, since April 19, my pull list contains 7 Marvel books, and 19 DC books. As a kid, I would never have picked up DC Comics (due to a fear, at that time, of the unknown comic universe). Now, as a more mature reader, I look for what is good. As you can see from my previous analysis of sales, especially in comparison with general reactions to comics, sales does not always equal quality comic.

I think the allegiance to companies is a poor move on the comic readers part. Not only does the non-chosen of the Big Two lose out, but indie comics also lose then. If you are not willing to look at DC because you read Marvel, there's no way you'll look at AiT/PlanetLar. If you look for good comics for good comics sake, your options open up so much.

This post ends as openly as it began as I'm not exactly sure what the point may have been. It is more the beginning of a long conversation than anything else. I feel that an observation has been made, and in the words of AC Weisbecker, when all is said and done, this post was definitely an example of something.