Why prefer marvel over DC?

[JKtheMac]

Have you read the comic? *KnightFall*

Of course, all of it, or I wouldn't comment, just as I wouldn't comment on Green Lantern. It wasn't a very good story IMO.

Because its made very clear that Bruce is challenged on an emotional and psychological level all throughout that story.I mean, in Batman #489, there's an entire conversation between Bruce and Shondra Kinsolving concerning his emotional and physical fatigue. The entire point of Bane was to challenge Bruce on a fundamental level and make him question if he, as Bruce, can still handle the emotional and physical toll of being Batman. That is the definition of character-driven.

This is exactly why there is little point arguing without a common agreement on what Character Driven actually means in this discussion. Just because a story questions a character on an emotional level doesn't mean that the story is structured around internal conflicts and obstacles. That is the technical definition of Character Driven, not just my definition. The internal wants and needs of the character are what drive the story, and the internal pulls of inner conflict are what define the obstacles. The plot is almost always an external thing to the character, but the plot in a character driven story arises from internal conflict, everything hinges upon how the plot impacts that internal conflict and reflects that internal conflict. Every action taken by the protagonist is a reflection of one of the pulls of this inner conflict. It isn't about individual instances in a story it is about the entire structure of the story.

The problem with the way you seek to define Character Driven removes this important distinction. By pointing at stories that contain internal struggles you are ignoring where the struggles are coming from and what part they play in the overall structure. The vast majority of plot driven stories will include things that impact the character and their personal issues. That doesn't necessarily mean that the story is seeking to address those issues as the key element of the story.

Most superhero stories seek to avoid this because the nature of the hero's original inner conflict actually defines the character. This is why origin stories often make better movies. Because they are actually about the inner change that occurred in the character — the conflict that defined them as heroes. From that point on it isn't easy to continue with character driven stories because it risks changing the character again, or just rehashing what was already defined.

And again I reiterate. I am not saying every Marvel story is character driven and that no DC stories are. A lot of your energy is arguing against a point I am not making.

The point that I'm making is that Marvel and DC have been telling similar enough stories for a long enough time now that their "standard modes" as you called it are essentially the same.

On one level absolutely. They are all heroic adventure stories with a wish fulfilment element, concerned with a struggle between right and wrong or good and evil. But to deny their differences and to argue with somebody who has a clear taste for one and not the other is counterproductive. If you are interested in why some of us find the approach different then you need to do more than assert that there are no differences. You need to pay attention to how we are expressing our tastes and the overall feeling we are seeking to explain.

Well, how much DC stuff have you read? As someone who has read a lot of both, I can say that there's really not much of a difference. Again, they trade off in writers all the time.

Enough to have a clear preference for Marvel. Bear in mind I have no problem with you liking both equally, or preferring different things to me. You seem to be affronted that I see this difference of taste and prefer one.

[Killerbee911]

I also forgot the obvious simple clear tonal difference in DC uses fictional cities between more real cities from Marvel not say Marvel doesn't have fictional cities and places like Wakanda and Lateveria.It is just another thing that adds to the why saying you can tell the exact same stories isn't really the same. Currently Green Lantern has Cyborg Superman running around in Coast City which he destroyed once. Trying say Marvel is only one thing and DC is only one thing is wrong they both can give similar stories BUT trying to say that they are so similar that is it just personal preferences of characters is also wrong.

[JKtheMac]

I also forgot the obvious simple clear tonal difference in DC uses fictional cities between more real cities from Marvel not say Marvel doesn't have fictional cities and places like Wakanda and Lateveria.It is just another thing that adds to the why saying you can tell the exact same stories isn't really the same. Currently Green Lantern has Cyborg Superman running around in Coast City which he destroyed once. Trying say Marvel is only one thing and DC is only one thing is wrong they both can give similar stories BUT trying to say that they are so similar that is it just personal preferences of characters is also wrong.

A very reasonable, succinct and in my opinion correct statement.

[Prof. Warren]

That is a rather shallow take on why these stories are disliked. There are plenty of gritty DC stories that are enjoyed by the fans and plenty of gritty Marvel stories that are hated. Many fans actually welcomed the idea of DC's heroes having a trauma center. It was the story built around it (a murder mystery which killed off numerous characters with little to no fan fare) that they were bothered by. If this story were done beat for beat by Marvel, it would be face equal amounts of backlash. Hell, you mentioned Identity Crisis and Marvel has a story very similar to it. Evil That Men Do by Kevin Smith. And it's also been rather badly received especially for a certain plot element that was also used in Identity Crisis.

Nobody likes the Kevin Smith story because it wasn't very good, not because of the subject matter itself.

My point isn't that DC can't tell gritty stories and that only Marvel can, it's that - because both universes are different in their core conceptions - telling gritty stories takes on different forms. Grittiness in the DC universe is an add-on whereas that element was baked into Marvel from the start.

I mean it isn't like the following decisions were so easily embraced by Marvel fans:

First of all, it would be absolutely impossible for any publisher to have every one of their decisions meet with unanimous approval.

Nobody is talking about which publisher has a better batting average in that regard. That's impossible to quantify.

So listing the following controversial stories:

Retconning Captain America into a Nazi

Spider-Man selling his marriage to Mephisto

Retconning Black Cat into being a rape victim

All the skeletons in Xavier's closet

Speedball becoming Penance

House of M/Decimation

...Is pointless to the discussion. Yes, sometimes stories meet with a divided reaction. You could put up a list of many more stories that generated outrage, from the Death of Gwen Stacy to Sins Past, but that isn't what we're talking about here. We're talking about the differences in DC and Marvel's universes.

DC fans are more than capable of accepting gritty stories. Batman wouldn't be popular if they weren't. The issue is the excess and these stories just not being very good.

There is definitely a segment of the DC fanbase that likes and prefers their DCU to be gritty. But that grittiness and that darker element is presented differently than how we see it in Marvel and that's what separates the two. With DC, it is taking essentially innocent creations and darkening them. Frank Miller's Batman work was arguably the watershed moment with this. It took a comic book mythology that had remained relatively naive for decades and re-cast it in a darker, more mature-themed light. That was the revelatory move that Miller made, creating a genuine shock with readers at the time, and it's the method by which DC has proceeded to darken their universe since, giving their innocent, Golden and Silver Age-tinged universe a gritty overlay.

This is different from, again with Miller, when Daredevil went grittier. There wasn't a loss of innocence in that case. It was just telling a more mature story with a character that could carry that weight. It was not shocking to see Daredevil become a more hard-boiled crime drama. It just happened, there was no jarring whiplash in seeing Daredevil go dark. He was already more or less there as his world was already a grittier, more real one. Seeing Karen Page as a porn actress and heroin addict was not perceived as being particularly radical within the Marvel universe as much as seeing Selina Kyle as a prostitute in Batman: Year One was, for example.

The former, shocking as it was, was still seen as part of the natural flow of already mature subject matter. The latter called for the long held concepts of what was permissible within the DC universe to be completely reevaluated.

To go back to Heroes in Crisis, the difference between DC and Marvel would be that the idea of a facility like Sanctuary existing in the Marvel universe would not be surprising or even especially note worthy. We already know that Marvel heroes are troubled and neurotic so of course there would be a facility to address that. To introduce it into the DC universe, on the other hand, immediately seems much more shocking or intriguing because their heroes, by and large, are not supposed to be or assumed to be psychologically troubled in the same way that Marvel's heroes are.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

Of course, all of it, or I wouldn't comment, just as I wouldn't comment on Green Lantern. It wasn't a very good story IMO.

I didn't ask you whether you thought it was a good story. But the fact is that it is a character-driven story because it is largely geared toward examining Bruce Wayne's character and his internal struggles. That is what "character-driven" means. That is the mainstream definition.

This is exactly why there is little point arguing without a common agreement on what Character Driven actually means in this discussion. Just because a story questions a character on an emotional level doesn't mean that the story is structured around internal conflicts and obstacles. That is the technical definition of Character Driven, not just my definition. The internal wants and needs of the character are what drive the story, and the internal pulls of inner conflict are what define the obstacles. The plot is almost always an external thing to the character, but the plot in a character driven story arises from internal conflict, everything hinges upon how the plot impacts that internal conflict and reflects that internal conflict. Every action taken by the protagonist is a reflection of one of the pulls of this inner conflict. It isn't about individual instances in a story it is about the entire structure of the story...

Okay, so let me just try to wrap my head around this. Even though there are numerous examples of DC stories that examine the inner conflicts of a character and challenge the protagonist on a psychological level (which is the mainstream definition of character-driven), somehow DC doesn't have a lot of character-driven stories because of some mysterious element concerning the way that Marvel structures their stories, which you still haven't really identified? And this mystery approach to storytelling somehow exists at Marvel and not DC, even though there is essentially a revolving door of talent and editors between the two companies?

You realize that that just sounds like you're moving around the goalposts just to fit your own narrative, don't you?

On one level absolutely. They are all heroic adventure stories with a wish fulfilment element, concerned with a struggle between right and wrong or good and evil. But to deny their differences and to argue with somebody who has a clear taste for one and not the other is counterproductive. If you are interested in why some of us find the approach different then you need to do more than assert that there are no differences. You need to pay attention to how we are expressing our tastes and the overall feeling we are seeking to explain.

I have been paying attention. What I'm saying is that the reasoning you're providing doesn't make much sense. Its fine if you prefer one company, but at least be honest about the reasons. The only real reason is just which characters you gravitate more towards. Let's not invent this fantasy narrative that one company apparently tells an inherently different type of story from the other when that's been proven wrong for, well, decades.

OK, which of these would you define as both 'in main continuity' and very obviously character driven. Bear in mind I haven't read any of them, so I will need time to purchase, read and analyse the story. But I am prepared to do so if it helps illuminate the issues.

Um, all of them. Almost all of those stories are in continuity (the only one that I'm not sure is is Peace on Earth) and are at least in part character driven because the obstacles and goals of Superman are structured around who he is as a character. And that's kind of what I'm taking about. A good amount of those stories are kind like a list of Superman basics, stories that most fans should get around to reading eventually. So, to really judge Superman as a character, you'd have to read some of his most famous stories.

[Prof. Warren]

Let's not invent this fantasy narrative that one company apparently tells an inherently different type of story from the other when that's been proven wrong for, well, decades.

It hasn't, and they do.

To say that DC and Marvel's universes are inherently different is not saying that one is better than the other. It's acknowledging that they are simply different constructs.

To look at them only in the most superficial terms and say that because they're both shared universes with superheroes who fight super villains so it's all kind of the same is simply not an accurate observation.

DC is rooted in the mythic. Marvel is not.

Even though Marvel has its share of Gods and Demi-Gods and cosmic beings, their universe is more rooted in the everyday world. Their heroes have feet of clay. DC's don't.

DC is inherently more naive and optimistic and when it verges from that core innocence, it's always notable - even decades on from stories like The Killing Joke.

Marvel naturally leans towards cynicism, so when its characters go to darker places, it's never been seen as a reinvention or some kind of outlier. Some stories may be darker and more mature than others but it's not a radical change in tone for a story like Kraven's Last Hunt to appear in the pages of a Spider-Man book. It doesn't have to be regarded as a Elseworld or alternate universe story, as Killing Joke originally was.

Can one publisher tell stories that are occasionally similar to the others? Yes, of course. There is not a hard line that prevents that. But because of the core differences between the Marvel universe and the DC universe, they are not interchangeable places and stories told in one universe will always have a different flavor than ones told in the other.

[Agent Z]

Nobody likes the Kevin Smith story because it wasn't very good, not because of the subject matter itself.

Same thing applies to Identity Crisis.

My point isn't that DC can't tell gritty stories and that only Marvel can, it's that - because both universes are different in their core conceptions - telling gritty stories takes on different forms. Grittiness in the DC universe is an add-on whereas that element was baked into Marvel from the start.

By this logic, Batman is an add-on.

So listing the following controversial stories:



...Is pointless to the discussion. Yes, sometimes stories meet with a divided reaction. You could put up a list of many more stories that generated outrage, from the Death of Gwen Stacy to Sins Past, but that isn't what we're talking about here. We're talking about the differences in DC and Marvel's universes.

The reactions are important because they reflect what fans think is and isn’t appropriate for each universe.

There is definitely a segment of the DC fanbase that likes and prefers their DCU to be gritty. But that grittiness and that darker element is presented differently than how we see it in Marvel and that's what separates the two. With DC, it is taking essentially innocent creations and darkening them. Frank Miller's Batman work was arguably the watershed moment with this. It took a comic book mythology that had remained relatively naive for decades and re-cast it in a darker, more mature-themed light. That was the revelatory move that Miller made, creating a genuine shock with readers at the time, and it's the method by which DC has proceeded to darken their universe since, giving their innocent, Golden and Silver Age-tinged universe a gritty overlay.

This is different from, again with Miller, when Daredevil went grittier. There wasn't a loss of innocence in that case. It was just telling a more mature story with a character that could carry that weight. It was not shocking to see Daredevil become a more hard-boiled crime drama. It just happened, there was no jarring whiplash in seeing Daredevil go dark. He was already more or less there as his world was already a grittier, more real one. Seeing Karen Page as a porn actress and heroin addict was not perceived as being particularly radical within the Marvel universe as much as seeing Selina Kyle as a prostitute in Batman: Year One was, for example.

The former, shocking as it was, was still seen as part of the natural flow of already mature subject matter. The latter called for the long held concepts of what was permissible within the DC universe to be completely reevaluated.

Batman was the story of a kid witnessing his parents being killed and this so thoroughly shattering his world view that he became a vigilante. How is that not an example of innocence lost?
And yes, Karen Page becoming a drug addict and porn actress was radical at the time. It wouldn’t have gotten so much attention if it weren’t. That tends to be how these things go. Same with the Death of Gwen Stacy. This type of thing had never been done in either DC or Marvel and that’s why it was so memorable.

To go back to Heroes in Crisis, the difference between DC and Marvel would be that the idea of a facility like Sanctuary existing in the Marvel universe would not be surprising or even especially note worthy. We already know that Marvel heroes are troubled and neurotic so of course there would be a facility to address that. To introduce it into the DC universe, on the other hand, immediately seems much more shocking or intriguing because their heroes, by and large, are not supposed to be or assumed to be psychologically troubled in the same way that Marvel's heroes are.

Again, this applies only to certain DC heroes not all. There are plenty who would fit this description. Kyle Rayner, Oliver Queen, Roy Harper (who is one of the victims), virtually every member of the Bat family, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Guy Gardner, John Constantine, the Doom Patrol (which did the theme of societal outcasts before X-Men did), Animal Man, the Suicide Squad (the Ostrander run has arguably the best depiction of mental illness found in superhero comics) way too many Teen Titan characters to count, etc.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

Which characters that are front and center shape what stories are told.

Marvel events Civil War 1 and 2,Secret Empire, Secret Wars, Infinity, Axis, Siege, Fear itself, Avenger vs X-men

DC Dark metal Nights, Forever Evil, Blackest Nights, Final Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Flash Point, Identity Crisis

It is not a accident that most of Marvel events tend to be earthbound involving one single dimension, While DC stuff multiverse cosmic stuff (and yes marvel has strong history with Infinity Gauntlet and secret wars which is that realm of those stories) . There is a clear reason why DC has more cosmic multiversal events,The characters who are upfront. And the characters who are upfront shape the universe and tone of stories. Civil War couldn't happen at DC because DC has different internal logic because who is front and center. Who is at front and center matters DC doesn't have Hulk, Wolverine, Deadpool or X-men.Dc doesn't have antihero culture as strong Marvel does and Justice League shine so much over every group that you can't think of other heroes stepping up saving the world outside of them. Those things affect how stories are written. Yes they can tell similar stories but even those will have different feel because of the universes cultures.

Infinity War, Infinity, Secret Wars (both versions), the Korvac Saga, the Kree/Skrull War, Annihilation Conquest, No Surrender, etc. aren't giant cosmic operas? Marvel not only does a lot of cosmic-level events, but IMO, they do it more than DC does. Not to mention that a good amount of the stories you mention do take place almost exclusively on Earth.

I mean, when you actually look at the stories that each company has published, you can find a similar analogue at the other. For every Blackest Night, there is a Marvel Zombies. For every Secret Invasion, there is a Millennium. And DC not only has a very similar story to Marvel's Civil War, but Civil War was in many ways directly influenced by DC's Kingdom Come.

I will give you example Marvel has bunch of superman analogs but they never work.Why? Because the biggest reason Superman works is because he is" The Guy" at DC. At Marvel there is no "the guy" Spiderman is the guy,Captain America is the guy, Iron Man is the guy,etc. Marvel created Sentry and they smartly came with angle that let Sentry be "the guy". The thing is Marvel fans don't particular want "the guy" and that is one of reasons he failed to catch on. DC created a character called Damage(basically DC Hulk) recently and in one story Wonder Woman said damage is the strongest character she has faced which implies that he is even stronger than Superman. In a thread I was reading about that comic there was fairly large amount of people going he can't stronger than Superman. They created a strength monster but strength can't be stronger "the guy" .One of the thing that legitimize new characters is the amazingness of them and at DC there is a wall,You can't be faster than flash,Stronger than Superman,Smarter tactically than Batman. Saying you can tell the same story is misleading imo the characters who around set a tone.

There is a LOT of that at Marvel. I have seen as many characters (and fans) treat Captain America as "the guy" in the Marvel universe as people in the DC universe treat Superman as "the guy." Same thing with the Avengers vs. the JLA in their respective universes.

And that is the thing: Marvel and DC are different in certain ways, which are in many ways superficial and just relate to which characters are front and center, but in many ways they are incredibly similar, to the point that you could tell any sort of story you wanted at either. Hell, again, there are documented cases of writers making just taking a story they couldn't sell to the editors at one over to the other.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

It hasn't, and they do.

To say that DC and Marvel's universes are inherently different is not saying that one is better than the other. It's acknowledging that they are simply different constructs.

I'm sorry, but that is just an outdated view of how things really are nowadays. That may have been true in the 1960s, but its not true now.

DC is rooted in the mythic. Marvel is not.

Even though Marvel has its share of Gods and Demi-Gods and cosmic beings, their universe is more rooted in the everyday world. Their heroes have feet of clay. DC's don't.

Again, this is incredibly outdated and relies on generalizations instead of the actual state of things in-universe. Characters like Wally West, Kyle Rayner, Virgil Hawkins, Jaime Reyes, the Doom Patrol, etc. have been proving this conception wrong for decades.

DC is inherently more naive and optimistic and when it verges from that core innocence, it's always notable - even decades on from stories like The Killing Joke.

Marvel naturally leans towards cynicism, so when its characters go to darker places, it's never been seen as a reinvention or some kind of outlier. Some stories may be darker and more mature than others but it's not a radical change in tone for a story like Kraven's Last Hunt to appear in the pages of a Spider-Man book. It doesn't have to be regarded as a Elseworld or alternate universe story, as Killing Joke originally was.

You do know that Kraven's Last Hunt was originally pitched to DC as a Batman/Joker story, right? Ironically, DC rejected it because the premise was already too similar to another story that was in development at the time: the Killing Joke. DeMatteis then reworked it as a Batman/Hugo Strange story and then after even that was rejected, into a Spider-Man story. So, do you see what we're saying here? Writers don't feel that they can't use characters from one company to mine the same territory they can with characters from the other.

Also, using your logic, someone like Captain America and all of the hope and idealism he embodies is fundamentally out of place in the Marvel Universe.

Can one publisher tell stories that are occasionally similar to the others? Yes, of course. There is not a hard line that prevents that. But because of the core differences between the Marvel universe and the DC universe, they are not interchangeable places and stories told in one universe will always have a different flavor than ones told in the other.

Again, as in the case of the development of Kraven's Last Hunt, that statement has been proven false time and time again. DC and Marvel aren't constrained to a certain "type" or "flavor" of story and are just as prone to publish stories of any type. And we shouldn't want them to be any other way because that's just bad business: there's a variety of audiences out there, so both of them should be able to attract those audiences with a variety of genres and content.

[Prof. Warren]

By this logic, Batman is an add-on.

No, the grimness and increased violence to Batman's world was an add-on.

For decades, Batman inhabited a much more naive world.

Batman was the story of a kid witnessing his parents being killed and this so thoroughly shattering his world view that he became a vigilante. How is that not an example of innocence lost?

Bruce Wayne reacts to the trauma of seeing his parents shot by choosing to dress like a bat and drive a bat-themed car and use bat-themed weapons. That's a fantasy, not anything real. He chooses the Batman identity because criminals are a "cowardly, superstitious lot." Again, this is rooted in a very naive, innocent fantasy world where hardened criminals will shake in fear at the sight of a grown man dressed in a bat outfit.

The only Marvel hero who you could say intends to strike actual fear into criminals is the Punisher and that's because he represents the very real fear of a guy with a skull on his chest who's going to pump you full of bullets, not a guy in a cape who plans to bean you with a batarang.

[Prof. Warren]

I'm sorry, but that is just an outdated view of how things really are nowadays. That may have been true in the 1960s, but its not true now.

No, it remains true. If you want to take a myopic view of Marvel and DC as being virtually the same, it's your choice but they are very different.

Again, this is incredibly outdated and relies on generalizations instead of the actual state of things in-universe. Characters like Wally West, Kyle Rayner, Virgil Hawkins, Jaime Reyes, the Doom Patrol, etc. have been proving this conception wrong for decades.

Those characters are not the norm. They were add-ons and DC typically defaults back to favoring the most iconic versions of their heroes.

You do know that Kraven's Last Hunt was originally pitched to DC as a Batman/Joker story, right? Ironically, DC rejected it because the premise was already too similar to another story that was in development at the time: the Killing Joke. DeMatteis then reworked it as a Batman/Hugo Strange story and then after even that was rejected, into a Spider-Man story. So, do you see what we're saying here? Writers don't feel that they can't use characters from one company to mine the same territory they can with characters from the other.

The bare bones of a story can be transplanted but the final story will not be the same.

Had Kraven's Last Hunt been told as a Batman/Joker story, it would have been fundamentally different in tone.

Which is the entire point here. Surface similarities can exist but the universes are not identical or interchangeable.

Also, using your logic, someone like Captain America and all of the hope and idealism he embodies is fundamentally out of place in the Marvel Universe.

He is. And he is often shown to be and many stories regarding Cap revolve around the fact that his values are in conflict with a harsher, more cynical world.

[JKtheMac]

I didn't ask you whether you thought it was a good story. But the fact is that it is a character-driven story because it is largely geared toward examining Bruce Wayne's character and his internal struggles. That is what "character-driven" means. That is the mainstream definition.

No it isn’t. It is how many misunderstand it. Unless you are prepared to accept this there is no point arguing about it. The rest of your post continues to miss the point precisely because you don’t believe you might be wrong about this point. That is no basis for an argument and especially not a civil discussion. I am out. I am not here to convince you of something you don’t want to discuss.

[Rosebunse]

I also forgot the obvious simple clear tonal difference in DC uses fictional cities between more real cities from Marvel not say Marvel doesn't have fictional cities and places like Wakanda and Lateveria.It is just another thing that adds to the why saying you can tell the exact same stories isn't really the same. Currently Green Lantern has Cyborg Superman running around in Coast City which he destroyed once. Trying say Marvel is only one thing and DC is only one thing is wrong they both can give similar stories BUT trying to say that they are so similar that is it just personal preferences of characters is also wrong.

Good point about the different settings.

Marvel having most of their characters based in real or semi-real places is one thing I like.

I also like that so many of them are based in New York. It sets a feeling of community amongst the heroes and villains. It's fun that so many characters can just run into each other.

[LifeIsILL]

Take the classic Old Man Logan. That story was inspired greatly by Unforgiven (1992). Unforgiven is structured as a character driven story. The internal struggle of William Munny is the entire focus of the story. It has external antagonists and much external threat, but they are not what the story is about. One might imagine that OML would also be character driven. At first sight it has lots of angst ridden focus on Logan and his reflections on his bloody past, and is all about his focus on family and a quest that takes him away from them. But essentially the story never really places the emphasis on this internal struggle. Or rather it is emphasised but only occasionally and not centrally. Importantly, the wasted landscape of the post villain apocalypse is not a reflection of Logan, instead it is just a cool backdrop and plot driver for a road trip story.

One reason I mention this story is because it is still a story that clearly belongs at Marvel. Not because it is dark and gritty, but because even though it isn’t really a character driven story it takes a very critical look at the protagonist and asks deep questions about their nature and the whole premise of Wolverine as an anti-hero. Unforgiven is considered by many to be the last word on the anti-hero and OML seeks to turn these ideas back onto Marvel's most famous anti-hero. Could this have been written at DC? Perhaps, but it wasn’t, and I think that is telling.

It was done at DC. And it wasn't just a story arc either. It was a series that ran for a decade long from the 70s and 80s. It was about an anti-hero who wandered from town to town killing everyone and reflecting on what he's done. Way before Old Man Logan was ever a concept.

There is definitely a segment of the DC fanbase that likes and prefers their DCU to be gritty. But that grittiness and that darker element is presented differently than how we see it in Marvel and that's what separates the two. With DC, it is taking essentially innocent creations and darkening them. Frank Miller's Batman work was arguably the watershed moment with this. It took a comic book mythology that had remained relatively naive for decades and re-cast it in a darker, more mature-themed light. That was the revelatory move that Miller made, creating a genuine shock with readers at the time, and it's the method by which DC has proceeded to darken their universe since, giving their innocent, Golden and Silver Age-tinged universe a gritty overlay.

This is different from, again with Miller, when Daredevil went grittier. There wasn't a loss of innocence in that case. It was just telling a more mature story with a character that could carry that weight. It was not shocking to see Daredevil become a more hard-boiled crime drama. It just happened, there was no jarring whiplash in seeing Daredevil go dark. He was already more or less there as his world was already a grittier, more real one. Seeing Karen Page as a porn actress and heroin addict was not perceived as being particularly radical within the Marvel universe as much as seeing Selina Kyle as a prostitute in Batman: Year One was, for example.

I would argue that pre-Miller Batman comics were darker and grittier than pre-Miller Daredevil comics. Frank Miller just took it to a place of no return for both characters. The idea that Batman before pre-Frank Miller was all silly Adam West stuff is just not true in the least bit. Maybe only in the public perception it was.

[JKtheMac]

It was done at DC. And it wasn't just a story arc either. It was a series that ran for a decade long from the 70s and 80s. It was about an anti-hero who wandered from town to town killing everyone and reflecting on what he's done. Way before Old Man Logan was ever a concept.

I am going to presume that’s a joke, because otherwise I am not sure what your point is.