DC vs Marvel: Who won the 80's?

[ed2962]

Yeah, punk-rock Storm pretty much gave the 80s to Marvel.

And yeah, I think the concept of the Beyonder as a character absolutely blew my mind, as a kid.

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for X-Men #201. Mohawk Storm with no powers beats Cyclops in a duel to win leadership of the team.

( Also Scott's wife rightfully criticizes him because he has no job skills)

[Adam Allen]

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for X-Men #201. Mohawk Storm with no powers beats Cyclops in a duel to win leadership of the team.

( Also Scott's wife rightfully criticizes him because he has no job skills)

It's a classic issue ... honestly, the passage of time can help us lose sight of it, but for whatever his faults as a writer, mad respect to Claremont for how way ahead of his time he was, with his portrayal of Storm. I mean, I'm even one of the relatively rare readers who would classify as a big fan of Cyclops, but Storm's owning of him in that fight felt right, as did her leading the team following.

I mean, she had no powers when I started reading X-Men, and though I caught up with back issues in time, the punk version of Storm was a good bit developed past the "goddess" version ... and really, with Storm, Kitty, Rogue, Rachel, even Madelyne Pryor ... Claremont's X-Men through the 80s was really progressive for presenting pretty well-developed female characters.

This has all made me remember Asgardian Wars, which I guess chronologically has to be around that time, as Rachel was there, but Scott was still part of the team. That was a great story, I should re-read. Storm got her own version of Mjolnir, as I recall ... someone should bring that back, in modern story!

[DrNewGod]

It's a classic issue ... honestly, the passage of time can help us lose sight of it, but for whatever his faults as a writer, mad respect to Claremont for how way ahead of his time he was, with his portrayal of Storm. I mean, I'm even one of the relatively rare readers who would classify as a big fan of Cyclops, but Storm's owning of him in that fight felt right, as did her leading the team following.

I mean, she had no powers when I started reading X-Men, and though I caught up with back issues in time, the punk version of Storm was a good bit developed past the "goddess" version ... and really, with Storm, Kitty, Rogue, Rachel, even Madelyne Pryor ... Claremont's X-Men through the 80s was really progressive for presenting pretty well-developed female characters.

This has all made me remember Asgardian Wars, which I guess chronologically has to be around that time, as Rachel was there, but Scott was still part of the team. That was a great story, I should re-read. Storm got her own version of Mjolnir, as I recall ... someone should bring that back, in modern story!

It was great. It was, I'm sorry to say, also the opening act of The Douchification Of Cyclops. He'd had his Third Act, and I wish he'd been allowed to gracefully fade into limbo.

[Adam Allen]

It was great. It was, I'm sorry to say, also the opening act of The Douchification Of Cyclops. He'd had his Third Act, and I wish he'd been allowed to gracefully fade into limbo.

Well ... can't fully agree. Like I said, pretty big fan of Cyclops, here. Claremont did intend for him to ride off into the sunset ... I think I recall him saying (don't recall if this was in-story or in some interview) that part of the reason he lost in the fight with Storm was that his focus wasn't there, his mind really was not fully in it, because he should have been focused on his family at the time. So Claremont did have him leave, and Storm led the X-Men, and I know it was from an interview where Claremont said his intent had been for it to be like someone retiring; like, we might have him come back for a big battle here or there, but it's like real life, people move on. Nobody stays in one place, at one job, forever.

So ya, having him leave his wife and baby to start X-Factor and hang out with his old high-school girlfriend was the first step in making Scott look really bad. Personally I feel like the whole Schism thing was kind of the final nail in the coffin of making him look like a jerk. From that you got Scott as basically a mutant terrorist, and Logan leading a school for mutants with Xavier's blessing as his heir ... which of course culminates in the Phoenix Five thing, Phoenix-Cyclops murdering Xavier, then jailbird Scott not even taking full responsibility for it after the fact. Having him die off-panel from the Inhumans thing was kind of a mercy killing, at that point.

But then, they had the teenage "original" Scott running around for years, before bringing the older version back. And the thing is ... for all of the mistakes that have been made with the character, I'm a big fan of when he's done right. I think this video explains it well:



I mean, I was probably a bigger fan of Storm through the 80s, but I think it was 1991 when they split off a new X-Men title from Uncanny and made the blue and gold teams, one led by Storm and the other by Cyclops. True, this was starting to get into that era of too-many-X-teams, but thematically, felt right to me.

Cyclops is basically the X-Men's Captain America ... for all that many writers have seemed confused about that.

[LifeIsILL]

In terms of monthly ongoing:

Marvel > DC.
-- Stern on Spider-Man, Stern on The Avengers.
-- Simonson on Thor.
-- Miller on Daredevil.
-- Claremont on X-Men and The New Mutants.
-- Byrne on Fantastic Four.
-- Tom Defalco on Spider-Man.
-- David Michelinie on Spider-Man.

So Marvel's ongoing was quite strong in the 80s as opposed to the general ongoings of DC in that period.

In terms of the peripheral stuff, the non-ongoing stuff and general readership stuff. DC did better, by getting Alan Moore to DC but then they drove Alan Moore away for good. Karen Berger at Vertigo did amazing stuff and started an entire new readership expanding outside mainstream superhero titles in a big way.

As for a lot of people who are fans of COIE, sorry folks but SECRET WARS 1984 is just way better.

DC had crazy ongoing books as well

-Paul Levitz on Legion of Superheroes
-Paul Levitz and Joe Cavalieri on Omega Men
-Cary Bates on The Flash
-Wolfman on Titans
-Moench on Batman
-Conway on Firestorm
-Mike Grell on Green Arrow
-Mike Grell on Warlord
-Conway on Justice League of America
-Michael Fleisher on Jonah Hex
-Kuppenberg and Morrison on Doom Patrol
-Roy Thomas on All-Star Squadron


But you know what...it doesn't matter....I don't think anyone here really reads any DC stuff before the 90s (beside the Alan Moore or Frank Miller stuff), or they would have mentioned any of the above titles.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

But you know what...it doesn't matter....I don't think anyone here really reads any DC stuff before the 90s (beside the Alan Moore or Frank Miller stuff), or they would have mentioned any of the above titles.

I have heard of Levitz' Legion run. What is about Legion of Superheroes writers going on to become editors and executives (Shooter first, then Levitz)? And Wolfman/Perez on Teen Titans which I think was the top DC selling title for a while, and led to them writing COIE.

[Englehart Humperdinck]

-Paul Levitz and Joe Cavalieri on Omega Men

I remember Roger Slifer, Doug Moench and Todd Klein writing Omega Men in the 80s, but not Levitz and Cavalieri.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

DC.

Crisis on Infinite Earths is the most important event comic ever
Watchmen is still the most critically acclaimed comic ever
DKR is still one of the most influential comics ever
New Teen Titans pretty much launches the most popular subset of young DC comics
Superman had 2 of his GOAT stories by Alan Moore and a reinvention by Byrne that creates many lasting impacts
Batman has another seminal story in Year One which many consider the best Batman story and also Death in the Family is still one of the most important Batman events ever.
Wally West stares his run as the Flash
Wonder Woman started her era defining Perez
It was probably the peak of a lot of Bronze Age stuff for DC too

[Surf]

black suit Spiderman the bullpen was in full swing back then.

Talk about it. Crisis is a go to- I get it but ultimately it was a big reset button. Man NOBOBY got bigger in the 1980's than Spider-Man, he was 50's Superman famous in the 80's. Bigger even creatively speaking. Any other character would have had to have a movie to get as big as that character did. Gwen Stacy died in the 70's but didn't a lot go on after that (yea you Spider-Buggy). In the 80's he got married, dude has been a major movie IP for 20 years at this point, the movies STILL haven't caught up to that turn. That was a book you looked for back then, with the variant cover btw and adult Peter was the one I grew up reading, shoutout to Spider-Verse for that call back alone.

Dude's rouges gallery got shots in the arm from the old guard and new threats throughout. Rhino, Hydro-Man, Eddie Brock, Kraven... Fuckin' Kraven c'mon, Mike Zeck on Spider-Man anybody? This was about as mature as it got for Marvel and it worked. DC didn't have nothing like that, and any story came close it wasn't changes to one of their top, top characters.

Zeck was dope (80's Punisher too!!) but Michelinie was a monster in the 80s. Anybody remember a guy name something McFarlane, Tim, Tom or something. The three of them put together one of Spider-Man's top 3 runs post the black suit. They made comics, or at the very least the Amazing title cool to early teenagers like me at the time. Spider-Man wasn't even my main jam but it was a title that was cool- without a cartoon, without a movie, without a toyline or a bunch of merch even (early on at least), the actual, monthly, comic books. Not to mention dude had about 4 titles going- they even kept Marvel Tales going throughout the entire 80s and put McFarlane covers on that.

Last but no even least, he got that black suit and ruled earth, they are STILL going to the symbiote well 35 years later. Never did a costume change send a character into the stratosphere like that. I still remember the first black suit comic I bought, it was poppin' back then in a way few things did. Craziest thing about the suit was- he ditched it soon after and went back to the red and blue and didn't miss a beat. If I remember he even got the cosmic powers at the tail end of the 80's. I know Wizard #1 came out in 1990 but that came off the back of how big the character was, not even the entire decade but most of it in the 1980's.

I love(d) DC comics back then too but they weren't close compared to Spider-Man alone.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

DC.

Crisis on Infinite Earths is the most important event comic ever

Thor is it though meme.jpg

Aside from a TV show that had fewer eyeballs than the SNL Season Premiere, COIE hasn't made much of a dent in popular culture.

Watchmen is still the most critically acclaimed comic ever

That's because of Moore and Gibbons not DC, who stole the IP from them.

DKR is still one of the most influential comics ever
New Teen Titans pretty much launches the most popular subset of young DC comics

X-Men is the most popular subset of comics in the 80s, 90s, and now again in the last two years.

Man NOBOBY got bigger in the 1980's than Spider-Man, he was 50's Superman famous in the 80's. Bigger even creatively speaking. Any other character would have had to have a movie to get as big as that character did. Gwen Stacy died in the 70's but didn't a lot go on after that (yea you Spider-Buggy). In the 80's he got married, dude has been a major movie IP for 20 years at this point, the movies STILL haven't caught up to that turn. That was a book you looked for back then, with the variant cover btw and adult Peter was the one I grew up reading, shoutout to Spider-Verse for that call back alone.

Word.

I love(d) DC comics back then too but they weren't close compared to Spider-Man alone. [/font]

Totally agreed.

Spider-Man getting married to Mary Jane at the Shea Stadium was the biggest comics event of the decade in terms of real world impact. News covered it, everyone covered it.