The Difference between Marvel and DC

 

Note: This is NOT an attempt to say one side is better or anything. I am very un-tribalistic in general and really don’t care to snipe at series I don’t like. And it’s not like I dislike either of these two, though I would be very obviously lying if I didn’t claim to favoring one by far. Hopefully that will not bias me to the point I can’t answer the question.

I was asked a few times why DC is one of my favorite series ever and Marvel I’m only ambivalent towards. I don’t think that’s a trivial question, as on the surface the two seem relatively similar. There’s something different about DC and Marvel. If I compare their best stories, broadly speaking on the same level of quality, or if I compare their worst stories, which again broadly speaking I would say are on the same level of quality, there still feels something different about the two. I wanted to try and identify what is different about the two series. 

A lot of people say it’s because some variation of Marvel being about humans, and DC being about gods, and I have to disagree with this assessment. At best it seems an over-simplification that leaves out important details and at worst it seems misleading as it suggests that the difference is so simple, and that someone only a fan of one would be so because of that reason. That said the actual reason is somewhat hard for me to articulate, and what I’m writing now might only be a vague approximation of the truth of the matter but hopefully it shall be helpful.

The first that sort of really caught my attention is their usage of mythology. Thor, the actual Norse deity, is one of the primary heroes of the Marvel Universe and in general Norse mythology is more closely entwined with the series then the more commonly used Greco-Roman mythology. In contrast in the DC Universe, Wonder Woman, one of the primary heroes gets her powers from the Greek gods, as does Shazam. Superman is called the “modern Hercules” and the first flash had the “speed of Mercury”.

Now obviously both DC and Marvel have expanded to have both Norse and Greco-Roman mythology in their complete roster, however they put different mythologies, very different mythologies at the forefront of their series. That suggests a particular affinity, although whether the presence of these characters at the forefront influenced the series, or they were pushed to the forefront because of their affinity with it, or there was some kind of feedback loop incorporating both etc. is unknown.

If you look into Greek Mythology one of the things that will be noticed very quickly is their deities were often embodiments of a domain of the natural world. Ares was not just a being associated with war, he was war itself, being wherever war was, and everything that was war was him. Thanatos was death itself and when he was bound, so was death stopped everywhere. Poseidon was not just the lord of the sea, he was the sea itself. The Roman Deities were somewhat more abstracted, being more often the embodiments of virtues rather than natural phenomenon but were similar in that they WERE their domains. The Lares, for instance were the ancestral gods of each family representing the familiar virtues of the household. 

This was absolutely not the case for the Norse Gods. Odin was the god of warfare and wisdom, yet he was neither war itself (in fact he rarely was on the field of battle, for he sent Valkyries to bring up the fallen), nor was he wisdom itself (as he had to sacrifice his eye to gain more wisdom). He was a being that had control over those domains. Freya was a goddess of war, as well as a goddess of love, beauty and fertility. Yet she wasn’t any of those domains itself. Loki was a god associated with trickery, deception and fire, yet when he was chained below those things didn’t disappear from the world. In fact there is a myth where Loki is challenged to an eating contest and loses because while he ate his half at the same time as his opponent, his opponent was actually Fire itself and burned all the food and the bones to nothing (the same myth contains many such challenges where the Norse Gods struggled because they were secretly put into competition with abstract concepts like Thor trying to wrestle an old woman who was secretly old age itself). This is taken to its metaphorical extreme in how, unlike the Greco-Roman deities, the Norse Deities are actually fated to and can die.

Why I find this interesting is that this is also how Marvel and DC depict their literal gods (though not all their cosmic entities). The Marvel Deities are physical entities existing on some physical world far off in the cosmos. If you had a sufficiently faster than light spaceship one could fly to Marvel Asgard just as they use the bifrost to travel easily between such worlds. Conversely in the DC universe the Gods are abstractions existing in the sphere of the gods, and not even running past the speedforce barrier can get you there. 

Symbolically, note how Marvel takes place in settings closer to our own, with cities like New York. Conversely DC primarily exists in imaginary lands meant more as representations; Metropolis, Gotham, Themiscyra. This builds to my thesis on the difference between the two; Marvel Comics focuses on the characters as hypothetical people primarily while DC Comcis focuses on the characters as archetypes embodied. Marvel Comics is realist (focusing on the real) while DC Comics is idealist (focusing on the idea). I should reiterate that neither is better or more valid then the other and both companies have made great stories and terrible stories. 

Scott McCloud in Making Comics divides comic creators and writers into 4 camps (though he and I both emphasize that these are not strictly defined lines, people have a bit of all and change their proportions over time, this merely is a denotation of tendencies), based on two metrics; an emphasis on the artistic tradition and on artistic revolution or subversion and art as art or art as simulation for reality. That leads to these 4 positions.

Classicists: Artistically Traditional and Art as Art: Those that seek the transcendant beauty of art beyond mundane life, the experience beyond reality. 

Animist: Artistically Traditional and Art as Simulation of Life: Trying to create something lively and full of heart, putting content (character and story) before anything else

Iconoclast: Artistically Revolutionary and Art as Simulation of Life: Trying to seek out truth and honesty, regardless of how ugly it is, in art

Formalist: Artistically Revolutionary and Art as Art: Those who like to experiment with the medium’s form and style, pushing what the medium is capable off as a medium.

While the distinction between the artistically traditional and artistically revolutionary is not wholly important here, as both Marvel and DC have had traditional and revolutionary periods (though Marvel arguably more towards the revolutionary and DC towards the traditional as Marvel first gained popularity by acting in subversion to DC’s traditions), it is the second one that I feel is the heart of Marvel and DC’s differences.

DC focuses primarily on art as art while Marvel primarily focuses on art as simulation of life. What makes this really sort of stick with me is the Formalists. Marvel has a few characters prominently that break the fourth wall, most notably Deadpool but in terms of actual experimentation with the medium itself, that is a huge part of DC’s upper echelon. The Monitors, the Endless even the Presence to some extent are textualized as metafictional and this has only been more noticeable overtime with things like The Gentry. DC is far more interested in metafictionality then Marvel is it seems, which would make sense with the division I suggested as Formalism is an Art as Art philosophy.

This also is attractive to me to be honest because it explains my own tendencies. I am a Classist (with admittingly some Animist tendencies) and I feel like this explains my own resonance towards DC. I very much like the idea of characters as symbols and concepts abstracted because I seek that kind of transcendent experience.

I have made the analogy before that Marvel at its best is like Shakespeare and DC at its best is like Dante. It was said by T.S. Eliot the world is divided between Shakespeare and Dante, there is no third. Shakespeare had an incredible ability to capture the human psyche in his writing, to capture the drama and the human experience in all its painful nuances. Dante on the other hand had an almost supernatural ability to see a reality deeper and fuller then the human reality, and to relate man with the rest of the cosmos. That’s how I see Marvel and DC at their best. 

If I was to try and sum up the difference between Marvel and DC in a simple way I would say:

Marvel wants to ILLUMINATE the human experience

DC wants to TRANSCEND the human experience