Sunday, February 23, 2020

General differences between Marvel and DC, vs-wise

DC Comics and Marvel Comics. The two largest franchises in terms of sheer amount of content. The two truly run the gamut of power, hax and types of powerset and content. However I do believe the two have differences tactically in what they are best at and wanted to make a blog on the differences as I perceive them.

Thing Marvel Comics is stronger at:

1: Street Level Stats: Any decent Marvel Street Leveler scales to way higher stats then most DC Street Levelers. I think this is because Marvel Comics has more characters in the range between humans and the planetaries and they absolutely allow scaling meaning you've got a lot of clearly metahuman feats, things like lightning timing and surviving massive explosions that scale to Marvel Street Tiers.

2: Higher Level of Supergeniuses: From what I can tell it's fairly well agreed that Lex Luthor and Dr. Doom are rivals intellect wise, but Lex is the smartest person on the DC Earth with only Batman being an intellectual rival, while Victor has numerous rivaling intellects as well as an intellectual superior: Reed Richards. Basically it seems DC intelligences are in various tiers while Marvel supergeniuses can rival each other far more. As the top Earthly intellects of both can rival this suggests most Marvel supergenius intellects in general are a bit below the Top DC Superintellects but above most DC Superintellects in a lower tier.

3: Better Mind Hax and Psionics: Saturn Girl is considered a significant DC psychic, and she can only read surface thoughts and has to really concentrate to control one person. Being able to control numerous people is usually the sign of a really high tier psychic in DC along the lines of what it takes someone like Despero or Raven to do. The Top Tier Psychics can control a planet, and this rivals threats that take the Justice League to handle like Starro. In contrast Karma is just one of the X-Men members and can easily possess numerous people and can rival Professor Xavier who is a planetary telepath. A random Spider-Man villain could control an entire circus. A random deviant who couldn't mind hax the Avengers could mindhax whole civilizations. I think because the mind in DC can warp reality, it's more broken in universe and so it is given less often and at a lower level then in Marvel where. In addition psychics seem to be more common.

4: Easier Inter-Dimensional Travel. A lot of cosmic villains in DC are dimensionally sealed, in the Phantom Zone for instance, or Trigon in his Hell dimensions. This is because traveling dimensions in DC is actually really hard. Conversely in Marvel dimensional travel is so common there are organizations and councils like the Council of Reeds whose purpose is to monitor the dimensions. Bear in mind the closest equivalent in DC is the Monitors who are some of the strongest cosmic beings, which should give an idea how high end inter-dimensional travel is treated. Only the Mages and strongest beings in a universe really have access to it.

5: Better supertech: This isn't to say stronger supertech per se, it's closer to more versatile supertech. Characters like Batman have created supersuits to bolster their stats a lot. But usually that's all it does, or most of what it does. DC supertech doesn't actually seem that crazy as often. Compare to Marvel which has some of the best tech in fiction. Things like adamantium, a cosmically powerful metal is sometimes used even by street levels with some amount of consistency. There are more power armor heroes in the Marvel Universe, and their tech is a lot more complex. Advanced AI in DC is almost always either future tech like Booster Gold's or alien tech like the Lantern Rings. Conversely in Marvel AI is regularly used by the supergenius intellects to aid them. I should also note that Marvel tech includes things like the Ultimate Nullifier, which is technology notably beyond anything I've seen DC Humanity create. Overall DC entities rely a lot more on learned or biological abilities then technology for their versatility. The closest thing to Marvel level tech in DC is the Lantern Rings which are the most advanced technology and computers in the universe made by the literal guardians of the universe.

Things DC Comics is stronger at:

1: More Higher Plane Entities: DC Comics has a lot more beings that exist on higher planes of reality then Marvel does. For the most part Marvel has physical space where most beings, even godly beings are, and conceptual space where the strongest beings interact until they create m-bodies to interact with physical space. DC on the other hand has a complex series of planes of reality ranging from the sub-physical to the physical to the conceptual to the meta-conceptual to the absolute as well as numerous realms of existence on every plane of existence. Marvel Comics for the most part, almost archetypal fitting it's nature as the more "realistic" one is focused on physical reality while DC very often deals with metaphysical or even metafictional concepts.

2: More Magic: DC Magic-users are absolutely insane, even compared to Marvel Mages. In Marvel magic is generally gained by years of study and by invoking the power of cosmic entities. In DC magic is often genetic, a large population being homo magi, and come far more easily almost the diametric opposite of the psychic situation. Most Marvel Mages can use levitation, hypnosis, spatial/dimensional manipulation on a local scale but Zachary Zatara is a normal DC Mage and he has the same cosmic reality warping Zatanna has with the sole limitation that he can't affect living beings. DC Mages regularly have access to the magic of whole dimensions and can warp reality or seal conceptual entities with it. DC Magic Users have regular access to and are considered notable to the greatest cosmic entities like the Spectre, Lucifer Morningstar, and so forth. In Marvel that is only the case with the Top Tier Magic Users and Most Magicians would be seen as party tricks to the great cosmics.

3: Ridiculous Speed: DC has more ridiculous speed feats in general then Marvel. Most Herald to Skyfather level entities need time travel and acausality to not get blitzed by anyone who scales to even a moderate speedforce user. Speed in general is emphasized a lot more in DC.

4: Easier Time Travel: In Marvel Comics Time Travel while possible seems to be a difficult feat that even exhausts the Dread Dormammu. In DC it is literally just a matter of running fast enough and not hugely difficult. In addition in Marvel, even if you do travel in time you can't make a change to your original timeline as traveling back in time canonically puts you in a new timeline. In DC it is completely possibly to use time travel to get an advantage against an opponent. In other words Acausal Time Travel is also more common.

5: More Cosmic "Species": In Marvel comics there are lots of planets with species around high street level with champions that are herald to skyfather level or above. The Kree, the Shi'ar, Asgard, etc. Until you get to the Cosmic Cubes, most species as a rule are not cosmically strong and it's only really the champions of each species or world that is. DC has in contrast a lot more numbers with numerous species that are independently cosmically strong such as the Kryptonians, Daxamites, Martians, The emanations of the New Gods, etc.




Anyway, I hope this blog has given you a good idea of the two verses relative strengths and weaknesses compared to each other and which characters would be stronger or weaker in each of the two verses. Truthfully I like to think it fits their natures as franchises. DC Comics comes from the Golden Age, from the 1930s. Marvel Comics (specifically Marvel as opposed to earlier iterations of the company like Timely) comes from the 1960s. DC has a bit more of an occult/mystic as well as a more abstract/metafictional feel to it, that it's a world of archetypes. Marvel meanwhile has more of a science-fiction and a realism feel to it, that it's a world of real humans given fantastic powers. The strengths they have seem generally to fit these feels.

No comments:

Post a Comment