The State of Comics: DC

Hope someone is taking his key.

This post pains me to write more than any other. I have always been a defender of Detective Comics. (I know that means that when you say DC Comics we are really saying Detective Comics Comics, but I don't care. Go to your ATM machines and deposit that.) Everyone has always criticized DC, saying that Marvel was much more down to earth, much more believable, because for some getting bit by a radioactive spider is way more believable than an alien sent to Earth as a baby. Now I always got what they meant, Superman was too perfect and Spider-Man was more like everyone else, he had problems like any normal kid, but to me DC and Marvel have always been like apples and oranges, two fruits but with different tastes.

Marvel is grittier and writes comics about ordinary men who gain super powers. DC on the other hand has always been loftier and looked at the world of superheroes like mythology. DC heroes are like a modern pantheon of gods, so far above the mortal man that I can understand how they might turn some people off, but for me it has always been the biggest check mark in the DC box. If I want to see an anti-hero who smokes and curses I'll read a Wolverine comic, but if I want a story about heroes (someone to look up and aspire to,) I will read a Superman comic, and that was always the point. We sympathize with Marvel, but we aspire to be DC. Unfortunately, I sometimes think I am the only one who gets this, and it's starting to seem more and more like even the people at DC don't quite get this. Long story short, Marvel is leaving them in the dust.

For some reason DC just can't get their act together. They are all over the map, frightfully clinging to old formulas that are almost ten years out of date. There are rumors every year of Flash movies, Wonder Woman movies, Sandman movies, Green Lantern reboots, even a Justice League Dark movie, but it all seems so disorganized. It's like DC runs its company by polling one-hundred random people they find on the street. They seem unwilling or incapable of finding a clear vision and sticking to it. I'm not saying Marvel is not run by public opinion to some degree, but it feels much more coherent. I mean they trust their path enough to gamble on a blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man movie. Hell, even an Iron Man movie was a bit of a gamble ten years ago, but that didn't stop them.

There is one thing Marvel hasn't done
yet, made a movie about a strong female
superhero. This could have been DC's
jumping off point. This could have put
them apart, but that requires a little faith
in your own characters, something DC
has historically been reluctant to show.

DC on the other hand is like a six year old unsure of what he wants his mother to buy him in the toy store. So he spends most of his time running up and down one aisle after the other, agonizing over decisions. He always inevitably returns to the most popular toy, the one you knew he would get all along. Yet even when he finally makes his decision it seems half-hearted and disappointing. DC will be going ahead with Batman vs. Superman (or whatever they will be calling it) for 2016 and a 2018 Justice League movie as they rush to accomplish in two movies what Marvel did in six well crafted ones. The effort feels forced and lackluster somehow. Maybe I am just already expecting disappointment. I mean it happens so much nowadays with the DC title, but it wasn't always like this. Ten years ago I would have said that DC was firmly in the lead. Batman: The Animated Series was an award winning cartoon that spawned the DC Animated Universe which in itself was a universe of award winning cartoons that all tied together to make a rich world of heroes and villains. The Arkham series of video games never fails to disappoint, Batman Begins made superheroes cool again in 2005 (three full years before Robert Downey Jr. ever strapped on a Iron Man suit,) and then Nolan smashed it out of the park with The Dark Knight in 2008. The comics were ramping up with storylines like Blackest Night and Flashpoint. Even Smallville, (which really was nothing more than a ten year long tease,) was on the air keeping Superman alive in the public conscience. Then it all fell apart.

It was like DC got scared of itself and just started doing the same things over and over again. Smallville was kind of popular, so let's make Arrow. Batman Begins was dark a gritty so let's make Man of Steel the same way. People like Ryan Reynolds and CGI so let's make Green Lantern. People liked Arkham Asylum so let's just make more of those, because Batman. I swear to Jor'el that the agenda at the DC office must just say: Batman Batman Batman Batman Batman, two dozen times over. They have developed a formula for success that reads, "Everything must be like Batman" (except that one Green Lantern movie which we will never speak of again.) I won't even get started on the New 52, one of the most sinful things the company could have done. (Because let's strip away almost sixty years of history and try to become more like Marvel.)

I understand that DC can't make movies the way Marvel does. Anything they do now will just look like they are playing catch-up with their competition. So if they want to go back to their roots to look for inspiration I think they don't have to go further back than their old Justice League cartoons. Start with the team movie and then break everyone out into individual ones from there. Take the Marvel formula and work backwards, and you can drop the origin stories. We know the origins of most of these characters. Heck we've heard them half a dozen times and for the newbies in the audience you can touch on them briefly, but we don't need to rehash them every single time. Man of Steel seems to be the DC's cinematic jumping off point, which also gives me mixed emotions. In some way's I enjoyed the movie, in others I think it butchered the Superman mythos just so it could be "dark." I wrote a full blog on my thoughts about that so I won't go into it here, but sufficed to say it didn't leave me with a sense of hope for the future of DC movies, because ultimately DC's universe has and always will revolve around Superman. Let me explain...

Think about the differences between Marvel and DC. The big one is the existence of Superman. The man of steel is practically a god, which makes him an almost omnipresent shadow cast over the entire universe. However, he is also the most moral and upstanding person you will ever meet. That means Supes becomes the very ideal of what it means to be a superhero in the DC universe. The rest of the heroes have to live up to him. That doesn't mean that gritty characters can't exist in DC, the Teen Titans and Justice League Dark are examples that it can be done, but what separates the two comic companies is the fact that Marvel heroes don't have that specter of blue and red hanging over them. Captain America is great but he doesn't have the power or presence of Superman. Supes sets the tone for everything. So if Man of Steel is meant to set the tone for the DC Cinematic Universe, I have more than few concerns.

There is no denying that Marvel is winning the comic race. They have the vision, the means, and the will to carry out a full cinematic universe, where as (if it's not Batman) DC seems to have no idea what to do with anything. Joss Whedon (the current guru of the Marvel's Cinematic Universe) went to DC years ago with a Wonder Woman script. They basically laughed his ass out of the office. Marvel is now gambling on a movie starring a talking Raccoon and DC somehow couldn't find a will to make a movie about the strongest woman in comic history? Had that meeting gone differently, I have to wonder if this current blog post might be reversed with DC now existing in a expanded immense movie universe and Marvel left floundering in their wake. I guess, unless there is some kind of real life Infinite Crisis and we get to see a glimpse of a world where that happened, we will never know. The state of DC is less than optimistic.

This about sums up my feelings.