Is the old meme of "Marvel heroes are more down to earth than DC ones" even applicable anymore? I get it's more of a normie meme but I'm confused by it still being said today when for the past few years, Marvel guys generally stay in costume all the time. Do any of them have a social life anymore or friends who aren't capes and celebrities besides maybe Hawkeye? At least Clark Kent has friends at his job or went on a road trip with his family.
I also can't see how you can get that impression from the MCU versions. They were all super-soldiers employed by SHIELD until recently and I don't think they've explored that much what they do without a costume. Spider-Man is the main exception.
Brody Hughes
Yes it is.
And it's more than "what they do out of costume". For example, Iron Man and his alcoholism. Did you think that DC would ever allow Batman to be an alcoholic in the main continuity?
Henry Morris
When was the last time we've had a comic about Tony's alcoholism?
Zachary Kelly
At least there's a passable explanation for that. Batman wants to maintain his peak human condition.
Matthew Sanders
They've explored Bruce Wayne being mentally damaged himself before. I more mean, doesn't it miss the point of being "down to Earth" when they never really interact with anyone outside their group. It's like saying the Kardashians are "down to Earth".
mid-2000s. There's a few jabs at him being an alcoholic during the original Marvel Now too if that counts but it wasn't important.
Levi Torres
Even if they aren't shown having normal lives they are more down to Earth by default simply because most of them aren't capable of destroying entire planets with punches.
Michael Gomez
"Down to Earth" is about personality.
Ethan Bennett
>for the past few years, Marvel guys generally stay in costume all the time. Do any of them have a social life anymore or friends who aren't capes and celebrities besides maybe Hawkeye?
bro read Ms. Marvel or Spider-Man
Ryder Wilson
Is it, though? I see it more as being relatable and simple.
Xavier Adams
And even when it's brought up, it's mostly played as sexy alcoholic and cool instead of the self destructive crippling addiction that it really is.
Charles Gutierrez
Wait, are you implying: progressivism is not "down to earth"?
Blake Turner
How relatable do you consider getting boxing training from Justin Trudaeu or partying with a few gods in your multi-million dollar tower that you paid for out of pocket?
Those are alright examples.
Evan Baker
It's not. Comics have changed.
The main difference between the two is that Marvel is focused mostly on virtue signalling and trying to make pitches for new movies and tv shows, while DC is focused on pleasing their basement-dwelling fans.
Neither approach is very good which is why comics are failing right now.
Jason Thomas
>I more mean, doesn't it miss the point of being "down to Earth" when they never really interact with anyone outside their group. It's like saying the Kardashians are "down to Earth".
Nah, down to earth means a somewhat more realistic approach, showing the "real life" of celebrities doesn't stop it from being down to earth, otherwise no super hero comic would be able to claim to be that.
Oliver Hughes
I'm not sure I understand whether you say one company has a down to earth approach or both or neither and if one, which. I'm sorry, I have no clue what you mean.
Thomas Thompson
Cherry picking. Check most of the books out now and they all depict people with very common struggles and even in suit they are still very mortal and normally win their battles outsmarting their opponent, not outpowering them.
Now go look at DC. Superman literally benchpresses the weight of several planets. Diana is so strong that she can actually duke it out with him. J'ohn is an alien with max level telepathy, he can also shapeshift, phase, fly and is invulnerable and super strong. Batman is close to a god, he can do anything and has zero flaws other once in a while the "you're totally nuts, dude!" Green Lantern can do anything he wants as long as his will allows it. The Flash can outrun existence and punch the universe back into a big crush.
William Brown
Yes
That's why they can be such pieces of shits compared to DC heroes.
Lucas Brown
You've never read a Martian Manhunter or Green Lantern book.
James Brown
I understand what would be Marvel's virtue signaling, but what exactly would be DC's basement-dwelling pandering?
Luis Hughes
I'm not really cherry picking. My thing is with them never doing things that don't involve capes or interact with anyone who's not in this small circle of rich people who have powers. Someone pointed out Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man (assuming Miles) who currently some of the few examples where I don't think they have that problem. The Flash has more "everyday struggles" than Carol as Captain Marvel.
Zachary Kelly
Yeah, what could be more down to earth than a deal with the devil?
Samuel Davis
It stopped being applicable in the 70s
Landon Morales
They ARE international heroes and celebrities, and they deal with the fact in a down to earth way.
Andrew Robinson
I still described their powers as they are in a literal form. If writers have to write ways around it it's irrelevant and normally shows it's a bad character to begin with.
Dominic Cruz
What makes you say that early?
Brody Foster
See, this is why you got to have secret identities. No one can have a marvel hero (even one less omnipotent than his dc equivalent) be treated like a normal person, because , when he goes on a date or to grab a coffee or hang out in public with his family, people around him know who he is and treat him like a superhero. Having a secret identity fixes that.
Plus, there's an old charm in secret identities that people have forgotten. The citizens don't know who the superhero is. So everyone can be the hero. That brings hope. And on a meta level, this happens to the reader.
Jordan Cox
Its a bit of a blanket statement but its mostly true lets take too examples: Batman and Spiderman.
Batman is always totted as the most "realistic" but that is in behavior and mannerisms not what he actually does because on his best day Motherfucker is basically Ironman, Captain America and Daredevil all in one and that's being generous to those heroes. Batman is a fucking legend and that's kinda the point of his character.A man who realize that being a man isn't enough so he willed himself to be an urban legend.
Spiderman on the other hand is the most DC-esque character Marvel has, he is the most genuine and the one with the least flaws even though he is supposed to be the every man of the Marvel universe.
Noah Ramirez
I agree with this and it makes the mantling thing Marvel has been doing for a while even worse. All someone like Steve Rogers or Thor Odinson has IS Captain America/Thor, it's who he is all the time....but they are also disposable for the sake of the "mantle" when passed on. I'm not sure if that's the best way to word what I'm getting at here.
Jackson Jackson
You're an idiot. You take the most shallow part of a character, their abilities, and draw conclusions based on that. Spider-Man fucking died and had his body controlled by Doc Ock, teamed up with alternative versions of himself against vampires, and became a fucking billionare overnight. None of that is "relatable" at all.
Dylan Nelson
Hellboy is just Hellboy and it's okay.
He is much more realistic, relatable and a better example than 99% of DC's characters.
I actually like that we have 2 companies, one of them with secret indetities, and the other with heroes as agents, warlords and celebrities.
Parker Evans
God this has to be the biggest circlejerk for DC I have ever seen.
Juan King
Not that user but while I think you are right its not just powers there is no doubt that they play a part for example what you just said is up there with Spiderman's craziest days however that's just a day in the life of Batman. I think the reason goes beyond just powers and how much the characters mess up its baked into the lore of DC and how they treat their heroes.
Wyatt Lewis
I think everything good happen to them. To the point, I think the villains are either crazy or unrealistic evil.
Gotham is literally a curse city.
Austin Bennett
Them who? The DCU?
Brandon Parker
That's why I dont read Marvel these days, almost no one has a secret identity, they are celebs, no real jobs or civilian friends and the worst of all they all work for the fucking goverment
Wyatt Cruz
>normies Busiek used this angle in JLAxAvengers
Thomas Reed
No! The Avengers criticize JLa for being "fascists". And both get along at the end.
Ethan Clark
>Implying both sides aren't right about each other
Brody Lee
>implying marvel heroes aren't much more fascist and intervening in the public's life than dc ones
Charles Martin
Marvel heroes aren't self-centered failures who made their world fall to shit and DC heroes aren't egotists who may as well put the world in a bottle?
Camden James
This books still canon right? It was honestly a better crossover than it had any right to be
Benjamin Hall
Both are from ahitty companies, in shitty stories, and never do any real good on the wrold, like stopping cancer or famine with all of their technilogy and magic bulshit.
Big 2 is shit, and there is no way to deny that all of their heroes are hypocrites.
Camden Murphy
>Marvel guys generally stay in costume all the time. Depending on the iteration, so do DC heroes.
Kevin Brown
There's not really a reason for them to not be outside the New 52 happening on DC's end but lolRebirth. Same thing with Access who might still exist, there were some references to him beyond the Marvel vs DC event.
We're talking about their main incarnations from the comics. TT cartoon doesn't matter here.
Carter Taylor
In the '60s some interviewer asked Stan Lee what Marvel's secret was and Lee said it was basically not so much what the heroes are like but how they're made fun of:
> Take, for example, in our competitors’ magazines, if a hero walks into a restaurant and orders something, no one will notice him. But in our magazines, they will, realistically, make a fuss over him and say, “Who is that weirdo.” In a nutshell we add more realism in ours.
When you put it that way it's not so much that Marvel heroes are so relatable as that the Marvel public acts more like real people, i.e. more assholish and more given to lampshade hanging.
I don't know if it's still true though, but DC comics take place in so many different places that their public isn't a character in itself like the MU asshole public.
Michael Martin
oh shit, I'm sorry
Bentley Foster
So the problem is that people applied the logic to the heroes themselves?
Isaac Adams
>We're talking about their main incarnations from the comics. TT cartoon doesn't matter here. YOU are talking about that. *I* am not.
Joshua Mitchell
I am OP, this thread is about comics
Jaxson Ramirez
Not him but shut up fag.
Easton Barnes
Well to be fair, Bruce doesn't even drink. He fakes people out with ginger ale.
Gavin Jenkins
Busiek isn't wrong, and as the guy with best Avengers run you should believe what he says about DC heroes standing head and shoulders above Marvel.
Even Hickman agreed (see Great Society).
Think of the worst shit Marvel heroes have done. Two Civil Wars. Planet Hulk. Onslaught. Multiversal genocide.
They suck compared to the JLA. The worst they've done was mindwipe some badguys-not even kill them, just delete their memories.
Mason Peterson
>They suck compared to the JLA. What about all the "OMAC" idea?
Adam Cox
You should blame shitty editors and shit writers instead. Fuck Planet Hulk and WWH.
Nicholas Miller
They were still things they did in 616.
Josiah Evans
If we're not including those because of shitty writers and editors, then Identity Crisis would go too.
Oliver Allen
Purely Batman's fault, and even then just as far as he trusted the tech to Checkmate.
It's far, far, far from the kinds of shit Marvel heroes do and get away with. Half the X-men have outstanding warrants and will never sere jail time for them. Fucking Magneto killed people and got to be a teacher to the New Mutants. The X-men hand out get out of jail free cards to their rogues gallery and no one minds.
Carson Butler
>no one minds desu that's likely part of the reason mutants are hated
Jack Hernandez
>It's far, far, far from the kinds of shit Marvel heroes do and get away with Remember this?
Remember how NOTHING happened to wanda after?
Jayden Reyes
>Bendis
Hudson Peterson
Has anyone rational ever tried to get the X-men thrown into jail for harboring known fugitives with body counts?
I'd kill for a book like that.
The weird thing is Marvel heroes back in the sixties started as being more relatable because they had strong personalities and flaws.
Now the DC heroes are more relatable because the Marvel crowd are sociopaths.
Colton Reyes
I wouldn't say "nothing", nearly everyone wanted her dead but no one could find her. That was a plot point until Children's Crusade when she returned. She didn't really become a hero again until Marvel Now I think and now people are just passive aggressive about it if mentioned.
Brody Kelly
Iron Man - drunkard Cap - soldier Spider-Man - kid Wolverine - short Hulk - nerd
Etc etc....all very "everyman" even if they aren't really, but it makes you connect more to them in a different way, you don't look up to them, you feel how they feel, where I feel like nobody knows what DC main heroes are feeling like, but they look up to them as father figures
Chase Anderson
And then everyone just forgot about wanting her dead.
It's the same with any event. There's a little fallout that mainly consists of characters sniping at each other like high school girls in the locker room but absolutely nothing happens.
And then the Avengers accidentally the planet again and people get mad. And then all is forgiven. Then they do it again. And again. And again.
David Moore
Fucking Tony Stark was replaced by a teenage version of himself. The current Captain America is a copy made by a sentient cosmic cube. Jean Grey is now both an adult and a displaced time version of herself. Carol gave birth to her son who grew up and raped her so she'd give birth to him.
It's all fucking weird. Superman comics are focusing on him being a dad to his son. That's pretty fucking down to earth. Sure DC has crazy shit but to pretend that's all there is, is disingenuous, and so is pretending Marvel's bullshit isn't pure fantasy.
Michael Jones
Fucking BOOSTER GOLD is more heroic than 90 percent of Marvel's "heroes".
Jace Turner
That's all on Batgod. It's kinda funny seeing people wank him considering how many JL threats have popped up due to Batman, like DC Metal right now.
Easton Mitchell
>Has anyone rational ever tried to get the X-men thrown into jail for harboring known fugitives with body counts? Pretty sure that was a thing but they were a protected group after House of M before forming their own nation off the coast of California. No one ever tried that with Wolverine's group that went back to America because Scott was losing it.
Current Tony Stark is actually a fusion of his classic self who became a villain, teen Tony, and his counterpart from Heroes Reborn. All the guys who "died" during Onslaught are fusions of their 616 selves and Heroes Reborn versions.
Bentley Russell
>and no one minds. Because some of their enemies like the Hellfire Club are so fucking rich and connected they can get away with it or they are government black programs like Weapon Plus. Why isn't there a storyline about the government spending billions on 30 tall robots to hunt down mutants and not the aliens that attack every so often?
Andrew Walker
>All the guys who "died" during Onslaught are fusions of their 616 selves and Heroes Reborn versions. Seriously try and fucking pass this off as down to earth. The difference between the two companies is DC embraces the batshit insanity while Marvel tries to sweep it under the rug for more dumb bullshit hero vs hero fights.
Gavin Wilson
user why are you so buttblasted about comics you don't read?
John Reyes
He's right though.
Daniel Ward
Stop being stupid mate, the difference is quite simple Ypu are just being a faggy trying to dick measure with another shitty company.
The real deal, is that Hellboy is better than both Marvel and DC, and he embraces the whackness while having no secret identity and such, and reacting to things in a down to earth way (which is part of the point of the character, being a regular blue worker).
Brody Gonzalez
Superior Iron Man
Julian Jenkins
Superior Iron Man is the complete opposite of being Down to Earth.
Noah Evans
Robbie Reyes
Josiah Fisher
Meant to quote
Thomas Powell
>Discussion about Marvel vs DC >Dark Horse/Indie fan screeching about how MUCH BETTER OURS ARE and STOP IGNORING US REEEEE
Eli Sanchez
Nope. Every time someone tries to make a division like that it's utter bullshit. Marvel and DC are virtually identical and have been for decades.
Bentley Gutierrez
What the fuck is Superman's problem?
Parker Barnes
he and captain america were both influenced to direct both teams to fight.
Camden Campbell
Both him and Captain America were going out of control when in the opposite universe. Something about being attuned to their own or it might've been something else, been awhile since I read it.
James Thompson
I remember that but here he's a much bigger douche than Cap. With really annoys me is how he mixed facts, opinions and lies about the MU. Like a Fox news talking head.
Ryan Perry
Marvel died in the early 90s and has relied on characters created prior to then to survive.
DC isn't much better, but at least they try new things.
Their sales are proof of this.
Luke Campbell
So you're saying he's using his super-opinionated power?
Kayden Fisher
Why the early 90s and not the 80s or something? 80s Marvel felt like they were stretching themselves a bit thin.
Brayden Moore
>DC isn't much better, but at least they try new things.
HA! It is the same shit.
Xavier Baker
>all very "everyman" even if they aren't really "They aren't really" being the key part here, mate.
Jack Barnes
Are indie fans down to Earth?
Liam Peterson
>complains about cherry picking >proceeds to cherry pick even harder and more stupidly
Jeremiah Brown
Professor X can mindrape the entire world. Reed Richards is so smart he can traverse the multiverse with his inventions. Thor is a literal God. Hulk can break planets with his feet.
That's mean describing some "down to earth characters" with their as written literal powers. The power scale of the characters can be high or low and it doesn't matter. Superman (one of the most powerful characters of either company) can do nearly anything, yet he can be brought down by a snipeful stare or few harsh words from Lois Lane: that's the relatability. I'm not saying this doesn't also apply to Marvel, but saying it doesn't apply to DC is fucking stupid.
Eli Turner
>Fuck Planet Hulk
Planet Hulk is good you filthy whore. Sure World War Hulk sucked, but that's cause they didn't let Hulk murder any members of the Illuminati, had Hulk killed Iron Man (especially as this was very shortly after Civil War) everyone would have fucking cheered and said Tony fucking deserved it.
Henry Young
Batman - orphan Superman - illegal immigrant
Jacob Sanchez
He's right.
Kurt fucking Busiek complained about X-Men being stupid and losing its down to earth jam in a fan letter from the early 80s.
Owen Gray
What point do you think Marvel lost the down to Earth idea? I want to say some time in the early 2000s is when it completely died with various series hitting it at earlier points.
Ryan Kelly
Modern Mutant "heroes" are dindu nuffins who commit crime after crime and get away with it because they're their own nation.
They're a bunch of super powered yuppies with their own mansion and VR chamber and private jet and they simply do not give a fuck about you unless you're a mutant in which case they will defend you and protect you even when you're wanted for crimes against humanity.
They only way they work is if they humans legislating against them are comically evil. If you actually had someone politely point out that they reason they want the X-men registered isn't because they have super powers but because they've proven they can't be trusted with them then the X-men become the bad guys. You need the gestapo robots and the evil Senators for the X-pricks to remain "good guys".
Henry Gonzalez
Probably when Ultimates was selling like hotcakes and Marvel took it as a sign to drop everyone's secret identity, make them pricks, make them celebrities, and make them government agents.
Gabriel Sanders
Fuck off. Planet Hulk is just as bad as WWH. They never should have started it because they knew damn well how it would end. Also there is alot more fucking wrong with WWH than just letting the designated retards survive. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't Busiek also of the opinion that the O5 were superior to Claremont? And he wasn't bitching about them no longer being down to earth.
Charles Walker
>Their own nation Now they live right in the center of Central Park. I'm serious, they teleported the mansion from limbo to there.
Henry Lopez
Wherever they're squatting now. It doesn't matter.
You think they pay taxes for squatting in Central Park?
You think they care about the people that now have to live against guys that breed danger around themselves like flies from a corpse?