The new Marvel v. DC (Market Share)
Being an old-head now, coming up on 50 years of collecting, I like to think I have the advantage of being able to look through the lens of time, and look at the history and get a decent view of what's happening. One of the bits I think I’ve puzzled out has to do with my lifelong hobby of comic book collecting.
So, I’ve noted on the Marvel sub, some “panic” about Marvel having fallen behind DC in market share. It’s the first sustained time that Marvel has fallen to DC since the 1970s, and they held a steady #1 (with some exceptions) for over 40 years.
I have a hypothesis as to why.
In the late 70s, we almost lost both Marvel and DC. Marvel was saved by Star Wars, and DC by the Donner Superman movie. Once both steadied their ships, DC kept on as business as usual, while Marvel, under Jim Shooter, became obsessed with continuity and canon. DC was seen as “silly” due to the “imaginary stories” of earlier eras, while Marvel prided itself on being the “world outside your window” (if you lived in NYC at least). Shooter pushed Marvel editorial to have a tight control on what got published, and to never contradict itself. This resonated with fans in the early 80s, and arguably created the modern “canon orthodoxy disease” you see in many fandoms nowadays.
DC kept on their merry way, until they began losing consistently to Marvel, so on their 50th anniversary, released Crisis on Infinite Earths to clean up their continuity and clean up their “canon” issues. However, while Crisis did a good job of that, the Byrne reboot of Superman and other things like “the Last Days of the JSA” immediately muddied the waters again. Despite getting big artistic talent on their titles (John Byrne, George Pérez, Alan Davis, Frank Miller, and up and comers like Adam Hughes, Bart Sears, Kevin Maguire, and Todd McFarlane) they still lagged behind Marvel, mainly due to the (no pun intended) Juggernaut that was Chris Claremont’s X-Men.
By the time the Nineties rolled around, it left DC doing gimmicky grabs, trying to capitalize on Marvel’s loss of the Image Seven, doing things like “the Death of Superman, Knightfall, and Emerald Dawn”, but their best writing was in the margins with their adult themed Vertigo. Marvel lived off the heat of the X-titles for over a decade after Claremont left, despite middling writing at best across all their best selling X-titles. Even when Marvel nearly killed the comics industry again in the mid-90s with their bankruptcy, they still maintained market share from loyalists to the titles.
The first twenty years of the 21st c. saw Marvel maintain their lead, synergizing a little at first, with the success of the various Marvel movies, whether they were MCU or Fox. DC finally got to where they should have been after Crisis with Infinite Crisis, and bringing in Jim Lee to the fold, but still they lagged behind in sales.
New52 gave DC a bump, and challenged Marvel, but it was short lived as the novelty of the reimagining and continuity change wore off in about a year, causing them to go back to the well of Watchmen and have Rebirth reset things again, and back more or less to pre-new52 continuity.
So, what’s changed in the last two years? DC initially kept chasing that desire for continuity that they thought that fans wanted, and Marvel has kept with the status quo to the point that readers are desperate for something new. It appears the change is that DC pivoted to not caring as much about "canon".
The Absolute titles, while born out of “yet another” big crossover event, are showing the standard characters in a new light, and in a way that makes readers rethink the characters. The Next Level and then All In titles have allowed writers to tell stories, and not be 100% beholden to previously established mainline continuity, or at least not have to be referential backwards to it. In some cases, this has blown up in their faces (Power Girl), but in most, it’s taking characters that readers may not have otherwise cared about, and making thought provoking new takes on them--that while not beholden to canon or continuity, also doesn’t disregard it. Deadman, the Demon, and Zatanna are all evocative of the best “DC corner of Vertigo” that was published in the 90s. JLU is a fun romp of superheroes in mixed teams handling varying worldwide crises. World’s Finest is telling great tales of Superman/Batman team ups (with Dick Grayson’s Robin) unfettered by time, happening “when it was most appropriate”, and giving us upscaled “Silver Aged” stories, but done in a modern telling. Even the post-modern take on the "Superman Family", last popular in the early 70s, is selling consistenly well.
Meanwhile, over at Marvel, Spider-man is stuck in a post-high school purgatory, a sort of superpowered parody of an older Charlie Brown, still pining over “the little red-headed girl” he can never have--and he’s been there for TWENTY YEARS now. Titles get announced and abruptly cancelled (not planned) after six-eight issues, then restarted with a new number one. Movie synergy is at an all time high as editorial attempts to court movie-goers to read comics, rather than to appeal to long time readers. And in my own opinion (ymmv), they are so committed to canon, they aren’t allowing the writers to move past parameters that were set for the characters 30+ years ago. Arguably, the only 'big new successful things' that pushed any boundaries that Marvel has done in the last 25 years has been the Krakoa saga, the Ultimate line, and Annihilation which brought in the new GotG (that and an insidious anti-intellecualism feel, but that's another discussion).
All comics in the Big Two are stuck in the perpetual “middle”. It’s beginning, middle, more middle, a brave new reimagining, middle, middle, middle, REBOOT, beginning 2.0, middle, middle…. Ad nauseum. Marvel has doubled down on this, insisting that readers stay loyal to canon. DC meanwhile is allowing writers to write “new” stories about the characters. While it may not last, that ‘novelty’ of DC not caring about continuity as much, is now more appealing than slavish loyalty to canon.
Ironically, what seems to be hindering Marvel, is that their “canon” is blowing up in their face. A pun and irony that as someone who grew up mostly on Marvel, I find bitterly sad and funny.
