DC vs Marvel as a kid 1 1

[AnthonyTheAbyss]

Do kids actually care if a comic is Marvel, DC, or Independent?  Take away the parental influence and kids will buy whatever looks good to them.

 

I liked Spider-Man, Wolverine, and X-Men.  They just happened to be Marvel.  The fact that they also had the best artists (Lee, McFarlane, Silvestri, etc.) was more of an influence than anything else.  So when Image launched I bought those books.

[FutureFlash]

22 hours ago, miraclemet said:

I was a comic book kid from the 80s. Started in the Fall of '82 with Green Lantern, and GI Joe. They, and most DC and marvel stories by that point, had multi-part stories, and I tried to get the consecutive issues, but buying at the local Circle K each Sunday (got my $3 allowance after church, then we'd stop by the Circle K on the way home. I'd get 4-5 comics and a Charleston Chew.) didnt guarentee that they'd have the next issue, or it would still be there when I was there on Sunday. I didnt mind getting a " to be concluded in..." book, but I did HATE seeing something interesting that was a part 2, or the third issue of an interesting 6 issue miniseries.... cause I KNEW there was no way I was going to find the back issues cause there was no comic book shop to visit....

 

 

Oh yeah finding the next issue was so annoying my first spring/summer reading comics. Every week I would go down to the Quickstop gas station and get new issues, and sometimes you could just never get the next issue. Arrgh! In the Fall I did find a comic shop in the next town over, but I had to have my parents take me, so I still missed the occasional issue. But at least they had back issues. Still remember looking at a GI Joe #1 for 10 bucks or so and thinking how was I going to save up for that? First back issue I ever bought was GI Joe #20.

[kav]

3 hours ago, makeminemarvel said:

When I was 10 in 1976 our next door neighbor gave me a huge stack of his ASM's to read.  Probably issues 80-160 or so.  I was hooked.  Started buying off the rack and then a few months later I ordered an ASM subscription.  Still remember getting my first ish, #169.  Then added subscriptions to Avengers, Cap, Iron Man, Nova.  So while I bought a few DC off the rack (mainly Batman) it was almost exclusively Marvel for me, mainly from the comics the neighbor loaned me.  He had thousands of others as well.  He was a young air force officer and moved after a few years.  Still wonder what became of him and his collection!

I used to go to Sac State where the librarian on the third floor had spider man #40-100 and you could read them.

[Ken Aldred]

4 hours ago, AnthonyTheAbyss said:

Do kids actually care if a comic is Marvel, DC, or Independent?  Take away the parental influence and kids will buy whatever looks good to them.

 

I liked Spider-Man, Wolverine, and X-Men.  They just happened to be Marvel.  The fact that they also had the best artists (Lee, McFarlane, Silvestri, etc.) was more of an influence than anything else.  So when Image launched I bought those books.

That's true.  In the 70s, I'd also buy some b/w magazines, including an occasional issue of Skywald's Psycho.  Looked interesting on the racks, but the material inside seemed a bit excessive at that age, and a fairly poor choice for me in the end.  Soon focused on Marvel's magazines after that brief experience.

Edited May 18, 2018 by Ken Aldred

[thunsicker]

Not knowing DC like I probably should, when did they follow Marvel to the continuing story paradigm?  I'm sure it was before New Teen Titans but when?  Anyone here know? (And I realize the answer to that is undoubtedly yes).

[kav]

Just now, thunsicker said:

Not knowing DC like I probably should, when did they follow Marvel to the continuing story paradigm?  I'm sure it was before New Teen Titans but when?  Anyone here know? (And I realize the answer to that is undoubtedly yes).

It was like the 80s

[Senormac]

I remember buying this new off the racks as a kid and thinking how cool it was that old comics from the 40's existed and somebody kept records of the first appearances of the characters.

I didn't even know who Neal Adams was at that time 

 

[David-Lance Roten]

DC got me in around late 74/ early 75 around 5 years old with Tarzan. Started reading Superman Family, Batman soon after. Didn't get into Marvel until late 76. Captain America, Daredevil, the Marvel Classics Comics series. 

By 1979-mid 83 when I was in full collector mode it was mostly Marvel. Cap, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, even Dazzler + others. Oddly no X-Men, didn't dig'em.  Even when I bought back issues it was Rawhide Kid, Luke Cage / Powerman. Only DC title I bought monthly in that time frame was All Star Squadron, until Vigilante came along in late 83. 

I still liked Superman, Batman, other DC characters like Hawkman. But the Marvel stories just did more for me from an attention standpoint. 

[Shadow]

Interesting topic! For me, you might be spot on, Kav regarding the multi-issue arc of Marvel. I still remember going to the grocery store in Adrian, MI with my grandmother. I was given 50 cents to buy a comic. I was looking at a FF or Aquaman. I think I was 10 or 11 at the time and the Aquaman seemed like it had more stories and all in one book.

Later, I got these at the K-Mart in Adrian as well. Great reading while I stayed with my grandparents on weekends occasionally. Not much else to do in Adrian, MI.

When I got this, I really started to appreciate Marvel more. Now, I did enjoy the X-Men as a friend had #107 which I read and thought was great. I loved Wolverine before Wolverine was cool. But I didn't start collecting X-Men until #138.

JLA was my first collected title with #156 which I shared a few weeks ago. I love both titles yet since I'm a sentimental collector, my collection leans a little heavier with DC. But nothing to me was better than the Claremont/Byrne X-Men run back in the day. (At least superhero based. Wrightson's Swamp Thing is a strong favorite as well.) Maybe the early New Teen Titans rivaled X-Men for me. 

[BAT MAN]

The Batman TV series absolutely put Bats to a whole new level with respect to an audience of critical mass in the 1960s. From my own personal experience in the mid/late 1970's there was nothing more I looked forward to than those episodes. The cliff hangers were off the charts. Combine that with the Saturday morning Super Friends cartoon and in my own little world, DC was it. On the marvel side of the fence in that same time earlier period though, I did read Spider-man, Hulk, and Thor. 

[kav]

2 hours ago, Shadow said:

Interesting topic! For me, you might be spot on, Kav regarding the multi-issue arc of Marvel. I still remember going to the grocery store in Adrian, MI with my grandmother. I was given 50 cents to buy a comic. I was looking at a FF or Aquaman. I think I was 10 or 11 at the time and the Aquaman seemed like it had more stories and all in one book.

 

Later, I got these at the K-Mart in Adrian as well. Great reading while I stayed with my grandparents on weekends occasionally. Not much else to do in Adrian, MI.

 

When I got this, I really started to appreciate Marvel more. Now, I did enjoy the X-Men as a friend had #107 which I read and thought was great. I loved Wolverine before Wolverine was cool. But I didn't start collecting X-Men until #138.

 

JLA was my first collected title with #156 which I shared a few weeks ago. I love both titles yet since I'm a sentimental collector, my collection leans a little heavier with DC. But nothing to me was better than the Claremont/Byrne X-Men run back in the day. (At least superhero based. Wrightson's Swamp Thing is a strong favorite as well.) Maybe the early New Teen Titans rivaled X-Men for me. 

Great Curt Swan reprint issues!

[Tony S]

I was ten years old in 1964. My years of buying comics as a child was 1964-1970. At 16  I discovered girls and cars and sorta ignored comics until I was junior in college. 

My brother and I read/bought everything except Romance, Archie and Westerns.  Marvels were where the most excitement was at, but Batman was on TV and Gold Key impressed with both the Disney characters and small superhero line that had painted covers - front and back - and no ads.  Tower had great art, Harvey had Spooky and Charlton taught you Judo. 

That wide interest persists to this day. For me, there is no Marvel Vs DC. 

[the blob]

I had no interest in DC as a kid in the 70s/early 80s, other than New Teen Titans with Perez and then some stuff interested me later like Omega Men and Ronin.

[bc]

I have to admit I've always been a Marvel-oriented buyer and I appreciate weekly serials and long novels.

Recently I processed about 300 various titled DC comics from 1962-1965 and read thru a lot of them. Other than one or two Adventure stories, you could almost telegraph the plot after a page or two. Think I gravitated to Marvel because of the multi-issue story arcs and the way Stan put notes in the books like "**way back in Tales to Astonish 42!!" - it just made it feel like an evolving, fluid story line while DC felt stuck or static.

Can't knock either sides artists, it was the storytelling and relate-ability that got my money.

Since we are disclosing our childhood allowances, late '60's thru early '70's - got 25 cents a day IF and only if, I did 2 chores. The chores weren't trivial - dust the entire first floor, vacuum the second floor, weed the garden for at least an hour, cut the lawn with a manual push mower, fold all the clothes, clean all the bathrooms, etc.. We were expected to help with the cooking, setting the table or doing dishes as a way to "earn" the meal (long before automatic dishwashers were around) - that didn't count as a chore that made you any money. Mom had a chalkboard in the kitchen were she would assign your chores for the week, you had to mark that you completed it and then she would inspect your work and maybe give you a smiley face.

Now that I typed that out, think my parents were actually running a child labor camp....but it did let me buy several comics, a couple packs of baseball cards, an O-So pop or three and still put something in the piggy bank every week

 

[JohnH19]

My first superhero comic was Jimmy Olsen 80 Pg Giant #13 in the summer of 1965. I bought DC only, never even noticed Marvel comics, until the summer of '67 when I picked up Spidey King Size Special #4. The only reason I grabbed that book was I had all of the DC books I wanted that month. I read it that afternoon and even as an 8 year old I could immediately comprehend the difference in the quality of the stories. The Spidey story made the characters seem like real people while DC stories seemed so formulaic, dry and humourless. I still bought a few DC books for a year or so after that but I went whole hog into collecting Marvel from that afternoon on to the end of my childhood collecting days.

[Garf]

On 5/18/2018 at 4:22 PM, AnthonyTheAbyss said:

Do kids actually care if a comic is Marvel, DC, or Independent?  Take away the parental influence and kids will buy whatever looks good to them.

 

I liked Spider-Man, Wolverine, and X-Men.  They just happened to be Marvel.  The fact that they also had the best artists (Lee, McFarlane, Silvestri, etc.) was more of an influence than anything else.  So when Image launched I bought those books.

I never really cared as long as the story grabbed my attention. In general I read more DC (mostly down to liking Batman), First, Dark Horse and other smaller publishers but still dipped into Marvel when I had the opportunity.

In fact when I was really young I read more Marvel because it was what was being sold close to home and I could get my hands on. Loved Transformers, Iron Man (especially Armour Wars), scattered issues and arcs of Daredevil (don't think I will ever forget reading #234 as a kid) and the same with Avengers & West Coast Avengers. It wasn't until the late 80's when I was old enough to start venturing out further and discovered all the indie stuff I had been missing out on ... then a few years later DC's Vertigo imprint got my attention

Edited May 22, 2018 by Garf