This month's Marvel books are running an interview with writer Mark Millar, and I found the first quote rather interesting. It's in response to a question about what he thinks of the MU after Civil War (which was, what, a year and a half ago?):
It really reminds me of the Marvel Universe I first discovered when I was a little kid. Marvel books always seemed a little more real and frightening than DC books. It wasn't a world where the heroes were quite as comfortable with one another. Even when they met, they were always fighting, whereas the DC guys always seemed like they were going fishing together when they were off-duty. I like the slightly uncomfortable feel of the new Marvel Universe. The idea that it's constantly in flux.
Sigh. How Marvel of him to try to lob mild attacks at the Distinguished Competition. As long as I can remember, Marvel's marketing plan has always been to stoke the fanboys. Stay classy.
But he's right. He just comes to a wildly different conclusion than I would.
That's precisely what I like about the DC books, that the characters enjoy a reputation of being, well, friendly. Yes, they do tend to hang out when not chasing supervillains. To me, that makes the DCU "a little more real," because it shows the heroes acting human. In broad terms, DC has a groundswell of characters who are marked by their friendships: Superman/Batman, Wonder Woman/Superman, Black Canary/Oracle, Blue Beetle/Booster Gold, Fire/Ice, Flash/Green Lantern, Green Arrow/Green Lantern. Some of these are friends because they have similar personalities, others are friends because they have different means to solve the same problems... and that strikes me as a very real appraisal of human dynamics.
Millar seems to be inching around the idea that DC suffers from story stagnation because, more or less, Superman and Batman have been friends for seventy years, but I wouldn't call forty years of Thing and Hulk fighting each other much of an editorial improvement. And reading between the lines, this is just another way of underlining the stereotype that DC's characters are black-and-white while Marvel's are all shades of gray.
I know he's just winding up readers. It's grist for our imagined rivalries. "Marvel Zombies" didn't always refer to simply an overdone miniseries concept.
One word that jumps out of that quote is "frightening." Seems like a odd choice, doesn't it? Do people want to read superhero comics that are frightening? I like dramatic, I like compelling, I like riveting, I like suspenseful. I'm not sure frightening makes the list. Millar is a writer, so I'm positive he chose that word on purpose... but I can't say I ever really enjoyed a comic because it was frightening.
The other hanging chad in there is the phrase "when I was a little kid." Ooh. Kind of a burn, right? Like, when he was a kid, he enjoyed seeing heroes fight each other. I get that. But today's comics readers aren't kids. They're adults who are hooked on power fantasy soap operas. So he's excited about returning Marvel to the kind of stories he enjoyed when he was seven. After reading World War Hulk (which Millar had nothing to do with, I believe), I'd have to agree.
Of course, the truth is that both companies offer plenty of both sides of the argument. I'd just call it a 70/30 split in either direction. You don't think Captain America and Iron Man went fishing together back when they were both pals in the Avengers? You don't think the Justice League was pissed as hell at Batman when they discovered Brother Eye and the OMACS? There's a lot more parity there than Mark Millar and the Merry Marvel Marketing Society would like you to believe.
