Good to see DC's still keeping pace with Marvel. Consistently ten years behind.
timh_iat wrote:Didn't DC have some of this penetration during the heyday of the JLU cartoon? Wasn't Jon Stewart becoming a "name" until DC discarded all that capital to revive Hal Jordan?
It's as if DC gets annoyed when the "wrong" characters become popular, then DC strangles the character, and appoints an old classic that only die hard groupies like Geoff Johns remember.
Geoff Johns
is DC at this point. Both companies have a gaggle of idiots at the top, but Marvel's idiots are more forward-thinking, so they manage some decent output. They surround themselves with other forward-thinking fellows and indulge in that newfangled craze where creators are allowed some measure of freedom in storytelling. You don't need to have seen any of the Marvel movies to recognize how much better their choices are on average.
DC's run by a writer stuck in the silver age, an artist trapped in the 90's and Dan DiDio. They surround themselves with the likes of Tom DeFalco, Rob Liefeld and Howard Mackie. It's hilarious. DC lags behind Marvel in almost every area possible.
Videogames - Marvel got 3-4 fun brawlers with the XML/MUA series. DC finally started catching up with Arkham Asylum, but that's just Batman. Why is one Lego game the only way I can have fun with the rest of the DCU? and now Marvel's matching that. Then there are little things like Marvel costumes in Littlebigplanet. Why isn't DC sneaking its stuff into unrelated areas like that? Why is there no Justice League Alliance on Facebook? Get aboard the microtransaction train, guys!
Toys - Domestic and foreign. DC's slowly making headway in Japan, but Batman's main competition is War Machine. He's not in the same league as Iron Man, and as usual, the rest of the DCU goes largely ignored. I want to see DC toys popping up all over. The '66 Batman stuff is. We need more of that, several companies with different takes on the same material.
Animation - Traditionally DC's forte. Lately, they can't keep anything decent afloat, but Marvel sabotages its own stuff, too. Definitely a win for DC, but I wish they could be more consistent, stop forcing crap like Flashpoint and just rochambeau Cartoon Network already. The whole AOL/Time Warner family's a mess.
Green Lantern is John Stewart. No reason you can't write good stories with other GLs, but I'll always think of him as the true GL. I grew up with Hal and a bit of Guy. So what? Nostalgia's a weak force when you get down to it. We fall deeply, madly in love with good stories, then we fool ourselves into thinking we need to be monogamous, that the same character will always thrill us no matter what. It's the writer, it's the artist, it's the story, it's everything. Green Lantern is one piece, and you're not building a puzzle. More like a Lego set. You can get another piece.