Make mine. . . DC?

Devon over at Seven Hells! has several great posts about his favorite DC comics (the ones that made him a DC fan).

I, sadly, don't have such a long history reading comics, nor such a long love affair with DC, but I do, in fact, also prefer DC over Marvel. You know what? If you would have told me this one year ago, that I would be buying mostly DC titles, that I would be buying the different mini-series' and crossovers tying into the big DC "event," that I would be blogging about how much I love the DC universe, that I would be frantically looking for back-issues of Hawkman, Starman, and The Elongated Man -- well, I would not have believed you, that's what!

I can't say things started off well for DC. I bought Hawkman because I liked Hawkgirl from the Justic League cartoon. Heh. Not exactly like the cartoon is it? At that time I was buying Bendis's Daredevil, reading X-Men Marvel Essentials, shuffling through the various X-Men titles trying to find one I could understand (unsuccessfully). I liked Daredevil and the X-Men as characters so that's what I thought I'd like in my comics. And then one day Spiderman and Doctor Strange and Luke Cage (who?) and Reed Richards showed up in my Daredevil comic and I was like, "erm? What are these guys doing here?" See, I like a lot of the Marvel characters individually, but I don't like Spiderman showing up in my Daredevil book. I realized that Marvel as a universe didn't work for me, that I had separated Daredevil's New York from Spiderman's New York, and to have the two of them fighting evil side-by-side was weird and kinda silly. The Marvel universe's attempt at more "realistic" comics struck me as being utterly unrealistic.

But in DC! In DC, most of the major heroes have their own city to fight crime in, and the city fits the character, and the universe seems like it really exists because it's not trying to pretend it really exists. There's also more malleability in the DC universe. Just look at the old Adam West Batman, the Tim Burton Batman films, and the new Batman Begins. All Batman, all different, all work (IMO).

And on a more superficial note: DC does a better job of advertising what it publishes. Now, I'm not talking about Previews, or press releases in Wizard and on the internet. I'm talking about in the back of a comic book. At the end of my DC books there're little blurbs about upcoming series, on-going series, what's going to happen in the next issue of the series I'm holding in my hands, etc. It's helpful. It lets me know about books I wouldn't otherwise know about (cause I'm a relative newbie, remember?). It gets me excited about what's going to happen next issue.

And frankly, more of my favorite writers are writing for DC. Morrison, Simone, Waid, Diggle, Willingham.

It's almost a little embarrassing how quickly I've come over to the DC side, really. And how far Marvel has fallen for me. I'm not even interested in what's going on in Daredevil right now, and Astonishing X-Men seems like it takes forever to come out so I've totally forgotten what's going on.

But a couple of weeks ago I bought my first Superman comic (Action Comics #827), something I never, ever thought I would do. And guess what? I can't wait to find out what happens next!