SuperSuit: a Business History of a Non-Linear Business

Reed Tucker, Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC

At a party recently, two fellas got into a heated tangle over Marvel vs. DC. Marvel, one insisted, has grown too snooty living atop the comics sales heap for decades. The other insisted DC was stuck in World War II and hadn’t had a good idea since Eisenhower without pirating it from Marvel. As somebody with no corner to back, I found the conflict confusing. But watching two guys kept my focus narrow.

Freelance journalist and sometime radio sidekick Reed Tucker takes a wider view. Spanning the period from Marvel’s launch to the present, he describes the parallel development of two industry titans who latch onto the wonder inside readers, and speak to beliefs in justice. Launched in 1961, by 1972 Marvel dominated the market, and has ever since. Tucker gets the business right, but something feels missing from his analysis.

After a very brief introduction to DC’s history, Tucker dives into Marvel’s launch and its industry impacts. Marvel started so shoestring that it relied upon DC to distribute its titles. But heroes like the Fantastic Four, who fought among themselves, or Spider-Man, who often couldn’t pay his bills, touched a nerve for teenage readers. DC assumed audiences stopped reading comics around age 12; Marvel caught older kids longing for something meatier.

Marvel’s heroes had complex inner lives that touched Baby Boom readers, while DC’s heroes remained patriotic pin-up characters from a prior generation. Marvel encouraged pathbreaking artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, while DC maintained a house style so generic, literally anyone could draw any hero. Marvel took risks during an era when risk-taking paid handsomely, while DC conservatively clung to a portfolio worth more in licensing than publication.

Thereafter, Marvel led while DC followed. DC’s Carmine Infantino plundered Jack Kirby, Frank Miller, and other Marvel talent, but shackled them, and their talents sputtered. Marvel pioneered event crossovers, in-universe continuity, and other now-vital aspects of graphic storytelling. DC copied. Even when DC pioneered one domain, live-action cinema, they failed to parley that into marketing success.

Tucker takes the relatively unusual tack of focusing on business and production, spending little time on stories and art. He acknowledges that early Marvel comics had a nuanced depth of characterization that DC, stuck in post-WWII kiddie schlock, didn’t match. But he doesn’t explicate why, as DC matured and Marvel became a factory, Marvel kept outselling. Especially since around 1986, DC’s stories have competed with Marvel’s for psychological complexity.

This is especially perplexing considering how many personalities, like Jack Kirby, Jim Shooter, and Frank Miller, crossed between publishers. DC literally had the ingredients for Marvel-style revolution, but couldn’t translate them into more-than-mediocre sales. Tucker limply says that DC’s in-house management style couldn’t unleash such talent. But that sounds unconvincing when talent moved between the houses throughout the 1980s. Something deeper is at work, and Tucker keeps focus elsewhere.

Tucker offers mere glimpses into even large story developments, like Secret Wars or the Death of Superman, mostly superficial descriptions which anyone who read the actual comics already knows. If Marvel really succeeds from psychological depth and complexity, why not pause on important points? Almost as weird as what Tucker includes is what he omits. Influential writers like Alan Moore, and non-Madison Avenue publishers like Malibu Comics and Dark Horse, get only salutary mentions.

On a personal level, the period Tucker identifies as the high-water mark for printed comic sales, the early to middle 1990s, is actually the period I stopped following comics. Stories became too intricate, universes too massive, and keeping abreast became a full-time job—one I didn’t want because, with young adulthood upon me, I had a literal full-time job. The qualities that drove record sales drove me away.

That being the case, I’d have prefered more attention to stories and art. The business is fascinating, particularly to fans, but sales figures and market dominance follow audience interest, not lead it. Myself, the comics I’ve most enjoyed recently have come from DC, but tellingly, have generally been non-canon graphic novels like Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum. Stories that don’t require decades-long immersion in character backstories and universes.

Speaking of Grant Morrison, a book already exists which addresses the psychology Tucker mostly overlooks. Morrison’s Supergods mixes Jungian analysis with Morrison’s own autobiography of comics experience to plumb how each generation’s new superheroes addresses their time’s unique needs. Maybe fans should read Morrison and Tucker together. By itself, Tucker’s MBA analytics are interesting but anemic, lacking clear insight into what drives readers and their loyalties.