When Did You Realize You Were DC Comics All the Way? OR… When I Realized I Was DC but Had Never Thought About It Before!

General Discussion Comic Books
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The argument among fans will always rage on… Who’s better? DC or Marvel?
When I was a younger fan in the 70’s 80’s and 90’s I always just laughed at this debate. I thought it was pointless. I was just glad there were so many good comic books to read.
BUT… now. With the cost of Comic Books being so high every one of us, young and old, (I’m 57 tomorrow the 27th) has had to make hard decisions.
And DC won! I can give up Avengers, Spider-Man, and surprisingly even Daredevil. I do read the Conan series (and Black Cat because its fun) from Marvel BUT that’s IT from Marvel.

It turns out… I cannot live without Detective Comics, Batman, Red Hood, Nightwing, Batgirl (and Cassandra Cain and Barbara Gordon. Love them both), all the Robins, Wonder Woman, Superman etc. etc. etc… I can keep going!
I had taken about a ten year hiatus from Comics because of rising costs and putting a daughter through college… but those DC Comics were just calling out to me. It took me all this time to realize I’m a DC guy all the way.
When did you realize you were ‘DC’ all the way!?
(ALSO… in order to stay on topic… this is about the comics… not a debate about the movies)

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You are a great human being. I like DC far more than Marvel. I’m attached to the characters in a way that Marvel just can’t stop. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like them. I’ve been reading Spider-Man (2018-) and it’s pretty good.
Happy birthday!

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I decided to go Dc fully since, well as long as I can remember. I had lots of dc toys, then I read those little easy books about dc. As I grew up I fell in love with the comics and the characters. Marvel just didn’t seem to be an option. And happy birthday! :birthday::confetti_ball::gift::tada::balloon:

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Not to go against the grain here, but… I’m being honest through and through. I’m non-bias and fair weather. I read everyone.

I love Tim Drake, but if I don’t like the way it’s going I’ll quit reading for a while (first year of new YJ title by Bendis as example). Same with X-Men. Or Hellboy. I follow creative talent mostly, so I like all publishers equally?

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Believe or not this argument was around in the sixties when I first started reading comics. I can remember telling a friend on my block that he had to read
DC Comics only, because Marvel stunk. Hey, I was twelve. I made him pinky swear. Then very shortly after, around January of 1968 I discovered Spider-Man (issue #59). I was immediately hooked. And within a few short months, Spidey, The FF, Captain America and Iron Man were competing with Supes, Batman, The LSH and Aquaman, for my meager allowance and bottle-changing money. From that day forward, I knew it was comics I liked and not a particular brand or company.

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Growing up and into my late 20’s I read both. Never been a big fan of Superman or Batman but Flash, LOSH, JLA, JSA, New Gods and a lot of Earth-2 books. Marvel was Thor (far and away my favorite and really got me into mythologies, especially “western” mythologies) Hulk, Dr Strange and What if?..I never really got into Clairmonts X-Men.

However, being a proud SoCal’er, I kinda started resenting Marvel because they were so NYC focused.they pretty much acted like the West Coast didn’t exist. Yeah, they did Avengers West Coast and it was garbage and had no real understanding of West Coast culture. One day I woke up and said to myself “FU Marvel, NYC is not the epicenter of the freakin world or the galaxy. I went to my local comics shop and cancelled all my Marvel titles. When they asked why, I basically told them “because NYC ain’t the freakin center of the universe so bleep Marvel.” Never gone back back to Marvel since. A few of their miniseries like Secret Wars, Kree - Skrull War and Infinity Gauntlet in TBP.

And I still hold that view, as it was made pretty clear in their film franchise as well, that NYC is still the center of their world.

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@DeSade-acolyte I remember Marvel’s The Champions being set in L.A. I don’t know how accurate it was. I’m as familiar with your regional culture as I am with Irkutsk, Russia.

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Champions was passable but that was one out of the dozens of NYC centric books.

I do think that DC, having gotten into the tv/film/animation business when they did, they did a much better job at making the west coast relevant, understanding and representing it.

But I will confess to being on the west coast side of the fence in the east coast/west coast rap “war” as well. I much prefer NWA to Public Enemy, for example.

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Hey@DeSade-acolyte, I understand your annoyance with Marvel’s NYC-centric-universe being a turn-off. Everything happened in NYC. It’s no wonder the city went bankrupt in the mid-seventies. And it always seemed a bit too pat that either the FF or the Avengers were out of town when Galactus or Ultron came a-calling. That said, Silver and Bronze Age Marvels comics are some of the best comics ever produced. And I could be wrong about this (I’m sure @TurokSonOfStone1950 will straighten me out if I’m wrong), but wasn’t Gerry Conway (a native New Yorker) one of the first creators to move a prominent hero–Daredevil–to the west cost in the early seventies?

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Daredevil went to San Francisco in 1972. I wasn’t reading comics them. But did in around 1973 or 74. Temember him with Black.Widow the

There was a lot of issues of West Coast Avengers that I remember seems to have started in.1984 by Rkger Stern
.
Founders

Hawkeye
Mockingbird
War Machine
Wonder Man
Tigra.

Wonder Man was oa stuntman who often worked on the west coast before that.

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I get what you’re saying about Marvel seeming New York-centric. While they’ve had characters and groups be in other places… they do tend to be more New York… east coast then anything else.
With that said… I never really minded that.

I just found myself slowly returning to comics and realizing how much the DC Universe drew me to it… and the Marvel Universe just does not.

If there’s a Conan Comic being published (by anyone) then I’m going to collect because that character has been a part of my life since early childhood. BUT… the DC characters overall just keep my interest, draw me in and keep me captivated.
It was just a surprise to me since I never focused on that before.
I just read everything… but now, on a tight budget, my focus really remains on DC.

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I love books from many publishers. I have Marvel Unlimited ( DC Universe is waaaaay better ), and the majority of the books I read now come from Image, Darkhorse, Ahoy and so on. But I’ve loved the DC Universe for decades, its hands down the most imaginative and risk taking universe in comics.

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I can’t say am DC exclusive. I like independent comics too. I don’t read Marvel much except for Dr. Strange.
I read DC more than anything else. I‘Ve read Wonder Woman since I could read and anything she appears in. I’ve got to say I’ve been mostly DC all my life. My husband likes Marvel and day Dark Horse, so we have nerd fights occasionally, but we have a good understanding of each other’s fandom.

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Growing up I read whatever comics I could get my hands on. I can remember in the 90’s when I was elementary school how big the Marvel and DC trading cards were, because for a long time THAT was our comics education. I was always a fan of Superman and Batman thanks for the movies, cartoons and comics.

If I had to pick a moment where I firmly planted my flag in the DC camp, it would have to be the summer of 1997. I’d been hearing about this new Green Lantern named Kyle Rayner. Thanks to the DC Comics area of America Online (yep, back in these days) I saw the latest issue (issue 90) was going to have an untold part of Kyle’s origin. I figured I’d give this a try as a jumping on point. I gathered what spare money I had and went to my local comic shop to pick it up that Wednesday. When I picked it up, the person behind the counter said they had a fifty cent bin. I’ve never heard of a fifty cent bin before, so I wanted to see what they had.

Inside was the Armageddon 2001 annual of Justice League. I remembered the cover from house ads i’d seen in some of my comics from a few years back. It was fifty cents, what the hell, right? I took my comics home with me and went straight to my room. Since it was a very hot summer, I decided to sit on the floor since it was cooler and read. The Green Lantern issue was interesting. I felt like I had a better handle on who Kyle was as a person. The Justice League Annual, however had a much bigger impact.

When Waverider touches Martian Manhunter to see his future, he’s become an all-knowing guru, doling out advice to those who seek him. This guy comes to him after a long and perilous journey and asks him what the meaning of life is. J’onn’s response? “Life is like an oreo cookie” As the man walks away in frustration and anger and starts muttering to himself like an old cartoon. I don’t know why, but that cracked me up. It set the tone for the rest of the issue, which I loved!

Whenever I got spare money or loose change, I’d go to the comic store to see what else was in the fifty cent bin. It was a lot of JLI/JLE annuals and the Quarterly’s. Reading those opened me up to characters that I knew about but hadn’t quite clicked yet. I broke out my DC trading cards to get more background on the characters, which in turn lead me to other characters. I knew about the characters and the world, but now I was clicking with them.

So yea, that experience made me a die hard DC fan. It started with Superman and Batman, with various comics and trading cards, but that day made me plant my flag with DC. And yes, I still have that Green Lantern and Justice League issue in my collection. The Justice League issue is signed by Giffen, DeMatteis and Maguire.

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Hey, at least it happens to be in L.A. sometimes. The only time my hometown has ever been mentioned in ANY comics related material was a single episode of Young Justice a long, long time ago.

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When I was a kid, I picked up two comics: Superman, and Uncanny X-Men. I don’t know how I ended up with those two. But I liked the Superman stories a lot more. They seemed to be about character, while the X-Men were just posing all the time and trying to look cool. From then on I stuck with DC.

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X-Men and Spider-Man went off the rails in the mid-1990s. 'Nuff said.

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@superby1: I love your story of how you got into comics. It reminds me of my entry into the “four-color” world. But we didn’t have comic shops, trading cards or AOL Online. But we did have candy stores with spinner wracks with new, shiny comics and an old, dusty book shop under the EL on Fulton Street in Brooklyn with boxes of–are ready for it–5 cent comics!. I’d visit that store whenever a spare quarter magically showed up in my Levi’s and snatch up any book with Superman, Batman, THE LSH, The Flash and Aquaman on the cover I could get my grubby little hands on.

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I became a DC guy when I was a little kid because of Super Friends. I just didn’t know it until 1985 when I started reading comics.

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Age 12, broken leg, sent my dad to get me x-men and he came home with GL 48, haven’t looked back since

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