Marvel/DC/Whatever: Origings of "Your" Brand (Or How You Got In to Comics)

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I've read just as many good stories in Marvel as I have DC, but I was a huge Marvel fan when I first started out really collecting. I also collected a lot of the Image comics in their heyday, as well as a substantial amount of Dark Horse variants.
I love them all, because the art is really what I look for, not always story (my favorite story though is Kingdom Come from DC). The way so much can be told by a single panel (when drawn correctly) is a true art form and I think what I love most about the recent MCU (and the first Spider-Man movie) is that some of the scenes you can freeze frame and they feel more like comic panels than movie scenes.
Some directors get that, and I'm thankful for that.

 

[Vault101]

Image is still around?
.

well...you know....theres this pretty obscure comic that been out for a while...you probably haven't heard of it "Walking Dead"....oh and Saga but that's nothing special... /sarcasm

they're the ones putting out all the best [footnote/] non super hero[/footnote] stuff I mean there's vertigo but they aren't exactly what they used to be....

I mean cone on...what else would I do? [I/]read super heros?[/I] hahahahaha! what a notion.../semi-sarcasm

 

[Lieju]

I got into comics from Franco-Belgian stuff. Tintin, Iznogoud, Spirou et Fantasio, Asterix, Lucky Luke, Inspector Canardo, etc. My mum really likes Tintin, and that was the stuff I got from the library.
Of course also Donald Duck, that's how I learned to read, and I have vague memories of 'reading' Tintin to my mum and making up the dialogue because I couldn't read.

I tried reading some American Superhero comics but had problems following them. I liked Spiderman from the tv-series, so I tried getting into it, but was quickly bored and confused. And finding issues was difficult.
And then I got into manga and abandoned American stuff almost completely.

I did like Hellblazer, though, and a bunch of other Vertigo stuff, like Sandman.

If you don't count Vertigo, I don't really have a 'side'.

I like Batman a lot, mostly for his rogue's gallery, but marvel has more series I like.

 

[ExtraDebit]

Personally I go with Marvel because alot of DC characters just seems dumb, green lantern? a dude that get his power from a lantern.....how lame is that! Superman, an alien with access to advance technologies and god like super power and what does he do? just fly around and punch people.

Flash with the speed force......more space magic.

As you can tell, I really really hate DC comics.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Interesting the number of parental responses.

The Marvel/DC binary never affected me. Most of what I know about it I've gathered from The Escapist. Apparently a lot of people feel like you have to "pick a side".

This was more or less real to me since I was a kid. And I suppose I defaulted to the "Marvel" camp because it's what I read, but I was never really all "MARVEL RULES!"

Still, this may be regional. My family gets all disgusted that I drink Coke instead of Pepsi, and didn't like my previous stance of "Whatever's on sale this week." I drank a lot of Pepsi when I was sick a few years ago. Really sick. And I have this association built up between the two to the point where Pepsi now triggers an ill feeling. But nooooooo....The lines are drawn and I am the enemy!

Tangent aside, there may be a reason you didn't com across it til the Escapist.

I grew up reading Asterix, Lucky Luke and Tintin. And these days I like collecting old-but-not-that-old (i.e. 80s/90s) Batman comics, because ever since the Chris Nolan movies and the Arkham games I've become a huge Batman fan, and it followed that I wanted more of it. So I read Long Halloween, Arkham Asylum, Knightfall, etc.

Until the mid or late nineties, I'd never heard of Lucky Luke or Asterix, and only knew Tintin because there was a cartoon. I still haven't read a single Tintin comic. Nothing against him, mind. Just....They didn't stock the comics here when I was a kid and I no longer care enough to seek them out.

It is indeed a regional thing, as trying to differentiate between Captain America and Superman would be seen as a yankee thing to do.

 

[SweetShark]

I know I will sound strange, but I was never a Marvel/DC "label" guy.
If you see in one of my Lists I created in Listal, I read many different comics in my life, but I guess I am a Conan[the old books]/Asterix/Lucky Luke/Iznogoud/Arka's comics/Almanako comics guy.

I only read from Marvel comics of Spiderman/Hulk/Ironman, but only few issues.
Maybe some Superman/Batman comics [The Killing Joke or other special books doesn't count], but I am not sure.

But now I have only one label for me:

The "Last Man Standing: Killbook of a Bounty Hunter" guy

I am so g*y for Gable right now

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Started with 2000AD and some XMEN - but they are difficult due to history - think the main story at that time was where Wolverine got all the metal stripped off his bones by Magneto. Also Death of Superman was great. My main comic interest came with Image because they had only started so it was easy to catch up on back issues if needed. Spawn, The Maxx, Savage Dragon were good reads. Some of the others like Prophet, Supreme etc could have been good had they great writers instead of just wanting to release characters with zero passion in keeping them going.

After that i just stuck with graphic novels for Batman etc instead of buying comics every month. Does anyone remember the Batman vs Spawn comic? The DC one was shit but the image one was awesome. Batman through his batarang at Spawns face and Spawn just smiled. After that he had to sew the a head length split with a shoelace. lol.

 

[Zipa]

One that sticks out to me is my love of Star Trek, I remember sitting down with my Dad and we would watch them together. It just sort of carried on from there, I kept watching them when I was a teenage and still into adulthood I am still a fan. Though admittedly I am much more a critic now of certain shows.

 

[Queen Michael]

My mom had a big collection of old humor comics from the sixties that she let me and my brother inherit. (Here in Sweden, humor comics sold in grocery stores are the most common form of comics.) We liked them, and when we started watching the Spider-Man series in the middle nineties, we went to a used comics store to buy Spider-Man comics now and then. Secret Wars was serialised in the Swedish Spider-Man comic books when it came out here, since every issue of Spider-Man here collected two American comic books, and that way we got to learn about the rest of the Marvel universe. Since X-Men and Spider-Man were the only Marvel comics published regularly here in Sweden and I was (and still am) crazy about Wolverine, it was only natural for me to keep collecting Marvel comics.

When I was a kid, my mom wouldn't let me buy X-Men since she felt that it seemed too violent, but I got back at her by buying every single issue published in Sweden since it was first released once I was old enough for her to let me. Finding them all took ten years, but I did it.

 

[Foolery]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. My school library had a few colour hardcover books of the Mirage classics. I still read it now.
A new IDW published series incorporating various parts of past TMNT incarnations was started in 2012 by Kevin Eastman and several others. The rotation of artists and writers keeps it fresh.
So, I suppose my preferred brand is IDW and what was Mirage.
Was never much of a Marvel or DC kind of guy.

 

[TheIronRuler]

I was on vacation, strolling around NYC while being occasionally pulled on a leash by my New-yorker uncle when I stumbled on a book-shop stall in the middle of the street and spotted "The Watchmen". Being the fanboy that I was, I immediately forked over eighteen dollars and bought the book, then loved every moment of it. Now I'm slowly creating a library of graphic novels (or serialized comic book series) while simultaneously reading online comics. DC for me, please. I like Vertigo.

 

[ninjaRiv]

I was exposed to Batman movies from a pretty early age, so that character was a bit of a constant; especially with the animated series. But I didn't really get into comics until later, around 14. I picked up the occasional book here and there. First comic I ever read consistently was "Wolverine and Gambit." It was a British reprint of the solo books. It was later renamed "Wolverine and Deadpool," when they ran out of Gambit stories. I probably had about20 of those and a couple of graphic novels when the Constantine movie came out, just as I was old enough to see it. Man, that movie blew my mind! Not because it was good, just because it was the first mature movie I had ever seen in a cinema. Saw a Hellblazer graphic novel in a book shop and that made me the nerd I am now. So I was never really loyal to any one company, I just knew what I liked. Still the same thing. I tend not to read comics much, now, just because there's not a lot I DO like.

So the whole Marvel vs DC thing doesn't make sense to me, really. I don't know how people can not like both. Liking more books from one company makes sense, sure; but hating one and swearing some sort of loyalty to another makes no sense. Both kind of suck at the minute, though... DC probably has the best books, imo, but not much better.

 

[Ikasury]

i think the first comics i read was 'Johnny the homicidal Manic' XD

... and pretty much stuck to the even 'weirder' side of comics since, tried getting more into the whole marvel/dc deal, but i watch enough cartoons as a kid to cover the 'gist' of that brand of crazy, course the whole continuity insanity... seriously i tried just reading 'Teen Titans' continuity only they go from 'Teen Titans' to 'Titans' to some other gibagaber and about fifty other random instances for the characters i give any damn about to the point i just threw the book down and went back over to 'Preacher' and '100 bullets' :3

also comic versions of books i love or based on stuff i like is always fun, ALIENS comics are crazy (and i've read them all) as well as the Hellraiser comics... i honestly couldn't believe there were comics for that, but lo, there they are!! *hugs* and pretty much anything else weird i can find... i swear i'll go to a barnes and nobles, completely ignore the manga/DC/MARVEL shelves and dive into the 'bs we don't know how to classify' graphic novels and find some of the best more random ones and love them~<3

though i will give credit to 'Identity Crisis' as that kinda made me realize even DC wasn't corny-stupid-kids-stuff anymore, plus it made me like all the 'lesser' characters more then the big name guys anyway :3

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

I would say my dad got me into comics in general, by making me watch Smallville with him and my mom when i was younger. I grew up DC, but I became a Marvel girl when I was younger. I remember going to see X-men the last stand as my first PG-13 movie when I was 12 and falling in love.

And now I feel oooooooooooold.

Oh god I'm sorry XD

 

[Mister Eff]

My biggest exposure to these brands before I started reading comics was the various 90's Marvel animations (X-men, Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man etc etc). But when I got into comics, it was mostly Vertigo stuff, Preacher, Sandman etc.
What got me into mainstream Marvel comics was the series Runaways (WHICH NEEDS SOME MORE DAMN ISSUES TO COME OUT) and NYX, a short, very cool series which marks the first comic appearance of X-23. It took me a couple of years to get into DC proper, because I knew less about the characters.

Now I'm pretty equal on both and also read comics from other publishers too, Image, Dark Horse, IDW etc. But to start off, I was all about Marvel and the bigger Vertigo Graphic Novels.

 

[Crispee]

Curiously enough, my first comic book was a trade collection of the original Thor comics. I'd seen the Spider-Man films at a glance and knew of The Hulk and some others, but I read this Thor collection, which got me into The Avengers, which got me into The Hulk and Captain America and Spider-Man.

I mostly read Marvel because of convenience, Marvel's "Essentials" lines are all really good comic books, AND I could easily follow the Marvel Universe because it was much smaller back in the 60s comics. Personally I don't read ongoing comics because of all the history I'm not caught up on, this is also the reason I don't follow DC comics much, Because the origin comics of DC's main superheroes were written back at the start of superhero comics, before people knew how to make them good. The 60s at the start of Marvel's runs were kind of the apex of comic books in my opinion, but that's neither here nor there.

I'll read DC comics though, I like them for their good miniseries and one shot comics, and I like Marvel for their trade collections of 60's silver age stuff, because that's personally my favorite era in comics.

But all this is a bit more information than the thread asked for. SO, Tl;dr: I got into Marvel comics through a trade collection of Thor's original comics and carried it on from there, I got into one or two DC thigns from the films.