Clash of the Comics Titans

From a business perspective, the two companies have engaged in a real and bitter rivalry, even as their writers and artists and editors enjoyed friendships and hopped between houses. DC (which is owned by Time Warner) and Marvel (a publicly traded company) are again putting their weight behind summer blockbuster movies. "Superman Returns" opened this week (didja know?), and if you flip through this month's Marvel titles, you will find ads touting the DC movie, an intentional irk that once would have been thought taboo. Meanwhile, "X-Men: The Last Stand," a Marvel production, has earned a comfy $224 million since its release last month.

Each publishing house has also launched a new, complicated series in its own universe this summer: "Civil War," a seven-issue epic clash of heroes, is currently unfolding at Marvel, while "52," a weekly saga launched by DC in May, will continue for one year.

To read either company's comic books now -- the complicated story lines, the endless relaunchings of old characters -- is to enter a world that can still be divided into Marvel people and DC people: A DC comic is still for the more orthodox, Marvel is still for self-styled rebels.

DC hires fantastic writers and artists but is cautious about its canon and where they take the characters. (The company's more provocative work can be found under its other imprints, such as the Vertigo brand.)

Marvel, it seems, will always possess the allure of the cool.

DC feels very Windows. Marvel feels very Mac.

Paul Jenkins, who is currently writing Marvel's "Civil War: Front Line," which is about reporters embedded with warring factions of superheroes, has also worked for DC. The big difference, he thinks, is that DC editors want stories to stay in imaginary places, with imaginary presidents, rock stars, cities. Marvel loves anything that references popular culture and current events. When DC goes after a big story, Jenkins has noticed, "it means they want a big story that will really impact the DC universe. But at Marvel, it's more like 'We want a big story that really gets to what's going on in the real world.' "

Joe Quesada, Marvel's editor in chief, remembers the rivalry when he was young -- not only between the two houses, but among readers. In regular conversations with fans on the Internet and in interviews, he says, "I've been trying for years to get that rivalry back up, to really stir the pot, and I think finally it's starting to work. Every once in a while you take a shot at the competitor. Marvel comics are the best in the world, I don't care what anybody says. All of it good fun, with tongue firmly in cheek . . .

"There's still a bit of a difference," Quesada says, in what kind of people read which brand. "Some fans prefer that higher level of pure fantasy that DC has. They've come a lot closer to that Marvel grimness, grittiness. Wonder Woman just killed someone. Snapped his neck. You see their heroes doing a little more morally questionable things. They used to be goody-two-shoes!"

Superman vs. Spider-Man

Marvel creator and "chairman emeritus" Stan Lee -- good ol' Stan Lee! Eighty-three now, long since retired from the game, speaking to us by phone from his office in L.A.-- remembers the 1960s, when DC was always the company on top but had a way of flinching at whatever punches Marvel threw:

"I had friends at DC. Guys would tell me they had these editorial conferences over there and one of them would say, 'Marvel uses more dialogue balloons on their covers,' so they would start doing that and then we wouldn't do it anymore. Then it would be, 'The guys at Marvel use more red on their covers,' and they'd start using more red on their covers, and I'd tell my guys, 'No more red.' I used to marvel -- no pun intended -- that they didn't see what the reason was, why we were suddenly getting all these readers. It was right in front of them. It was the personal problems that our heroes had. When they weren't in costume they could have been you and me; they had to make a living. The DC stories were all plot -- this is the hero, this is the villain who is trying to do something dastardly, and here comes the hero to stop him. The stories I was trying to write were: This is the villain, this is the hero, but unfortunately the hero has a lot of other problems also, and will he be able to take care of his personal life and do something about the villain?"

Now here is Paul Levitz, in a separate phone call. He's DC Comics' president and publisher, and he's also on the West Coast somewhere, promoting "Superman Returns." There used to be more of a split in comic-book personality types, Levitz says -- a way of seeing the world, for loyal readers, in tints of DC or hues of Marvel. "I would argue if the separation is even valid anymore," Levitz says.