This article is for my Friend, my Brother, Andrew Buehler. From calling each other when Smallville was on to today. You’ve always had my back and hopefully you’ve known that I’d always have yours.
Ever since I started this site and made it known that I was a huge comic book fan, I’ve had one question posited to me on multiple occasions : Marvel or DC? Now, this is a bit of a rough question because I love both companies for so many different reasons. Each have made some truly amazing decisions and put out some of the best stories I’ve ever read and each company has made decisions that made me question if they were ultimately trying to sabotage themselves.
So why do I really love DC Comics?
Let’s let the comics speak for themselves here :
Although I love all of the previous moments shown and all of the characters depicted in those moments, we have yet to talk about someone who is very important to me :
Superman still is and always will be my favorite Superhero. That surprises many people and I get it, why would I love the hero who in the films leveled a city and just kinda blinked when the nations’s capital was bombed? Because there’s another version of him out there…Let’s take you to metropolis in the mid 2000’s. Geoff Johns and Gary Frank bring us a comic called Superman : Secret Origin and it’s legitimately one of my all-time favorites. In it, they retell the early days of Superman but set it in a more modern day setting. It starts out in Smallville and Clark is learning about his powers and it’s got some great moments early on because it tells the origin of Lex Luthor as well as Clark Kent. But the moment I really want to focus on happens in issue #6 :
It’s a great moment that shows that Superman wants nothing more than to help and inspire. It’s everything I love about the character.
Grant Morrison continues this trend in All-Star Superman : Now, I’m not going to get into everything in that comic because it is wild and crazy but it has some truly amazing moments but the moment I’m referencing is my absolute favorite from the book. All you need to know is that Superman is dying and trying to do everything he needs to before he goes but during all of the crazy fights and everything else going on, this moment happens and I’m going to let it speak for itself :
He doesn’t grab her. He doesn’t guilt her. He just puts a hand on her shoulder and reminds her of how strong she is. Superman isn’t my favorite hero because of what he can do, but because of what he chooses to do.
Now you’ll notice that everything I referenced was written by either Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns or Scott Snyder. That’s largely in part due to the fact that over the last 25 years, you could make the case that one of them had a part in just about every major story of DC Comics. Infinite Crisis, Batman and Robin, Final Crisis, Court of Owls, Endgame, Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night, Brightest Day, Throne of Atlantis, Forever Evil, Metal and Multiversity have all had at least one of those writers on it and honestly, I just scratched the surface. Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t other great writers out there. Gail Simone, Greg Rucka, Brian Azzarello, Charles Soule, Marv Wolfman, Jeff Lemire, Marguerite Bennett, Robert Venditti, Joshua WIlliamson and many others have all done amazing things at DC and I genuinely love all of them as writers but I wanted to show you what really made me fall in love with DC Comics as a whole and writing styles of these 3 men and the aspects of the characters they wrote is what kept me coming back for more. The truth that Wonder Woman reveals, The wonder and excitement that Green Lantern seeks, the perseverance that Batman maintains, the love that Flash carries, the regality of Aquaman, the coaching mentality of Cyborg and most of all, The Hope of Superman.
I’ll always love DC Comics.
