Marvel Comics -- The Prodigal Son.

Back in the 80's and early 90's, Marvel had a peculiar power. It could wipe out the competition almost any time it pleased, with the notable exception of DC. Marvel was like the General Motors of comics, DC was the Ford, but there was no third place, no Chrysler, and certainly no Toyota or Honda. Maybe the closest next competitors would be Jeep, or something.

So Marvel merely need to ramp up it's production, and squeeze all the other comics off the shelves.

No retailer back then would dare to skip a Marvel comic. (Heck, we used to order EVERY comic, until there got to be too many. The first comic I decided NOT to order was a wacky little thing called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles -- but that's another story.)

When comics went through a bubble in the early 90's, Marvel started putting out more and more dismal titles, badly written, badly drawn. Marvel had always had the pick of talent, but when extremely gifted artists like Todd McFarlane, (Spider-man), and Jim Lee, (X-Men), left Marvel's reaction was to say, good riddance, who needs ya, you'll never work in this town again, we have Spider-man! We have Hulk! We can put any Joe Shmo to work and sell the hell out of them.

And for a few years, it proved to be true. They put out more and more comics with less and less content; endless and needless crossover mega events, die-cut, metallic, variant covers.

Only this time, they were facing companies like Image, and Dark Horse, and Valiant, who didn't immediately lay down and die.

When the bubble burst, Marvel blamed the distributors for supporting the indy's, and tried to distribute their own comics. They seemed to lose all awareness of just how crappy their comics became. They made a different character than Peter Parker Spider-man for almost a year. (Hey, forget this James Bond fella, let's make the 009 the new star!) Incredibly stupid decisions.

Not surprisingly, they went Chapter 11 bankrupt.

A long slog, where most comics shops disappeared, and everyone struggle to keep the comic industry alive.

Meanwhile, DC was like the steady younger brother. Never quite got caught up in the mania of variant covers, always put out a solid product, created a quality adult line of comics called Vertigo (Sandman, Watchmen, Preacher, etc.)

For a short time, DC and Marvel were even in sales. Finally, Marvel hired an astute editor in chief, Joe Quesada, who understood that artists and writers were important, and Marvel started the long hard climb back up.

Lately, Marvel has been blowing DC out of the water again. How are they doing it ?-- by putting out crappy, endless mega events, with fancy, variant covers. Here we go again.

DC's strength has always been their Graphic Novel selection. They have a great line of titles, which they keep in stock, which they will even consign when an important movie is coming out such as V for Vendetta or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. They always put out a solid product, vary rarely over reach in their variants and mega events (though that is becoming a problem with them too.)

Marvel has never quite got the hang of graphic collections. They are short-term thinkers, like a flighty Peter Parker vs the more thoughtful planning Batman. Marvel's final answer was to put almost EVERYTHING into graphic novel form, which is pretty ridiculous. And they are still terrible about keep their books in stock.

Still, Marvel's sales are way up.

In essence, Marvel's characters just seem to be stronger group to sell. Spider-man, the X-Men, Daredevil, the Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, etc.

Superman, Batman, Green Lantern are no slouches, but they can't quite create the overall appeal of Marvel.

Marvel seems to be able to create sales by doing all the wrong things, and DC seems not to be able to create sales by doing all the right things.

How can it be wrong if it works? Because it's short-term thinking, and we've been down this road before. I can only hope that Marvel will pull back a bit on their promotions, but I doubt they will. As long as they back it up with quality writing and art, and don't depend too much on gimmicks, we may come out all right.