She Geek Critique – Not So Distinguished Competition

This weekend I realized why I am so negative about DC, both the comics and the movies. It’s not because I feel there needs to be a big rivalry between Marvel and DC, and I happen to like Marvel more. No, it’s because, for the past few years, DC and Warner Brothers have ruined the things I used to love about DC characters. 

This realization came after watching the new trailer for the Justice League movie. Sure, it shows all the characters and it’s flashy and exciting – except it isn’t. I was surprised at just how blah it was, even with all of the over-the-top Zak Snyder effects. There’s no depth to any of it, no weight behind these classic characters. And that’s where the problem really lies.

Over the past decade or so, DC characters have lost what made them great to begin with. Some have had their origins retconned so many times that no one knows which one is “real” anymore (even the characters themselves!). And the storytelling has disappeared, especially with the movies, replaced by a lot of fighting and effects. They are more concerned with how a character looks than giving the audience reasons to care about them. I mean, really, did anyone care that Superman died in Batman v. Superman? Sure, we all know he’s coming back, but I didn’t hear anyone say they were moved or affected in any way by his death in that movie.

When I was first getting into comics as a pre-teen, I didn’t base my buying on one company or another. I bought Dark Knight, Justice League, Lobo, New Mutants, Sensational She Hulk – I liked the characters and stories, not who published them. They were fun and interesting to read, discovering who these characters were, their motivations, how they handled the situations they ended up in. And guess what – most of the time they didn’t use violence to solve problems or, if they did, it was proportionate and not overblown. There was strategy, a finesse to handling villains.

But the grace has left, not only in the movies but in the comics. DC no longer cares about the long game, only about grabbing headlines with a reboot every year or two (and yes, I will concede that Marvel is guilty of the same). And what made some of their titles unique has been lost. I was reading Batwoman a few years back and stopped when DC went all in on anti-LGBT bullshit, causing the writer and artist at the time to leave. They have moderately changed their ways, so I’m giving the Rebirth Batwoman a try – and it’s so disappointing. One thing that made the earlier series brilliant was the watercolor-style art and now, well it looks like every other comic.

I’ve tried to keep an open mind, not be all Marvel vs. DC about things, but it’s difficult when the characters I grew up enjoying reading about so much are simply no longer around. It’s not a “you ruined my childhood” sort of thing because they didn’t. But I suppose nostalgia wins out this time, wishing for those days when the characters and stories had something more to them than a sleek costume and cool gadgets.

web statistics