by Dave Denio

Created on: April 23, 2008   Last Updated: November 03, 2010

People who are in love with everything Marvel were teenagers in the 1960's or 1980's. They came on board with the emergence of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby or the break out popularity of the X - Men. They came to these stories directly through the comic books themselves. Therefore they want a universe that is simple, serialized, filled with the concerns they had as teens: peer pressure and puberty and escaping from everyday life. These are all temporary subjects so that's how they view their comics. They want and receive a universe where everything stays stable for about six to eight years and then is rebooted and begun again without any acknowledgment of past events, basically, the time it takes to pass through puberty into adulthood. This is why Marvel continues to outsell DC. They are created to be for the transitory reader, the teenager.

Pop culture gets rehashed all the time to lure kids into thinking they are getting the latest, best version of things. Marvel Comics are tailor made for the teen. That's why the star focus at Marvel is usually on the artists. They only effect the way a comic looks. They rarely effect a story or universe where it matters, in the writing. Frank Miller became successful at Marvel then began to develop his superhero characters beyond the simple formats of the 1960's. Marvel steered him off the regular story run and put him on a side rail of special stories. Miller brought real enhancement to Daredevil's narrative. Marvel thanked him, took his new characters, and dragged the story back to its beginnings.

The adult readers in the Marvel Universe that stay beyond the six to eight years want life to be as it was when they first stepped into a comic book store They want their superheroes as bombastically colorful as they've always been. They want their fights and misunderstandings. They want superficial changes to characters, but, in the end, they want the same universe every month. The Marvel Universe is static and simplistic.

The DC Universe has striven for something bigger. Superman grew up. A Robin did die. Sandman began, played, and ended. Gotham City, Metropolis, Fawcett City, Opal City, Krypton, Collu, Oa, Apokaplypse and New Genesis, the Bat Cave, the Fortress of Solitude are fantasy creations of this universe. It's richer than Marvel's world. The villains have more to them than colorful, three-color costumes. DC readers want stories to progress, they want to see their characters changed by the events of the last issue. They

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