DC Versus Marvel: Who Is Winning 2016 So far?

Whats going on guys welcome to comic island, my name is joey and have you ever wondered whose winning the war between marvel and dc? Well we are half way through the year and Im going to bring up everything that the two studios have done to win our hearts and open our wallets.

The purpose of this article is to list the many different ways that marvel and DC have done to pull your interest. I will be focusing on the branding, not so much who own the rights to what because that could get pretty confusing. That being said lets take a look at how well marvel and dc did at the box office.

Comic book Movies

The year opened with a huge bang with Ryan Reynold’s Deadpool which surpassed everybody’s expectation. The movie only cost 58 million but brought in 782 million worldwide and marvel is laughing their way to the bank.

Then the long awaited batman v superman came out. The production budget was 250 million and made 872 million. Marvel responded with their own hero on hero action with civil war which costed the same amount as BVS but made a whopping 1 billion 152 million dollars.

Then in the same month, marvel hit the big screen again with x-men apocalypse. Production costed 178 million but brought in 534 million.

suicide squad is coming out really soon so I don’t have the numbers for that yet but for the rest of the year, marvel has a chance for a comeback with gambit on October 7^th.

Gambit is still coming out but there are a lot of problems with production so we wont be seeing Channing Tatum the raging Cajun this year.

But we will see Sherlock Holmes as the sorcerer supreme this November. And yes, this movie is a marvel/Disney property. And to end the year, we were supposed to get a sinister six movie but that movie seems to be shelved till a later date.

What about SDCC 2016? Who do you think got more fans chanting their logo? Marvel or DC? Lets start with everything marvel had going for it. we got a full trailer to dr strange which was awesome. Then marvel gave us a bunch of movie announcements. Guardians 2 will introduce Kurt Russel as Ego the living planet as peter quill’s father. Dang they are straying far from the comics. Brie Larsen is playing carol Danvers captain marvel, the vulture will make his big screen debut in Spider-man home coming, and black panther gets his cast.

Comic Book Tv Shows

Oh, and we got a new marvel tv show announcement. Legion, Charles Xavior’s estranged son, is coming to a television screen near you.

So now lets take a look at what DC brought to the table. We are visual creatures and there’s nothing that gets our nerd juices going than an epic trailer and we got 2 of them. But then again, batman v superman made us go nuts but the movie fell kind of short. But whatever the justice league trailer alone was just so good. But that’s not all, DC got an answer for Thor fans in the form of Wonder Woman. If these two trailers were the main course then the Lego batman and the justice action trailers were a very nice dessert.

Lets take a look at how well marvel and dc are doing on tv and Netflix. Arrow is on their 5^th season still going strong along with its spinoff the flash which will enter its 3^rd season with a classic story-line that would please all fans. The band of misfits is also coming back for its second season which will introduce the justice society of America. Supergirl got a second season, Gotham on its 3^rd season, and we got this strange show on its 3r season. Wait, they replaced young justice with this? GODAAMNIT  DC!

Ahem, continuing on, so it looks like DC is dominating cable tv whereas marvel only has agents of shield but then again, ghost rider is coming to agents of shield so maybe that will pull your interest away from flashpoint. Unfortunately agent carter was cancelled and not even Netflix wanted to pick it up. But marvel is going strong with their animated shows such as ultimate spider-man, avengers assemble and guardians of the galaxy. Damn I gotta catch up on some of these shows. Hulk and the agents of smash is sitting in limbo without any news as to if they will get a 3^rd season or not. My guess, its gunna be cancelled.

Since DC seems to be dominating cable TV, its only right that marvel gets a big piece of the pie on netfix. Its all about the defenders for marvel. We got a few very good shows coming up such as Daredevil season 3, Jessica Jones, luke cage and iron fist and of course they will join forces in the Defenders, which is their version of the avengers. There are also talks about a spinoff the punisher tv show staring your favorite crazy gangster killer jon Bernthal.

Ok, we all know marvel dominates Netflix and DC seems to be winning the cable TV race but we cant argue that DC comics is doing all sorts of win in their animated movie department. They have adapted the killing joke into an animated film and following SDCC 2016, we got 3 more dc animated movies to look forward to.

Comic Book Industry

Finally it all comes down to their roots. What is marvel and DC doing with their comic book lineups and events? Because of its success with 2006’s civil war, we are now getting a civil war 2. The x-men has the apocalypse war which seems downright boring to me but we were teased with the death of x storyline which will reveal what happened to present day cyclops and how he died. We know the inhumans are involved somehow which leads us to the x-men versus the inhumans. Sadly one of the biggest absences in the marvel now is the x-men except for the death of x storyline. If you subscribe to conspiracy theories then it looks like marvel is moving away from their x-men comic book titles because fox owns the movie rights. The inhumans movie is scheduled to be released so it would stand to reason that marvel is giving this franchise a bigger push and there arnt any other groups that could replace the x-men except for said group.

I also gotta point out the lack of Fantastic four issues in all new all different marvel AND marvel now. Fox owns X-men And Fantastic Four meaning they own the side characters and all of the villains that we grew to love such as deadpool and cable. That being said, maybe deadpool is up next on the marvel comic book chopping block. I don’t think this will happen at time soon or at all but it is very interesting to speculate.

Over at DC, me and Arden have covered why what we thought about the New 52 BUT, comic book master writer Geoff Johns has brought us DC rebirth, a new status quo that fixes a lot of problems and gave us back our post crisis Wally.

When im asked if I am a marvel or DC fan boy, I say, im neither and im both. I love both companies but right now, because of Rebirth, DC got my attention. This, combined with SDCC 2016 and the great TV shows i watch on cable tv, makes me a dc fan in 2016. But the year isn’t over yet. Marvel did a great job with their cinematic universe and deadpool was just ridiculously good whereas I felt like I died a bit inside after watching Batman V Superman. I have all the confidence in the world that Marvel’s Dr strange will knock it out of the ball park but because of the announcement that Geoff Johns has been promoted to President of DC comics, my focus has shifted to DC.

So there you have it. its half way through the year and my attention has leaned to DC. But this is all subjective, there is no right or wrong in an opinion. Which studio are you enjoying more right now and why?