Brooks on Books: "Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC" by Reed Tucker

I love this book. It's just the right blend of taking the subject seriously and having fun with it, just the right combination of facts and opinion, just the right amount of reportage and gossip.

As a DC guy for all my comic book life, though--which is close to 100% of my total life--it pains me to read it. Oh, I'm not one of the hyperpartisan fans mentioned in the text who support one of the Big Two comic publishers at the expense of the other. I have always read both, and when I bought comics and stayed "current" in the hobby, I bought both. But my heart has always been with DC, and my favorite characters are the ones controlled by that company.

So it's tough reading so many anecdotes about Marvel surpassing DC in commercial and critical success, Marvel being perceived as the cooler and hipper outfit as DC time and again tries to imitate it and play catch-up. It hurts, I tells ya.

It's a lot of fun, though. Tucker, a former New York Post staffer and freelancer who is not in the industry, offers an evenhanded but lively account of the decades-long rivalry between DC and Marvel. The former company got a 20-plus-year head start, but when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby invigorated the field with Fantastic Four and other creations, the tides turned and the game was on.

At times it does seem like a game, with publishers, editors, and creators taking playful snipes at each other but still socializing and competing in friendly softball games. At other times, it feels more like a cold war, with personal animosity driving business and creative decisions (like DC and its executive Paul Levitz's anger at Marvel executive Joe Quesada's brash, insulting interview blocking efforts for a Batman/Daredevil team-up). Over the years, though, the two companies managed to cooperate on special projects, share talent, and work together on relevant issues. In Tucker's narrative, there is always at least an undercurrent of rivalry, though.

Tucker spoke with many comic book notables and also gathered info from sources like mainstream newspapers and fanzines and comic book magazines. His skillful integration of that research makes for a smooth read. The history of the medium has been told (and told well) before, but Tucker offers a unique slant on the saga. His focus on the relationship between the two largest publishers mean there is a lot here for people who have read other tomes. Sean Howe's excellent Marvel Comics: The Untold Story  is similarly compelling and gossip-flavored, but there is a lot new in here even if there is some overlap in the themes.

If Jim Shooter, former Marvel editor-in-chief, was a controversial figure in Howe's book, he may be topped by former Marvel president Bill Jemas in Tucker's. One of my favorite moments, even though I am a DC guy, is when the publishers meet for a Comics Code Authority conference and Jemas makes it a point to bring a bunch of guys he just hired away from DC just to stick it to the other side. DC has two reps there, Archie Comics has one. When DC squawked about the unnecessary entourage, "Jemas contended that the number of people from each company was in direct correlation to sales."

That's a great example of the kind of tidbit you get in Slugfest, but most of the time, the feud is friendlier. Tucker shows how the underlying tensions remain even as the specific dynamics often change. In the 1960s, it's the upstarts at Marvel against the staid, conservative DC. Both companies get new corporate overlords and flirt with financial disaster. DC finds licensing success and movie success with Superman while Marvel tries again and again to get some movies off the ground. Now, of course, Marvel Cinematic Universe releases are massive events while DC struggles to find consistent success despite its favorable results on the small screen.

And of course, the battle wages on in the comics itself despite a landscape that is much different than it was in the 1960s. After years of skirmishes in areas like price increases, page counts, variant covers, etc., the two publishers seem like intellectual property farms in an increasingly narrow market for readership. They are still around, though, and still competing not only against all of the other entertainment options out there, but against each other.

Tucker offers valuable perspective on the epic rivalry while wisely refraining from choosing sides. He references the sniping between fans of DC and Marvel but concentrates on the people actually working for the two companies. Slugfest shows that the giant adversaries have a symbiotic but contentious relationship and that their conflict has been an entertaining driver of change in the medium for years and will continue as such. Anyone who grew up on comics and took a side in the eternal DC or Marvel debate will love this, but so will those who always made room for both. Tucker's book is strong enough to bring everyone together--maybe even Paul Levitz and Joe Quesada.