DC and Marvel are the two biggest comic book publishers in the world with iconic superhero characters we have come to love through comic books. Over the years, both companies have expanded their businesses the include movies, TV shows, Animations, games and mechandise in order to expand their universes. We are going to look at who has the lead in aparticular category
not who will win a fight, or which team is better.
Lets start from the traditional battleground comic book sales and we shall look at yearly sales for the past few years. Lets look at the market share of boyh companies over the last 5 years.
|
YEAR |
DC |
MARVEL |
|
2010 |
34.00% |
43.35% |
|
2011 |
36.77% |
40.93% |
|
2012 |
36.75% |
37.59% |
|
2013 |
33.50% |
36.97% |
|
2014 |
32.47% |
36.78% |
As you can see above, Marvel has dominated the last 5 years when it comes to yearly unit sales. This has been aided by the constant #1 issues, events and exposure the new readers throught movies. This strategy has worked for Marvel which has led them to take chances with lesser known and new characters like Ms.Marvel, Silk, Spider-Gwen which have become critical success.
DC on the other hand has less new #1 issues and mostly depends on its heavy hitter comics for most sales, the lesser known characters don't sell as much as Marvel counterparts.All in all both companies have big sellers like Spiderman ,X-Men,Avengers,Batman,Superman but the is made due to the overral sales of the small characters.
WINNER: MARVEL
When it come to movies it's kind of unfair to compare both companies becouse one has already established its universe while the other is just getting stated. MCU has achieved great success worldwide with characters like Thor, Captain America, Iron Man and becoming house hold names because their movies are light hearted, funny and enjoyable.
For DCCU, they have one movie in their slate right now (Man of Steel) which divided fans and critics alike with two other movies coming out next year it would be better to wait till then. I beleive DCCU underwent a silent reboot as they want us to forget about Superman Returns, Cat Woman,Green lantert like they never happened while saying hey the Dark Knight triology is badass.DC has all its characters so they can use them as they want but despite Warner Bros having more DC movies than Marvel Sudios, we still beleive that Marvel had agreat start yet they just got the winning fomula.
WINNER:MARVEL
DC had ahead start on Marvel with successful shows like Smallvile followed by Arrow, Flash, Gotham and constatine while Marvel decided to enter the TV game with Agents Of Shield, Agent Carter and Daredevil. Both companies have spinoffs of their shows in works with DC having three or four new show coming out this year, Marvel also has Jessica Jones coming filming now with two new show coming to ABC next season.
For me this is a tie becouse Daredevil leveled the odds on the Marvel side.
DRAW
When it comes marchandise Marvel wins hands down due to the Disney marchandising machine which DC unfortunately doesn't have. Disney has a yearly plan for Marvel properties mostly aligned with the release of the movies. Last year alone both Spiderman and Avengers earned more than 1 billion dollars each in marchandise sales. DC doesn't have such huge numbers with the highest seller Batman generating about $400million with less than $1billion annual sales.
WINNER:MARVEL
DC better games compared to Marvel,games like Batman:Arkham city, Injustice:Gods Among Us are more enjoyable and are better known than what ever marvel is putting out.Their is really nothing to talk about here.
WINNER:DC
Here is another area DC does really well with Justice league:Throne of Atlantic and Batman and Robin released this year while Marvel has nothing in the pipeline.Marvel has animated movies but the quality is not comparable to their DC counterparts.
WINNER:DC
These are my scores for the two companies in the respective fields, as you see DC has two wins, Marvel three wins. What do you guys think about the scores.