Marvel Vs. DC: Contest Of The Champions

MARVEL VS. DC: CONTEST OF THE CHAMPIONS (320kbs-m4a/131mb/57mins)
BBC Radio 4 broadcast: 27th May 2023

Marvel and DC, the two titans of America superhero comics, have been locked in cosmic battle for over six decades - raging across publishing, radio, TV, movies, gaming and animation.

It’s one of the greatest rivalries in the history of pop culture, ferociously debated by generations of readers, fans and industry creatives alike.

While both companies are now worth billions, this wasn't always the case.

This feature goes back to their early comic book roots, where DC comics and young upstart Marvel both had offices in 1960s Manhattan - and yet differed widely in their approach to the genre, posing very distinct ideas of what our superheroes should be – and as a result, what it means to be human. Do we want to look up to the skies or do we really want to see a reflection of ourselves? Are our heroes other, outsiders like gods – or are they basically people like us, who gain strange powers but keep their flaws? Readers had a choice.

The creative rivalry between Marvel and DC comics has always been more than a question of sales or market share. It is a fascinating culture clash of ideals, morals and even politics. It has constituted one of the greatest post-war, pop-culture wars of our times.

For years DC Comics dominated the super-hero genre with its pulp tales of super-powered crime fighting, bright costumes and capes, shiny headquarters, secret identities and primary colours. Their heroes - Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, the Flash, the Green Lantern – have a kind of mythic grandeur. But dig deeper, and there's another story. DC's creative department had its own secret identity, driven mostly by writers and artists who felt themselves to be at the margins of mainstream American society.

Marvel Comics in its modern form arrived later, in the early 1960s, a totally different cultural era. In every way the precocious new kid on the block, Marvel offered a widely different set of ideas about what superheroes ought to be - they would be like us. The tone was less authoritarian than the opposition, politically liberal under the stewardship of Stan Lee, tapping into the emerging counter-culture and creating a web of integrated characters (the ‘Marvel Universe’). Marvel heroes - Spider-Man, the Hulk, Captain America, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four - lived in our world and suffered as we do. They had financial difficulties, dead-end jobs, romantic heartache, teenage angst, even drug addiction, suffered blindness, breakdown and divorce. They encountered street protest and the counter-culture, gang violence and organised racism.

Each company watched the other. Each company tried to outdo the other, either on their own terms or – sometimes brilliantly - their opponents'. This is the comic-book bedrock upon which the blockbuster superhero movie franchises are currently fighting tooth and nail.

Talking to industry legends from both companies, artists, writers, experts and diehard fans, this Archive on 4, presented by documentary maker and lifelong Marvel and DC comics fan Simon Hollis, tells the story of the Greatest Battle on Earth.

A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4