The great comic book donnybrook
Inside the comic industry’s biggest rivalry: Marvel v. DC
There may be no better pageturner than a classic rivalry. Reed Tucker’s “Slugfest: Inside the Epic 50-Year Battle Between Marvel and DC” takes you behind the historic panels of the comic book industry’s two legendary comic book publishing behemoths and into the minds of their editors, artists and storytellers to show the contention, pettiness and one-upmanship that’s only fitting for a business that brings costumed superheroes to your eyes. The results are as entertaining and chaotic as a knock-down, drag-out donnybrook between Clark Kent and Bruce Banner (the alter egos of Superman and the Hulk, for you newbies).
“Slugfest” starts us off in the cramped New York City offices of both DC and Marvel to show you how the two companies got their footing in an industry that was originally deemed trashy or juvenile by the masses. DC rose to prominence first with it’s success of Superman and Batman in the 1930s and ’40s, but Marvel changed the game in the 1960s by making their characters less heroic, but more relatable to ordinary mortals. Mr. Tucker is able to hammer the differences home within the first several chapters by showcasing the conservative, aristocratic guise of DC’s Fortress of Solitude in contrast to the wild, risktaking exuberance of Marvel’s Stark Tower. He then leads you through the two’s highs and lows in not just the offices, but when they bleed onto the pages of the comic books themselves and eventually into the box office.
From Jack Kirby, to Stan Lee, to Denny O’Neil, to Brian Michael Bendis, readers will be treated with heroic (and villainous) tales of some of the business’s most renowned figures, and will be introduced to some lesser known ones if a reader falls in between obsessive and casual fan.
Mr. Tucker refrains from choosing sides, but lets his interviews and research speak for itself and boy, it speaks in a volume almost as colorful as the characters you see in halftone every Wednesday on New Comics Day. I’m not kidding. This book contains real-life accounts of espionage, thievery and subtle pot-shots, some of which would make even the Riddler green with envy.
“Slugfest” also dishes out the developments that led many of the major writers and artists at both companies to jump back and forth across those hostile enemy lines. Sprinkled throughout are fascinating nuggets of how some superhero crossovers between the companies came to fruition and where some characters were originally conceptualized (like Marvel’s Wolverine, for example).
While “Slugfest” delivers on most aspects of the dirty details and industry insights, Mr. Tucker tends to paint the actual comic book moments in broader strokes than your average fanboy may like. He mentions why a particular storyline occurred, but he doesn’t give too much of a basis of what exactly happened in that storyline, which could confuse some comic newcomers and frustrate veterans of the game.
The same goes for prominent characters. As a young 1990s’ comic fan who grew up on the XMen, I was champing at the bit to see how Chris Claremont’s chainsmoking, card-throwing Gambit impacted both parties, but he didn’t even get a name-drop in the book’s 304 pages. Cyclops, the XMen’s leader, was lucky to get even one mention. Granted, the comic book characters and their stories are not the focus of “Slugfest,” but such omissions become a little more than glaring after a while.
There are some benefits to those broad strokes, however, one of which being further engagement. Whenever Mr. Tucker would mention an artist’s or writer’s work on a particular issue, I was compelled to turn to Google for a visual of the book’s cover art or to get more details on that certain Justice League and Avengers crossover.
In that regard, “Slugfest” puts the fan back into his or her natural habitat. It is worthy of a place among those trade paperbacks at your local comic book store.