Watch Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and the first 7 episodes of Luke Cage. Honestly the first half of Luke Cage may be my favorite bit of their entire TV universe.
I’ll watch it all eventually and maybe this summer once I’ve gotten caught up on Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl. I simply cannot believe the embarrassing number of good to great superhero shows we have available now! Comic collecting me from the 80’s and 90’s is extremely jealous of 45 year old me.
Those CW DC shows are in no way comparable to the Netflix Marvel shows. They’re fun little diversions at most. Iron Fist aside, the Netflix shows are truly great TV.
The CW shows are quite faithful to the original source material. Far moreso than any of the DC films. The camp and fun is what makes them great and frankly a breath of fresh air. Also, this season of Arrow has been tremendously entertaining.
Marvel and DC have always had that same dichotomy in the approarch to their books. Both can be appreciated for what they are and I’m thankful that they offer different takes on heroes.
Certainly more than the films, yes. I’m not getting in the middle of a marvel vs. DC flamewar, so all I’ll say is that I definitely feel the marvel TV shows are on a completely different quality level.
First off, I think Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is garbage. It got decent for a while, but it’s garbage again, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. But not in this thread. Offering this disclaimer here just to be clear that when I talk about Marvel vs. DC shows, I’m really speaking strictly about Netflix Marvel shows vs. DC CW shows (I’m also never going to watch Gotham).
So with that out of the way, @stusser and @davelong are both right! Netflix’s shows are aiming to be Prestige TV—and they usually get pretty close. They’re trying to be better than average TV, and often are. They’re more adult and ask for more patience from the viewer (erring on this side actually), things we associate with higher quality dramas. Not coincidentally, that’s kind of the same thing Brian Michael Bendis had going on with Alias (his Jessica Jones book) and his Daredevil run in the comics that so much of the Netflix run draws from. So it’s not like it’s unfaithful to the comics, but it’s modeled after some specific comics that were already a little bit different from the stereotypical mainstream superhero comics from both Marvel and DC.
The CW just wants to comic as much comics as it can comic into its shows, comic comic comic. Earlier seasons of Arrow took a shot at playing things a little straighter and more realistically, but once the Flash and metahumans were thrown into the mix, they fully embraced the sci-fi/supernatural/fantasy elements and haven’t looked back. Time travel, superhumans, alternate universes, costumes costumes costumes. They’re picking up any character Warner didn’t nail down with the movies and putting together team-ups and crossovers and giant shark persons and anything their budget and schedules will allow. It is, needless to say, trying to be something very different from the Netflix shows, in the same way a Justice League (or even Avengers) comic was usually doing something very different from Bendis’s street-level heroes of New York (at least prior to Bendis’s ascent to power in the New Avengers days when he started pushing his style into the larger Marvel world).
So that’s my long way of saying Netflix and CW are apples and oranges, there’s a place for both. I think Netflix has a slightly better track record, but I don’t think what either of them are striving for is objectively a better goal. There’s some objective difference in production values that’s tied to the budgets and scope of what they’re doing, but I won’t hold that against the CW.
I honestly don’t expect the Defenders to top the alien invasion crossover event from the CW shows this year, just as Arrow’s earlier (and certainly lingering) “gritty realistic vigilante” style doesn’t hold a candle to Daredevil’s.
Get ready to rumble.
But not in this thread.
Good analysis. But isn’t it funny how in their respective styles, the Marvel/DC shows have gone back to their Silver Age roots? Marvel=semi-“serious”, semi-“gritty”, semi-“realistic”, DC=balls to the wall comic whackiness?
And I’ve had fun with both the collections. Just like when I was a kid, while I professed Marvel adherence partly because I loved Marvel, and partly because that’s what the cool kids did, I moonlighted with DC, and I loved the bizarre side of DC in the Silver Age (which Grant Morrison has given numerous paeans to).
But curse market differentiation - why can’t we have both? After all, juxtaposing the fantastic with the everyday heightens both. For me the sweet spot with Marvel was the original Infinity War (back in the very early 70s was it?) when Marvel had established their “grounded” heroes and first brought them face to face with cosmic marvels. That was pretty mind-blowing at the time, watching that window onto the vast expand. Conversely, I really enjoyed the Green Arrow/Green Lantern run, when whacky old DC got a bit “serious” for a while, then later when the Vertigo series came out, some of those runs (e.g. Hellblazer) got a great mix of the gritty and grounded/fantastic as well.
IOW, sometimes I think they get a bit stuck in their respective market differentiations - I think there could happily be more irruption of the fantastic in the Netflix shows and a bit more serious stuff in the DC shows (an it were merely less cheesy, more realistic relationship stuff).
Isn’t Iron Fist the weakest one here? Not in terms of power, but in terms of how much people actually care about the character.
I’m guessing that prior to their shows, Jessica Jones was the least well known, but Iron Fist and Luke Cage weren’t far behind. Now I’d say you’re probably right, since Iron Fist is the newest and has the worst show.
None of the Marvel shows have gone back to their Silver Age roots. The characters in the netflix shows, other than Daredevil, didn’t even exist in the silver age, and the Daredevil show is heavily based upon more modern runs and Frank Miller’s revised origin from the 80s.
I had heard of Iron Fist, but only vaguely remembered the character as a blacksploitation kind of thing. Jessica Jones and Iron Fist I did not know. I’m a nerd, but not a comics nerd.
Before their respective series I only knew of Daredevil.
Daredevil is the only one I was familiar with prior to the show due to the Frank Miller run in the comics. There was also the Affleck movie, of course, but the less said about that the better.
I knew about Iron Fist, but only as a vague outline. “He’s that 70’s martial arts guy.”
I worked in a movie theater at the time those came out, as a server. So I was in and out of that movie constantly. Jennifer Garner kept me sane through those weeks.
I did say “style”. I mean the thing that made Marvel famous in general during the Silver Age, the human-sized realism and everyday stuff that hadn’t been seen to any notable extent in comics before (people having everyday problems, relationship problems, births deaths and marriages, etc.).
That trailer brings a tear of fanboy joy to my eye.
They had me at “ears”.