Brick Tamland said:
Growing up I had an Iron Man action figure but knew next to nothing about him, and never heard of anyone else outside of Spider-Man and X-Men (neither of which I'm a fan of). Contrast that with growing up watching the Batman and Justice League cartoons, and the Batman movies of the early 2000's.
Today's kids, all they've known is Marvel and DC is too dark for them.
That's interesting. I guess it speaks to different eras of the companies, but I was heavy into comics during the late 70's up until probably my sophomore year of high school (1986-87).
I read JL, Batman, Teen Titans, Green Arrow, Blue Beatle, Booster Gold, and a few other DC titles, but they were more...I dunno...upbeat, or "happily ever after" stories. A couple of notable exceptions to that feeling were the Dark Knight Returns miniseries and Crisis on Infinite Earths. But even after Crisis, eventually everything seemed to go back to the way it was before Barry Allen died.
I also read Marvel, including the Avengers, X-Men, Defenders, Spider-Man, Captain America, New Mutants, Daredevil, Fantastic Four and Cloak and Dagger. To my 6-15 year old mind, Marvel's characters had more gravitas, the stories were a darker, but I loved that. Jean Grey died. Elektra died. (and my interest waned before they came back...) It was easier to relate to Peter Parker than to Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne.
I know that has flipped over time, but my affinity for Marvel over DC still goes back to that period of my life. While the MCU is certainly stongly influenced by the Ultimate storylines, I still catch enough of the stuff I really loved in the movies to be really entertaining for me.
I don't see much of what I remember about DC in their movies.