| Posted: 24 July 2014 at 5:31am | IP Logged | 6
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This seems like a good thread for these recent ruminations. . . Whenever visitors are in my Studio, one of the first things they notice is that I have the various DC figurines and statuettes I have accumulated displayed in groups, by character. All the Superman figures are at one end of the “DC Shelf,” all the Batman at the other. Wonder Woman in her various representations, is in the middle. Etc. The Marvel characters, on the other hand, are spread around their shelves. (Yes, plural. I have more Marvel figures.) I tried putting them together — all the Captain America figures in one place, all the Spider-Man figures in another, but it just did not look right. A few of the same characters are adjacent, but they are not grouped, like their DC counterparts. This seemed perfectly natural, but today, not for the first time, I got to wondering why that was so. And I think the answer lies in the fact that until fairly recently, it was only DC who presented multiple iterations of their characters. Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Superdog, Superhorse, Supermonkey, etc. Green Lantern was, of course, deuniqued right out of the box. Batman saw Batgirl and Bathound and various interplanetary and international variant. Even variants from the Future! But there was only ONE Captain America, at least at first. Only ONE Hulk. Only ONE Spider-Man. This has all been torn apart by legions of creatively bankrupt writers and editors, alas, but for a while it was true. And that while was the formative years. So, a bunch of Superman figures in one place doesn’t look WRONG, the way a bunch of Captain America figures would, because DC Comics themselves have trained up to see the character that way. And now Marvel is rolling down that same rocky road.
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