Video Recounts How Marvel and DC Nearly Merged in the ’80s

The Marvel vs. DC “rivalry” has been going on for the better part of 80 years. Sure, these days the universes call a truce and do special crossovers. But for decades, the two did not mix. But in the early ’80s, Marvel Comics was riding high, dominating comic book sales. It was an era when Spider-Man and the X-Men titles were selling hundreds of thousands of issues monthly. Meanwhile, despite their iconic status, you could barely give Superman or Batman comics away to readers. And it was in that environment that Marvel attempted to license DC Comics’ biggest heroes and reinvent them. YouTube channel Owen Likes Comicsexplains how this almost happened, and exactly why it never went through. It also details what Marvel’s Superman would have looked like. You can watch the full video below:

As the video details, the ’70s were rough on both publishers. However, acquiring the Star Wars license in 1977 gave Marvel a sales boost, saving them from bankruptcy. This led to the hiring of new EIC Jim Shooter in 1978. Although a controversial figure, his early years led to massive success for Marvel. This was the era of Frank Miller’sDaredevil, Chris Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men, and John Byrne’s Fantastic Four.By early 1984, Marvel had a whopping 70% of the market share. Aside from DC’s hit seriesThe New Teen Titans, most DC books sold quite poorly. And that’s when DC’s corporate owner, Warner Bros., nearly did something that would have changed comic book history forever.

In February 1984, Warner Bros. saw that DC Comics were mostly not selling, yet their merchandising was still profitable. This is right after Richard Donner’sSuperman, along with Wonder Woman andSuper Friends on television. WB planned to keep the actual rights to the characters, and license them to Marvel, who would publish the DC characters, incorporating them into its existing universe. (Whether they’d be their own parallel Earth within the Marvel multiverse remains unclear.) The seven titles Jim Shooter planned to publish were Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Justice League, Teen Titans, and Legion of Super-Heroes. If you’re wondering whyLegion instead of Flash, a more likely candidate, LSH was one of DC’s only decent-selling titles in the early ’80s. Also, Jim Shooter’s first job as a teenager was writing Legion stories at DC. So he probably had a soft spot for the team.

When superstar writer/artist John Byrne heard about the potential deal, he came up with a whole reinvention for Superman that Marvel could publish. Some of his choices in his Superman pitch were controversial, such as having Kal-El’s mother, Lara, in the rocket from Krypton, giving birth to baby Superman after landing on Earth, then dying shortly thereafter. Byrne was a huge Superman fan ever since childhood, and wanted to leave his mark on the character. He was convinced the success of Donner’s first two Supermanmovies proved the character was still popular.

So what happened? Well, unlike today, in the ’80s antitrust laws were actually enforced. Smaller publishers realized that this would have given Marvel a massive market share, squashing all competition. The deal died on the vine. But if it had gone through, it’s clear our modern pop culture landscape would look vastly different today. Although the deal never went beyond the talking stages, it must have put the fear of God into DC editorial. Just knowing that their owner was so unhappy with their efforts they were willing to shut them down must have stung badly.

What came next for DC was a massive reinvention of their whole line in 1986, after the event series Crisis on Infinite Earths. This restructuring led to Frank Miller’s Batman, Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and yes, John Byrne jumped ship to DC and did his Superman reboot, Man of Steel. All were massive successes, and we can’t help but wonder if they would have ever happened if that Marvel/DC merger had never been floated at all. We don’t want to live in that world where it went through. Although sadly, given how things are going these days with studios selling off their assets for parts, who knows what the future brings. But we’d love to peek into the parallel reality just to see what it looks like. Even if it’s only out of morbid curiosity.

For more great comic book history content, be sure to head on over to theOwen Likes Comics YouTube channel.