Full disclosure: I don’t do comics. It’s not a matter of snobbery or dislike — I quite admire the medium, in fact — but I wasn’t brought up on them and can’t fabricate the kind of lifelong enthusiasm they inspire in others. The pile of unread novels on my bedside table is high enough without bringing graphics into the equation.
This is a roundabout way of saying that talk of the rivalry between Marvel and DC Comics means about as much to me personally as that of the teams atop the German Bundesliga table — I understand both the game and the stakes, but my knowledge of the players themselves is elementary at best. So I found this LA Times article, in which Geoff Boucher and Ben Fritz break down the recent fortunes of Marvel and DC’s respective film production divisions, rather enlightening.
With DC Entertainment’s extreme polarities of success (Christopher Nolan’s Batman pictures) and failure (the still-reeking “Jonah Hex”) putting them on shakier economic ground than the more consistent Marvel, the studio has appointed former “Harry Potter” brand manager Diane Nelson and comic-book writer Geoff Johns to take the reins. Nelson’s background is telling: parent company Warner Bros. will be relying heavily on DC Entertainment to plug the gap left when the Potter film series concludes next year.