An age-old rivalry in the entertainment business has grown between the two oldest comic book companies, DC and Marvel. They began in 1934 and 1939, respectively. In the modern age, Marvel and DC still produce their characters’ comics, but they produce a variety of movies for the bigger market of cinema as well.

“I love Marvel’s movies,” Video Production Teacher Richard Ashley said. “I think they are incredible. They don’t necessarily have to do a movie about every single character for the audience to learn about them, like they did with Black Panther or Black Widow, it’s really smart and I like that.”

Marvel’s solo character films has led it to produce a profit of over $5.2 billion dollars as of 2017. However, DC’s movie sales do not reflect similar progress, as they have only earned over $1.2 billion as of 2017. DC has been producing films for longer than Marvel, making sure their characters never left the public eye.

“DC has Batman, and I liked the new Justice League movie,” sophomore Mason Turner said. “I like the characters, they all just really fit together, they just brought out the best in eachother, like one person is the funny character, then there is the serious character. I remember one time, I think it was Flash and Cyborg, they were in a very serious moment and Flash cracked a joke or something, but Cyborg just looked at him real seriously, like he was wondering what Flash was doing.”

DC’s characters moved into the medium of television starting in the early 1950s with live action episodes of Superman. Their success in this department has outperformed the average rated Marvel television shows, giving DC the same sized audience in television as Marvel has with film.

“I’ve seen more Marvel movies than DC movies and I grew up around them,” senior Dylan Higgins said. “I liked Captain America: Civil War the best because it had all the characters basically in it and I liked it had the new Spider-Man and how the Black Panther was in it. I like that Black Panther doesn’t really have a super power, he just uses his suit.”

The big team superhero movies, such as the mentioned Captain America: Civil War, took Marvel Studios almost a decade, and many solo character films prior to them to establish the desired characters. This allowed Marvel to have an audience growing up with the movies starting in 2008 with the first Iron Man movie produced by Marvel Studios. This audience would be the core group of customers, creating a constant stream of profits for Marvel, but DC didn’t stop once Marvel started.

“DC is getting a start,” Ashley said. “I think they’re actually doing better than what the critics are giving them credit for. They have to compete basically with Marvel that has done so well already, and recently DC has finally gotten a movie out there that has six characters.”

DC is making progress with its own cinematic universe as its movies have recently been getting higher reviews and financial successes, DC’s Wonder Woman movie alone scored a rating higher than the majority of Marvel movies with around 90 percent. If this model continues with DC’s movies, they could begin to give Marvel more competition than before.