PAOerfulone said:
JWeinCom said:
Why would you have had Superman ahead of Spider-man at any point? Mostly out of respect for Superman's legacy. He's supposed to be THE superhero of superheroes. Not in terms of his powers, but in his morals - What humans and mankind should strive to be like. But it's been so long since we've had a GOOD Superman portrayal outside the comics - And like you said, comics have been so niche now that they're almost irrelevant. In terms of movies, Spider-man has clearly been miles ahead since the first Raimi film. In comic books, he's outsold him probably since the 70's. Superman's yet to have a decent or good selling solo game and Spider-man's had at least a handful prior to the PS4 game. Superman possibly has the edge in animation, not counting the Spider-verse movies. I think it's generally agreed that Spider-man and Batman are 1 and 2. I am fairly sure they've had the best grossing solo films, and best selling videogames. Spider-man comics tend to outsell Batman, but the comic book industry is at this point a relatively small part of it. If Superman is third, it's a pretty distant third. X-men might have been ahead for a while if you count teams here, until Marvel intentionally set out to devalue the franchise. Superman is iconic, but really hasn't been as big as the others since like the 70s. At this point, Spider-man is definitely in the top spot. I think you could have argued that even before the MCU, but now it's not close. The fact that the PS4/5 games have overtaken the Arkham series as the top super hero franchise, by a lot, is just the cherry on top. Now if only they could make another good Spider-man animated series... and not cancel it after two seasons. |
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The comic book industry is actually bigger than its every been... ummmm... sort of.
Revenue from comic books is at a high point, but a lot of that is driven by the increasing popularity of manga which is lumped in. It's hard to really tell how traditional superhero comics are doing. As far as I could tell, that segment is about as big as it has been, but that's again hard to tell because of digital sales and subscription based models.
Just clarifying what I meant by comic books being a relatively small part of it had more to do with the rest of the super hero stuff, particularly the movies, getting so big and less about the comic book industry shrinking.
Anyway, if you're just going based on what people think of the character, you can make a case to put any hero in any spot. Personally, I always found Spider-man more compelling on a moral level. May not be quite as virtuous as Superman, but it feels easier to be perfect and moral when you're basically omnipotent and it's not as much of a struggle to do the right thing. Some writers have found ways around this, but I think that's why both Batman and Spider-man have been more popular.
