Lets See.... I read Marvel, not DCU (other DC imprints sometimes but the DCU is just crap). Mainly X-men but have recents started reading the relaunched Avengers book which is very good.

Marvel is a lot better the DC's confusing and repetitive universe (so many 'Super' people), although if Marvel recently had their way that's all we'd get too from then, luckily good writers and at least tried to keep Marvel individual.

X-men comics haven't been good lately with the rubbish crossover they had, I don't like X-force book yet that's meant to to be the hip and in one at the moment, having the view that heroes shouldn't kill apparently is a view many frown upon nowadays...weird that.

EDIT: And favourite book with favourite creation is Alan Moore's Captain Britain....but you got that right?

DCU is....wha?  I don't understand.  I crap some kind of slang that you kids are using nowadays that stands for awesome?

I don't know, do you crap slang?

You know, that would explain a lot........

Personal favorite of mine: All Star Superman, by Frank Quitely and Grant Morrison.

But the absolute best for me is Wark Waid and Alex Ross's Kingdom Come.

This book is the closest I've seen of a comic book feeling like watching a movie.  Writing, illustration and pacing just scream movie adaptation.

I've always been a huge fan of Superman, and Batman is at a close second. 

Never been much of a Marvel fan. 

I love Marvel  but I LOVE DC.  DC gets critcized (not really but, I've seen it recently) for having characters that are too powerful.  I don't get it.  Silver Surfer can fly through the sun at the speed of light and not get hurt.  Magneto can bend the entire earth at its axis and flood New York City.  Sentry or the Hulk are strong enough to break the planet apart.  And don't get me started on people like the Beyonder, Red Skull, or Thanos who've had the power to change the world just by thinking about it (in previous Marvel storylines).  The fact is that BOTH universes have characters that are over-powered.

It's up to the writers to make the characters likeable, put them in challenging situations, and just tell good stories.  I think that DC tends to do a better job of this with their characters.  Plus, DC has the icons!  Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, the Flash--these are the characters that people who don't even read comic books think of when the think of a comic book character.

And the best storylines of all time tend to feature the DCU.  I just wish they'd stop with their recent trend of storylines so epic that nobody can read them (Final Crisis, Blackest Night, Infinite Crisis) and scale things back just a little bit.  Nobody has $100,000 to spend on a storyline!!

The comic book industry crashed in the early '90s for the very reasons you left. Speculators rushed the industry upon learning how much old Golden and Silver Age comics were worth (not realizing that they were worth that much because people just threw comics out back then, causing few to survive and thus scarcity), and the industry responded by going apeshit with collector's editions and such, but the speculative bubble collapsed precisely because the industry over-responded (and since everyone was collecting the collectors' editions, they were worth little), found themselves overextended, and crashed. DC and Marvel both declared bankruptcy (i think. I'm positive DC did), and the industry has found itself locked in a niche world of collectors ever since, never recovering to the mainstream pull they had before it.

That's what the rush to make superhero movies is for. The comics themselves make no revenue, so its only worth anything if you can license the character out into a property that actually makes money

yeah, wolverine has some new comics don't remember title, but they seem pretty inventive w/ the artwork and story plot.  One story had this gay guy setting wolverine up for a robbery unter the guise of a date but wolverine went along with the whole thing just for the challenge of hunting the hunters. 

I also really like the wolverine origin story, thought that was the shiznit

Actually, Marvel went bankrupt and DC didn't........

I'd call myself a fan of Franco-Belgian comics but I had to google some as you mentioned some real old ones:
- I had never heard of The Adventures of Nero, Urbanus and De Rode Ridder/The Red Knight (well, at least I've heard of Willy Vandersteen before, the creator of Suske & Wiske). They look interesting.

-"Jommeke" was called "Peter und Alexander" in Germany, I read some albums of this series as a kid and loved De vliegende ton and Kinderen Baas (I just googled the original names, the German ones are direct translations of those as far as I can tell).
-  Lucky Luke, The Smurfs, Gaston and of course TinTin (called Tim & Struppi over here) are classics also in Germany and still successful today. My 9-year old nephew recently started reading and collecting Lucky Luke comics and when I found out about his new obsession I gladly gifted him my 5 favorite albums of the series.
- Largo Winch is a superhit in France as far as I know, in Germany it's only known to some comic fans.

André Franquin, the creator of Gaston Lagaffe and Marsupilami, is my most favourite Belgian comic author. I even like him more than Hergé. Gaston is my 2nd favourite comic character. I had a Gaston avatar on VGC for the last few weeks but changed it back to my favourite comic character yesterday - I missed the tiger.

André Franquin created some of my favourite funny/adventurous comic books ever for the Spirou & Fantasio series and the very best one imo is "QRN sur Bretzelburg".

Other brilliant comic artists from France and Belgium imo:
Moebius (L'Incal/with Jodorowsky, called John Difool in GER - simply brilliant series!), Charlier/Giraud (Blueberry), Goscinny (one of the best scenarists ever imo)/Uderzo (Astérix), Goscinny/Tabary (Iznogoud), Mézières/Christin (Valérian et Laureline, Valerian und Veronique in GER), Jacobs (Blake & Mortimer), Schuiten/Peeters (Les Cités Obscures/Die geheimnisvollen Städte in GER), Sfar/Trondheim (Donjon), Arleston/Tarquin (Lanfeust de Troy)...

Sorry for the long read but I love Franco-Belgian BD, though I've never read a single one of them in their original languages - my French isn't good enough and my Dutch is non-existant.