Do Brands Matter in Comics
Detective Comics
Born of this title early in its run, Batman quickly took over as the sole focus of Detective Comics in the early forties. But even though Batman’s was the only story being told, it looks like the book could never decide how important he was. In the first logo, coming from the early nineties, Batman’s name looks shoehorned into the logo. And this was an otherwise unchanged logo, V-shaped bat wings and all, so it seems rather redundant. But as you can see from the next two examples the publisher didn’t think so, preferring to give Batman center stage and making the original title secondary. I also find it interesting that the third logo lasted until 2000. You would think DC would want to distance the book from any connection to Schumacher’s Batman & Robin as fast as possible.
The current logo, and likely the last to feature Batman, I like the most though it looks a little haphazard. With only three words in the title, the designer managed to use three different typefaces in three different sizes while using three different amounts of tracking. But I still like it mostly due to the design of the arms and bowls in the “Detective” part of the logo.
Justice League of America
JLA was probably the earliest use of synergy in marketing. Individually, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and others were already very popular and teaming them up for larger adventures made the title an instant success. So perhaps logo design isn’t as much of issue. The custom lettering, if used today, would make for a great retro look but the choice to surround the text with a distorted black shield that most times didn’t fully fit on the cover was a strange one. It would have no problem drawing attention on the store shelf (or more likely store rack back in the sixties) but then it would proceed to distract from the rest of the cover.
The title’s initial run ended in the mid eighties. By then the original concept of the superhero team had been diluted by bloating the cast with secondary characters, then trying to spin them off into affiliate groups in other series. DC relaunched the book with the original seven members as “JLA,” giving the shield a more proper shape or sometimes not using it at all. To me such a change would qualify as rebranding but it seemed DC was wary about the books chances, always electing to include the original name as a subtitle somewhere.
After that book ended during a reformatting of most of DC’s titles, the original Justice League was relaunced, though now none of the original members remain, save one. The lackluster cast is therefore well serviced by a lackluster logotype. The shield is once again distorted and even made into an outline this time. Couple that with the high contrast between the vertical and horizontal strokes in the lettering and the logo is once again competing for attention with the rest of the cover art.
The Amazing Spider-Man
Amazingly (ha ha) this series, one of Marvel’s longest, only opted to alter its logo once during the mid-nineties while the Fox Kids’ cartoon aired. The original logo does seem to have a timeless quality to it that the temporary replacement definitely lacks. Alternately, it can also seem to be lacking modernity by keeping the the letters extruded and leaving the handwritten “the” with no visual tie-in to the rest of the type.
But this is definitely a case of the character overpowering any typographic treatment. Spider-Man is one of Marvel’s most recognizable superheroes and I would put him at the top of the mountain in terms of popularity given the records that were broken during the release of the first film. And that film’s logo was so bland and generic, my eyes almost refused to let me process the image.
Uncanny X-Men
So it’s pretty apparent to me by now that brands do matter. Though instead of being driven by logo treatments, it’s the treatments of the heroes themselves that go the furthest in establishing and maintaining that brand. (So, wait, it’s not characters, it’s characters?) Of course, that doesn’t mean you can afford to ignore a logo, it’ll still need to do its job of representing the brand being created. And this last set of logos accomplishes that handily.
Most people who read X-Men are quick to point out that the stories have served as allegories for puberty, racism, and civil rights. But, c’mon, don’t try to tell me that it’s not the endless ever-changing supply of fantastical heroes, villains, and their physics defying mutant abilities that keeps you reading from month to month. If Marvel had to cut every title but one, I would vote to keep Uncanny X-Men as that one—given that Spider-Man could still show up from time to time.
Evolution is also a touted theme in the book so it’s interesting to see the almost evolutionary progression of it’s logo as well, completely unlike the random shifts of type treatment that we’ve seen above. And the current logo is the best of the eleven. It manages to follow an asymmetrical shape yet still be perfectly balanced within that shape. I’m very glad that they ditched any kind of 3D element. Finally, and I hope this was planned, the flares on the strokes of the “X” gives the letter a humanist quality.
