The Distinguished Competition

I understood that there were separate continuities (or whatever word I would have used) -- Everyone in Superfriends was in one world, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends was another -- but crossovers still weren't common, as such, so it didn't seem to make much difference.

Even when I got into all the meta stuff like talking about the differences between pre- and post-Crisis DC, stuff like that, I don't remember taking much note of the rivalry -- I mean, I wasn't oblivious to it, but it didn't seem very pressing. Although if asked, I would've told you DC comics were more like cartoons than Marvel ones. I'm not sure what I meant by it, I just remember saying it.

Then, of course, I discovered 2000 AD and through it Alan Moore et al.

For all that the DC Universe has Superman and Batman, it is essentially lame and lacking in the majesty of Lee and Kirby's creation, yeah?

This is why WE DON'T READ CAPTAIN AMERICA.

wasn't there some great storyline in the 1980s where he turned against the government because they had betrayed America?

DV, you might be referring to the CA / "The Captain" split, where Cap took on the black costume that US Agent later wore. I'm not a Cap fan, but that'd be my guess.

Cap, to me, is the moral center of the Marvel Universe, in that (afaik) he never does the wrong thing, and embodies the best aspects of the American ideal. There's a lot to admire in him, but then he can be written as moralistic, preachy, and inflexible, too. Ditto with Daredevil.

Seems like I remember a good storyline around the Watergate-era where shadowy government figures framed Cap for murder - back then, at least, it was unexpected that such an iconic figure could fall so far, and paralleled Nixon's tainting of his office.

The Cap-turning-against-the-gov't storyline was actually the 70s, I think, unless it was the very early 80s -- it was Englehart's "Nomad" two-parter. (There've been other things where Cap's opposed the government on one thing or another, just not wholesale.) Gruenwald's "the gov't fires Cap, replaces him with John Walker" storyline was the 80s.

I prefer the Marvel universe, I guess, probably because I got to follow it from the start through British reprints back in the seventies and because, well, Stan'n'Jack'n'Steve, y'know, geniuses all.

I would always buy Marvel stuff, it just seemed superior. Like a Division 1 football team.

I only ever had a brief Batman flirtation when it came to DC.

The thing is, Marvel did try a change as drastic: the spider clone saga. And then they backed out of it, and into it, and did the hokey-cokey until they'd fucked any semblance of rationality out of it (best bit = when they're just about to clean up everything, and then Bob Harras is made Editor-in-chief.)

note that the DC Universe in my head doesn't really bother with Crisis or know anything about what's happened since, as this Marvel-style attitude has infected the DCU (forcing hard reboots every nine months when they realise they OMG forgot to account for Ace The Bat-Hound in post-Zero-Hour continuity TEAR IT UP AND START AGAIN). the only ongoing books I've read in the '90s were Chase, Hitman and the Morrison JLA.