Jeanette Kahn seems to have been the lynchpin to a lot of things over a period of years.

I definitely remember, in the early 80s, suddenly realizing one day that I was actually ENJOYING new DC comics far more than new Marvels. It was a slow thing, but it did happen. Any my estmation of Marvel CONTINUED to drop, further and further, ever since.

Sometimes I wish we hadn't seen the results from "CRISIS" that we did. Allegedly, they changed what the story was supposed to accomplish, mid-way into doing it. A number of good things happened as a result, but it also saw some regrettable results, and certain books, in the long run, NEVER recovered, even to this day.

Regarding WONDER WOMAN... I'd begun reading her new stories sometime around when Gene Colan got on the book, and continued all the way to the end of that run. George Perez' efforts were undoubtedly impressive. But I could never quite get it out of the back of my mind that something was rubbing me the wrong way about that run, mostly that it often seemed far more violent and nasty than it seemed like it should be. I kept reading for a long time, but somewhere after he left, so did I.

And then, I got ahold of the 1st 3 Golden Age Archive books. OH.. MY... GOD.

I've had a lot of people argue with me every time I say this... but to me, ever since I read the ORIGINAL stories... by William Marston & Harry Peter... I've come to feel that nobody-- and I mean NOBODY-- not even Perez-- EVER really did WW "right", since her original creative team.

You know, there's a reason Charles Schulz didn't want anyone continuing "PEANUTS" after he was gone.

Some years back, I caught a rerun of the Lynda Carter WW pilot. I was blown away, by something I had been totally unaware of when I saw it on its original airing. That show was MUCH closer to the 1941-42 comics than I ever imagined it was! Stanley Ralph Ross really did good there.

Sure editorial, sure newstand distribution, sure... Star Trek? Huh. Never thought about that.

But New Teen Titans was a huge sales hit when DC was not having any huge hits - there second best selling title before NTT was Warlord. And it was a comic that got younger fans talking (IE not the college Alan Moore crowd) and every major success DC had for damn near a half decade borrowed from the NTT formula. It might not have been the SOLE factor un DC's reversal of fortune but it was A major factor.

Also: Wonder Woman. Yes. I wish more people recognized how much the Perez Wonder Woman did to turn her into an actual fan (and creator!) favorite character. I don't think Perez gets enough credit for this.

(Note: Last time I read New Teen Titans I thought it was a slog, I don't think Crisis would be worth the toilet paper it was printed on if it was printed on toilet paper, and Perez' Wonder Woman is so cluttery that it hurts my Tothian eyes. But they sure were important!)

All I can say is that the only DC titles I looked at with any regularity back then were JLA when Perez was drawing it, and New Teen Titans.
And that Crisis made me interested in the larger world of DC.

Marvel got into the Direct Market earlier; but, other than flooding reprints (as did DC) and the few Direct Only titles, didn't seem to really exploit the potential, until later.  Marvel was tight with certain corners, like Mile High (Shooter and Chuck Rozanski have been friends for quite a while); but, I do think DC, by 84, was really experimenting with the potential, with the graphic novels (Marvel seemed to focus more on their deal with Waldenbooks), Baxter reprints and new series, prestige books (starting with Dark Knight) hardcovers and more.  They really did blow Marvel away with the marketing giveaways and ancillary merch, like the Watchmen buttons (though that caused more than a few problems) and stuff like that.  Their comic shop giveaways were great.  I had a Psycho button, from the Dan Brereton series, a Green Lantern plastic ring, and a few others, including posters.  DC embraced trades more heavily and kept them in print.  Marvel, to this day, has had a bad habit of letting them go out of print, quickly.  The American Bookseller Association criticized them heavily, over 10 years ago, about that and it hasn't changed, much.

Marvel caught up, eventually; but, not during the 80s.  I do think Shooter was a big factor in Marvel's 80s stagnation, coupled with owners looking to sell, which leads to demands to not rock the boat.

Yes at half the cost

More on DC's 80s success being more of an organic action, rather than an administrative one--

From TwoMorrows Publishing's The Legion Companion, Paul Levitz--almost undeniably the most prolific and impactful writer ever to handle the LSH reveals a number of key points about the how and why of the title into the 1980s--

TLC: When you came back to the Legion in the Eighties, how did you adjust to the changes that had occurred in your absence?

PL: The characters I liked out of what had happened I tried to take full advantage of. The characters I liked less I tried to change in a way that would make them more interesting to me, and hopefully to the reader in the deal.

TLC: It wasn't too long when you returned that Keith Giffen came on board.

PL: Keith was the backup artist almost from the beginning. He may have done the back-up in the second issue that I did. Keith and I had some old history from All-Star where we had gotten along not particularly well, so I was a little nervous about working with him again, be he had changed enormously, as had I, in the years since. It was really some wonderful magic fun that we were able to play together.

TLC: Why do you think the two of you worked out so well?

PL: I got in a conversation with Stan [Lee] once, asking him about the Golden Age of Marvel when he and Jack [Kirby] and Steve [Ditko] were just doing such awesome work, and some point in the conversation, he basically shrugged his shoulders and said, "You know, for a few years there, it just seemed like we couldn't do anything wrong." Not comparing my work to theirs, because it doesn't deserve to be, but one of the peculiarities of comics as a collaborative medium [is] sometimes you're just in tune.

The fertility of Keith's imagination, which is one of the truly great imaginations in our business, the passion he was able to bring to the work made me do better work than I probably would have done otherwise, or that I have done otherwise with many other artists. Whatever I was doing in terms of the way the stories were structured [and] the springboards were set up funneled his imagination in some productive directions. Although we didn't agree on everything during the course of the time, we just had a lot of fun playing, "Can you top this?" "Here's and idea: what if we can do that? "I don't know, but what if we did it that way with whipped cream on it?" "Okay!"

Levitz goes on to discuss building up Darkseid into a Legion villain. Later, he mentions making the title appeal to new readers:

PL: I had a conscious effort, I think, when I came back on Legion from the beginning that we should make it not just a new beginning for me, but a friendly entry point, 'cause if I was trying to bring some new vitality to the project, hopefully that would be an invitation for people to come in.

Obviously, Levitz's plans worked to the point LSH was a major success, and--

TLC: When did the Legion become a candidate for DC's hardcover/softcover program?

PL: I think when we came up with the idea of doing it. It was probably our second most profitable title at the time, so it was a logical thing to do.

TLC: So DC did see the Legion as one of its more valuable properties?

PL: There's a dichotomy between being a valuable property and being a successful publishing venture. Wonder Woman's never been an extraordinarily successful publishing venture, but its a extraordinarily valuable property. Legion's never been an extraordinarily important property outside of comics, but in its good years, its been a very. very successful publishing venture.

I believe the key from this in relation to the topic question is that Wolfman & Perez were undoubtedly revolutionary with the first of their signature works at DC (The New Teen Titans), but others were already building titles with ideas and inspiration born independently. That the title exploded to becoming DC's second best seller for a time in the 80s was not a case of "Well, look at what they're doing over there, and that's the way everyone else will do it--that's the magic formula!" Levitz--having been involved with the LSH since the 70s (and pushed for the first LSH tabloid publication, thanks to the monthly being fairly successful) was also a longtime fan and always had ideas of what worked--a personal directive and tone in concert with others (Giffen in particular) to bring out the best of what was always there in the basic LSH concept. That is a truly organic process that cannot be micromanaged or directed from "above", which is why I give credit where it is due in the Levitz/Giffen team sending the LSH title to the comic stratosphere based on their unique mix and vision, which had much to do with DC's rise in the 1980s, and they were not alone (in terms of titles or creative paths chosen) in that rise.

As a further comment... it's long seemed to me that once many of the original creative teams of the early 1940s went off to WW2, and "editorial" decided to take more complete control of the various National Comics (DC) books, things got dumbed down extensively. The coming of the Comics Code only made it worse.

I see a very long stretch where DC books slowly, painfully improved, starting in the early-mid 1950s up to the early 1980s. In some ways, they were only just beginning to get as "good", as interesting, as exciting, as they'd been in the early 40s.

I sometimes wonder how comics might have evolved if they hadn't had their early roots so connected to organized crime, if they'd been run more like "real" book publishers (with series being owned & controlled by the creators, and with proper financial involvement & compensation), and without the censorship pushed on them by outside (and sometimes inside) forces.

Or am I trying to look at "the big picture" too much?