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But the point of this thread was when DC began as a whole to resemble Marvel. And Lee, your aversion to Crisis, and post-Crisis DC, surely chalks up even more evidence for 1984 or so being the dividing line.

And I would also argue that it is around this time that Marvel as a whole began to resemble DC in terms of plotting stories and story arcs.

I started collecting comics, mainly Marvel but later a mix of Marvel & DC in the mid 70's. I'm now in the middle of reading the Marvel Universe in order starting with FF #1 and one thing that is striking is how many story arcs, particularly outside of Steve Ditko's titles and Jack Kirby's titles, just seem to fizzle out i.e. it doesn't feel like the ending was planned out in advance. Some examples of stories fizzling out are Namor's quest in Sub-mariner, Tony Stark's battle with Congress, the Secret Empire saga, etc.

I'm looking forward to when Roy Thomas begins to tell more thoroughly plotted stories in Avengers in the late 60's (I'm currently in early '67), but even he has trouble with interesting stories in X-Men and the Avengers early on.

Stan Lee was great with dialogue, even if it was sometimes silly. When Iread stories plotted by Stan but scripted by others, I really miss Stan's dialogue. But I think Stan had a really hard time doing a complete story by himself; he was much better at working with a collaborator such as Ditko or Kirby who could generate stories.