OK, I asked this question a while ago on
Reddit and the response was...mixed at best, So I figured I'd re-ask it here and see what comes of it.
In 1967, National Periodical Publications, the company that in a decade would
officially become DC Comics, was bought by a Car Parking and Cleaning corporation that now had a hand in the entertainment world. Kinney National Services, Inc. Who, 2 years later, would also buy the struggling Warner Bros-Seven Arts studio company, which would later, after a financial scandal caused KNS to split their entertainment and non-entertainment assets into two companies, become known as Warner Communications, later TimeWarner and now Warnermedia. The end result being that Warner's Entertainment division now had a good amount of creative control over the actions and activities of DC. To this day, the idea that Warner and DC could ever have not been a partnership is hard to believe, since the two are so intertwined. In fact, Warner's creative hold over the Cinematic, Animated, Video Game and Comic adaptions of the DC Superheroes is what has shaped the DCU to what it is today, for better or worse.
That all being said, one question remains. What if Steve Ross, the then CEO of both Warner and KNS, took more of a gamble? What if instead of the more seemingly financially stable DC, he had turned his eyes towards the younger, fledgeling Marvel in 1967, bought the company, then bought Warner two years later? What if Marvel and its growing cast of characters became Warner's to own, while National was left to become DC and deal with its own affairs? What would the state of things be like? What properties do you think Warner would have focussed on and what direction would the company have taken under WB's leadership. And what would be the ultimate fate of DC?