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Post by jason on Jan 25, 2021 23:40:04 GMT -5
I thought this could be interesting, what was, in your opinion, the best year for Marvel each decade? Now, while I'm going to do this, I havent read any 40s or 50s Marvel comics, and only a handful of comics from the mid-90s and up, so I cant comment on those years:
60s: probably 1966-7, from what I've seen from then, they were at the peak of their storytelling, and they were starting to develop all their characters nicely.
70s: 1975. The debut of the "new" X-men, and books like Avengers and Captain America were doing some of their best work.
80s: 1984. Some really good stuff, Black costume Spidey, Secret Wars, ROM, The New Mutants had finally come into their own, even the licensed books were putting out good stuff, GI Joe in particular.
90s: The middle of this decade is where I tapped out, but I'll go with 1991, Infinity Gauntlet was fun, and I actually LIKED Darkhawk and Sleepwalker.
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Post by berkley on Jan 26, 2021 1:19:20 GMT -5
The 60s, I'd have to look up the dates to say for sure, but I think I'd agree with 1967 or so.
The 70s is really tough but I might put my peak a year or two earlier, in order to get things like the BWS Conan and the Severins' Kull in there. OTOH that might leave aout a few things too, like HtD, or Gerber's Defenders.
The 80s, I suppose I'd have to pick 1980 or 1981, when I believe at least MoKF, Miller's DD, and perhaps the Thomas/Pollard Thor/Celestials epic were still going.
The 90s, etc? If I were an evil computer in one of those old tv shows, the hero could make me explode by asking this question: "You ask ... best of 90s Marvel ... but ... there is no good 90s Marvel .... but you ask ... best ... but ... Contradiction! Contradiction! Does not compute! Does not - Cannot compute!" And then the smoke starts coming out of the computer and they're all saved.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2021 2:24:39 GMT -5
I'd have to do a lot of research to do earlier decades, but the 90s is easy for me-1998.
Lots of very good (and some even excellent) and at least readable fare coming out after several years of that not being the case.
Heroes Return including Busiek/Perez on Avengers (and Avengers Forever later in the year), Busiek/Chen on Iron Man (and the Iron Age mini), and Waid/Garney on Captain America, Jurgens/Romita Jr on Thor, the launch of the Marvel Knights imprint with Priest's Black Panther and Jenkins/Jae Lee's Inhumans and Doctor Strange: Flight of Bones, Busiek still on Thunderbolts, Peter David still on Hulk, Waid/Kubert on Ka-Zar, Ostrander on Heroes for Hire, DeMatteis/Sharpe on Man-Thing in Strange Tales, DeMatteis on Silver Surfer, The Untold Tales of Spider-Man Strange Encounters one-shot featuring Doc Strange, a couple of Roy Thomas Conan mini-series, Roger Stern on Marvel Universe (both the Invaders and Monster Hunters stories were fun)some very good Essential volumes coming out, interesting creative teams doing black and white stories on the Shadows & Light mini (including Wrightson), even Ladronn on Cable made it worth checking out.
There were others that didn't appeal to me but others liked too-The KevinSmith Daredevil, Claremont on FF, the M2 line (Spider-Girl. J2 etc.). It was a renaissance for Marvel after a number of years of dreadful output.
-M
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 26, 2021 4:25:51 GMT -5
Don't really have an opinion on the other decades, but for the 1970s, it's easy: 1979. The Claremont/Byrne/Austin team was taking X-men to the next level, Michelinie and Layton were doing the same thing for Iron Man, Michelinie and Byrne were doing great work in the Avengers, some guy named Miller started drawing Daredevil, Marvel Team-up and Marvel Two-in-One featured their best multi-part stories ever (amnesiac Black Widow and Project Pegasus respectively) and the Micronauts, a series based on a licensed property based, a mediocre toy line, was absolutely amazing. Near the end of the year another surprisingly good series based on an even less remarkable toy, Rom, was also launched.
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Post by Dizzy D on Jan 26, 2021 5:47:02 GMT -5
I'd have to do a lot of research to do earlier decades, but the 90s is easy for me-1998. Lots of very good (and some even excellent) and at least readable fare coming out after several years of that not being the case. Heroes Return including Busiek/Perez on Avengers (and Avengers Forever later in the year), Busiek/Chen on Iron Man (and the Iron Age mini), and Waid/Garney on Captain America, Jurgens/Romita Jr on Thor, the launch of the Marvel Knights imprint with Priest's Black Panther and Jenkins/Jae Lee's Inhumans and Doctor Strange: Flight of Bones, Busiek still on Thunderbolts, Peter David still on Hulk, Waid/Kubert on Ka-Zar, Ostrander on Heroes for Hire, DeMatteis/Sharpe on Man-Thing in Strange Tales, DeMatteis on Silver Surfer, The Untold Tales of Spider-Man Strange Encounters one-shot featuring Doc Strange, a couple of Roy Thomas Conan mini-series, Roger Stern on Marvel Universe (both the Invaders and Monster Hunters stories were fun)some very good Essential volumes coming out, interesting creative teams doing black and white stories on the Shadows & Light mini (including Wrightson), even Ladronn on Cable made it worth checking out. There were others that didn't appeal to me but others liked too-The KevinSmith Daredevil, Claremont on FF, the M2 line (Spider-Girl. J2 etc.). It was a renaissance for Marvel after a number of years of dreadful output. -M
After reading the first two posts, I immediately wanted to say reply this, but you already said it all: Pulling back from the huge company-wide events and crossovers, giving the creative teams more freedom and ability to focus on the characters in their titles.
Kurt Busiek and George Perez on the Avengers was the big one that year.
In the X-Men corner;
Seagle and Kelly were doing fine work on the X-Men, trying to pull back from the large intertwined stories within the two main series and work forward with a smaller cast of characters. Cable was in the Casey/Ladronn period which I really liked. X-Force was John Francis Moore and Adam Polina drawing the team back from the paramilitary outfit it had been to a bunch of young kids on the road, which I also really liked.
On the downside, X-Factor was basically done and rebooted as Mutant X, which had some potential (I liked the semi-horror designs for the X-Men by Tom Raney) but turned quickly into "alternate reality variant of a character for this issue", but X-Factor had lost focus basically every since Peter David left so it was no great loss. Hama was a bad fit for Generation X (but they did get the Jim Mahfood one-shot so that makes up for that somewhat) and Raab was terrible on Excalibur.
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 26, 2021 6:52:08 GMT -5
1960s: While some would cite the year Marvel jumped into the superhero business, 1966 would be the standout year for the publisher; the Fantastic Four had reached its zenith in redefining the group comic (until The Avengers would have their turn at it in two years), with Lee and Kirby in perfect sync. Then, there was The Amazing Spider-Man: instead of the title stagnating with the end of Ditko's run, Lee continued to evolve the title character into one of the most unique protagonists ever seen in comics, with Peter Parker's maturation mirroring a number of concerns/issues experienced by teens and young adults, hence the reason the character was so obsessively embraced in the youth culture, far more than the other popular teen character of that day, DC's Robin (then enjoying an explosion of media saturation as the so-called "Bat-craze" swept North America). The arrival of John Romita as the title's artist (and occasional co-plotter) was one of the most seismic impacts in the medium's history, as few other artists ever placed such a defining hand on a character to the degree that it quickly became the way all other artist's interpretations would be judged. It is no surprise the title would become Marvel's most successful of the 1960s, overtaking the F.F.'s throne.
In 1966, Spider-Man--with his mix of high adventure, character self-reflection and realistically applied series of Greek tragedies--became a true phenomenon, and as in the case of Lee & Kirby on the F.F., Lee and Romita on ASM was a brilliant creative monolith that made most of the industry take notice, and have tried to reach those heights ever since. Obviously, there were more creative highs for Marvel in 1966 (like he launching of Fantasy Masterpieces, which effectively capitalized on the growing popularity of revived Golden Age characters like Captain America and the Sub-Mariner), but I dare say if the rest of Marvel's 1966 output was lacking, the triumphs of the Fantastic Four and The Amazing Spider-Man still would have shot Marvel to the comic book stratosphere.
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Post by badwolf on Jan 26, 2021 11:34:53 GMT -5
Don't really have an opinion on the other decades, but for the 1970s, it's easy: 1979. The Claremont/Byrne/Austin team was taking X-men to the next level, Michelinie and Layton were doing the same thing for Iron Man, Michelinie and Byrne were doing great work in the Avengers, some guy named Miller started drawing Daredevil, Marvel Team-up and Marvel Two-in-One featured their best multi-part stories ever (amnesiac Black Widow and Project Pegasus respectively) and the Micronauts, a series based on a licensed property based, a mediocre toy line, was absolutely amazing. Near the end of the year another surprisingly good series based on an even less remarkable toy, Rom, was also launched. What? The Micronauts were GREAT toys!
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Post by The Cheat on Jan 26, 2021 14:10:49 GMT -5
1998 was my first full year of reading American comics, so of course I agree 100% with the above
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,707
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Post by shaxper on Jan 29, 2021 15:27:34 GMT -5
1939: Motion Picture Funnies Weekly introduces The Sub-Mariner
1940: Sub-Mariner and the original Human Torch crossover and sock it out.
(I have no opinion on the 1950s)
1966: The Fantastic Four repeatedly introduce brilliantly original new concepts into the MCU, beginning with the Inhumans, and soon followed with Silver Surfer, Galactus, and Black Panther and Wakanda.
1974: The height of the b/w magazine titles, , Gerber's Man-thing, Englehart's Avengers, Deathlok, Moench on Master of Kung Fu and Werewolf by Night, and Wein's run on Hulk, including the epic Hulk/Wendigo/Wolverine battle.
1982: Kitty Pryde comes into her own in the pages of X-Men and they have my favorite off-world adventures, the Wolverine limited series, The New Mutants get started (though they get better with time), the Fall of Hank Pym and the introduction of Monica Rambeau in the pages of The Avengers, and the culmination of the Daredevil Elektra/Kingpin Saga.
1993: Though I feel Marvel had mostly lost its way by this point, Fabien Nicieza and Scott Lobdell wrote a strong X-Men franchise long after it had already jumped the shark, and Peter David was on X-Factor. Pretty much the only Marvel from this era I ever bother to re-read.
2007: Newuniversal is the only Marvel work published after the mid 1990s that I have any interest in whatsoever. Fantastic premise and so much potential. An utter travesty that it was never completed.
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 30, 2021 13:32:11 GMT -5
1990s: 1994's Marvels.
By the 1990s, Marvel had published numerous in-universe histories (straight or alternate), but few ever captured the total essence of the elements and emotions that made Marvel's creations part of the modern day pop-cultural mythology in the way of this series. To say the "you are there" / Man on the Street perspective of the dawn and growth of superheroes in a real world--how they would really be viewed was powerful would be a gargantuan understatement. On that note, and quite frankly, this series presented the mix of real world and fantasy heads and shoulders above the bloated Marvel Cinematic Universe of today. All of those dollars, actors and marketing thrown at Marvel concepts, and about 95% of them paled in comparison to the way the heart of Marvel was presented in Marvels.
Of course, in the art department, there were many painted covers (and a few interiors) in comics long before this series, with the work of Neal Adams, John Romita, Ken Barr, Bob Larkin, Alex Niño, Earl Norem and others who took the basic comic character to new heights on Marvel magazine and TPB covers, but Alex Ross' sense of making heroes appear as one would imagine among familiar settings was revolutionary. The characters were not just painted, but a breath and energy was put into every character--from hero to random person in the crowd, which added to Busiek's engaging journey through three "Ages" of Marvel history.
Marvel's eXtreme failings in the Liefeld/Lee/McFarlane/Larsen/all things mutant (and all influenced by those markers) between the late 80s and into the 1990s had the company turned into a noisy mess--a fading shadow of its stellar past. Marvel (largely) in name only, but this one miniseries--both quietly patient and seismic at the same time--reminded the world of what Marvel had been. Unfortunately, Marvel never reached this peak ever again.
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Post by SJNeal on Jan 30, 2021 14:05:58 GMT -5
As much as I condsider myself a 90's kid, I disavow all things Marvel from 1994-1997. The first few years brought some of my favorite stuff ever (the X-Men franchise, bomber jacket Avengers, AWC, Wonder Man, She-Hulk, Alpha Flight), but things fell of drastically and didn't recover until "Heroes Return" in 1998.
That said, I think the 70's - 80's remain Marvel's strongest period, creatively.
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