The 80's and 90's for me. Those were the most lurative years for comic book companies based on inflation scaling percentages. John Byrne, and Neal Adams of the the 70's to 80's led the charge. You had new up and coming companies like Image and Valiant (Dark Horse to a lesser extent) challenging the Big Two for market share percentages, which were led by the best artists in history up to that point. Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Dale Keone, Marc Sylvestri, Ron Lim, Brett Booth, Erik Larsen, Mark Bagley, etc. These guys raised the bar by which comics should look like.
Originally posted by Stoic
The 80's and 90's for me. Those were the most lurative years for comic book companies based on inflation scaling percentages. John Byrne, and Neal Adams of the the 70's to 80's led the charge. You had new up and coming companies like Image and Valiant (Dark Horse to a lesser extent) challenging the Big Two for market share percentages, which were led by the best artists in history up to that point. Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Dale Keone, Marc Sylvestri, Ron Lim, Brett Booth, Erik Larsen, Mark Bagley, etc. These guys raised the bar by which comics should look like.
Having come up in that era, I agree... To a point.
In terms of the writing, I think Byrne Superman beat the pants off of Pre-Crisis fare. The writing matured greatly during this era.
As far as the overall "scene" goes, comic book stores were booming everywhere, Indies were in the mainstream, it was essentially the Attitude Era of the comic book reader. Just about EVERYONE was into them, kids milling about, cleaning out their files, angry parents demanding refunds for their stupid kids 30 dollar purchases. It was great.
The combo comic-video game shops were even better. They let you "demo" a game literally all day long, we'd treat it like a free to play arcade.
It was a fun era for a kid, in the same way visiting a circus is fun.
On the other hand, it was death for the comic industry, as this era of gimmicks, skyrocketing cover prices, and "discount files" left a VERY bad taste in everyones mouth when they realized they'd been had.
I agree with Whirly and Dark here tbh.
We tend to romanticize the past. Often, we remember the best arcs of any decade and forget the garbage that came along with it. I don't know that there really is a best decade. I guarantee kids will remember the 2010's fondly once we enter 2030. It only seems "worse" because all the bad stuff is still fresh on our minds. The 10's had some good stories like any other decade, and time will eventually pare the '10s down to its gems as well.
Originally posted by StyleTime
I agree with Whirly and Dark here tbh.We tend to romanticize the past. Often, we remember the best arcs of any decade and forget the garbage that came along with it. I don't know that there really is a best decade. I guarantee kids will remember the 2010's fondly once we enter 2030. It only seems "worse" because all the bad stuff is still fresh on our minds. The 10's had some good stories like any other decade, and time will eventually pare the '10s down to its gems as well.
Originally posted by StiltmanFTW
For the past decade?More like for the past five decades.
Batman exists in seven separate books doing seven separate jobs simultaneously. How? DC is a strange place. In the same month he'll be in space on one title, a separate reality in another and in Gotham in a third. All released the same month. Terrible world building and continuity
Batman has like 7 or 8 books. Then the rest of DC is the JL7 and their junior versions. So it still amounts to the same shit. Zero ****ing variety. Almost the entirety of DC revolves around the core 7 of one team