What age of comics has the best stories? 2 2

[Ken Aldred]

On 7/22/2022 at 9:26 PM, SweetTooth said:

I will not lump my ECs in with the vapid output of the Golden Age. Kav is right 

I can’t argue with that level of respect for EC.

[InsomniacComics]

On 7/22/2022 at 3:21 PM, piper said:

Hot take: the Modern Age has some awesome storytelling.  The quality of the writing todayis excellent and the diverse genres and target audiences are broadly covered.  There is something for everyone.

 

Wait, is it generally considered that modern comics have sloppy writing or something? I've always thought them to be at least decent.

[KingOfRulers]

On 7/22/2022 at 5:03 PM, InsomniacComics said:

Wait, is it generally considered that modern comics have sloppy writing or something? I've always thought them to be at least decent.

I think the dislike or disinterest by so many to "current" comics is mostly due to lack of editorial oversight and "cash grab" business decisions. Or at least, that's how it is from my perspective.

I have no doubt that on an individual basis, there are good Marvel books being written. That being said, it seems that for roughly the last 20 years, the production of stories has been very different from the decades of production that preceded that time for numerous reasons:

1) Lack of personnel consistency. Creative teams come and go from titles very quickly. Walt Simsonson's Thor run lasted something like 4 years. Chris Claremont's run on X-Men lasted something like 8 years? Today, it seems if a creative team lasts for 12 months, that's a fairly long run. This takes a toll on the stories as the "slow burn" method of building up the story over time is lost. You're not as time invested into a story anymore, because you can't be. 

2) Lack of editorial direction/oversight. It is my opinion that creators are often unaware or don't care about the stories that preceded their time working on a title. The same ignorance or indifference can be claimed about the editors that are supposed to oversee what's produced by a title's creative team. It feels like most creators are in it to simply tell the story they want to tell without regard to how it fits into the grander vision. Their individual contribution and idea might be excellent, but it can still make for not-so-great longterm quality if a title has gone through seven creative teams in five years, all with their own ideas. With a new creative team being rotated into a given title every six months, that sort of compartmentalized storytelling makes it so that it all seems so dismissible. Everything is a one-shot, in a sense. Everything will be retconned anyway. Everyone just tells their own story, because why not? None of it really matters.

And that doesn't even touch on the rise of the activist creators which first and foremost use the titles and characters as a platform to express their political views. I believe that the entertainment quality of the comic book is an afterthought to this sort of creator. As long as they get their message out, that's what matters most. And yet again, editors seem only too willing to sacrifice quality product to assuage today's activist focused creators.

3) Reboots. Related to my second point, titles are being rebooted more than ever it seems. Just in the last 10 years, it has become really, really...pathetic (unfortunately). I see it all the time when I'm filling out CGC forms. I'd rather not take the book out of the bag/board, so I have to Google image search books to find out when it was published. Was it the 2005 reboot, 2008 reboot, 2012 reboot, 2015 reboot, 2018 reboot, or 2022 reboot? That's how bad it is now. How can the overarching stories really carry any weight if the titles are being rebooted every 3-5 years?

[WolverineX]

Shooter's Preunity Valiant is top quality too.

[october]

Every age has stuff worth reading, so not sure you can go wrong with looking for the best from any decade.

I will say that people who focus on Marvel and DC are doing themselves a very typical, but massive, disservice. A cornucopia of awesomeness lies outside of the big two. The older I get, the more I feel like most of the stuff worth reading has come from outside those confines. The list is so long: Mignola, Woodring, Seth, Bagge, Clowes, Smith, Sakai, Corben, Ware, Los Bros, Tomine, etc, etc, etc. For the love of God, at least check out Dark Horse!

Edited July 23, 2022 by october

[kav]

On 7/22/2022 at 5:57 PM, october said:

The list is so long: Mignola, Woodring, Seth, Bagge, Clowes, Smith, Sakai, Corben, Ware, Los Bros, Tomine, etc, etc, etc. For the love of God, at least check out Dark Horse!

Big fan of all of those and have letters from seth, tomine, clowes, bagge, woodring but their output is too small to compete with the silver age.

[Cat]

On 7/23/2022 at 7:39 AM, KingOfRulers said:

I think the dislike or disinterest by so many to "current" comics is mostly due to lack of editorial oversight and "cash grab" business decisions. Or at least, that's how it is from my perspective.

I have no doubt that on an individual basis, there are good Marvel books being written. That being said, it seems that for roughly the last 20 years, the production of stories has been very different from the decades of production that preceded that time for numerous reasons:

1) Lack of personnel consistency. Creative teams come and go from titles very quickly. Walt Simsonson's Thor run lasted something like 4 years. Chris Claremont's run on X-Men lasted something like 8 years? Today, it seems if a creative team lasts for 12 months, that's a fairly long run. This takes a toll on the stories as the "slow burn" method of building up the story over time is lost. You're not as time invested into a story anymore, because you can't be. 

2) Lack of editorial direction/oversight. It is my opinion that creators are often unaware or don't care about the stories that preceded their time working on a title. The same ignorance or indifference can be claimed about the editors that are supposed to oversee what's produced by a title's creative team. It feels like most creators are in it to simply tell the story they want to tell without regard to how it fits into the grander vision. Their individual contribution and idea might be excellent, but it can still make for not-so-great longterm quality if a title has gone through seven creative teams in five years, all with their own ideas. With a new creative team being rotated into a given title every six months, that sort of compartmentalized storytelling makes it so that it all seems so dismissible. Everything is a one-shot, in a sense. Everything will be retconned anyway. Everyone just tells their own story, because why not? None of it really matters.

And that doesn't even touch on the rise of the activist creators which first and foremost use the titles and characters as a platform to express their political views. I believe that the entertainment quality of the comic book is an afterthought to this sort of creator. As long as they get their message out, that's what matters most. And yet again, editors seem only too willing to sacrifice quality product to assuage today's activist focused creators.

3) Reboots. Related to my second point, titles are being rebooted more than ever it seems. Just in the last 10 years, it has become really, really...pathetic (unfortunately). I see it all the time when I'm filling out CGC forms. I'd rather not take the book out of the bag/board, so I have to Google image search books to find out when it was published. Was it the 2005 reboot, 2008 reboot, 2012 reboot, 2015 reboot, 2018 reboot, or 2022 reboot? That's how bad it is now. How can the overarching stories really carry any weight if the titles are being rebooted every 3-5 years?

That's why I so enjoyed IDW's TMNT run. Over 100 issues with the same writing team, telling a seamless story with repercussions you could trace all the way back, and long-term consequences all the way through. So good to have again. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

My first instinct is copper.  Obviously it’s because I grew up in the era, but I can’t think of stories I enjoyed more than Perez Titans, Byrne FF & Miller DD. 

[Ken Aldred]

On 7/23/2022 at 1:57 AM, october said:

For the love of God, at least check out Dark Horse!

And Image.  Big name creators they’d be familiar with from Marvel and DC; Morrison, Kirkman, Hickman, Rucka, Brubaker, Azzarello, Millar, Lemire, and, conversely, to me it seems that those companies have headhunted a lot of the newer talent from there; Seeley, Cates, Williamson.  Well, at least that’s where I first encountered their work.  More interesting material, not constrained by a corporate house style.

Hardly a complete step into the unknown.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Ken Aldred

[Ken Aldred]

On 7/23/2022 at 1:57 AM, october said:

A cornucopia of awesomeness lies outside of the big two. The older I get, the more I feel like most of the stuff worth reading has come from outside those confines.

There’s also European material such as from Metal Hurlant, or maybe be even more adventurous and try some manga. I wasn’t disappointed.

Blueberry, Metabarons, Ghost in the Shell, Alita; start with the classics.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Ken Aldred

[Ken Aldred]

On 7/23/2022 at 5:28 AM, kav said:

Big fan of all of those and have letters from seth, tomine, clowes, bagge, woodring but their output is too small to compete with the silver age.

I never think volume is necessary.  Look at David Mazzucchelli, a small body of brilliant, classic mainstream work on Daredevil and Batman and then some very, very different indie material, such as Asterios Polyp.  He made his mark quickly, nothing else to prove to anyone.

Edited July 23, 2022 by Ken Aldred

[KingOfRulers]

On 7/22/2022 at 8:57 PM, october said:

Every age has stuff worth reading, so not sure you can go wrong with looking for the best from any decade.

I will say that people who focus on Marvel and DC are doing themselves a very typical, but massive, disservice. A cornucopia of awesomeness lies outside of the big two. The older I get, the more I feel like most of the stuff worth reading has come from outside those confines. The list is so long: Mignola, Woodring, Seth, Bagge, Clowes, Smith, Sakai, Corben, Ware, Los Bros, Tomine, etc, etc, etc. For the love of God, at least check out Dark Horse!

I definitely agree with that. Image has so many titles. There is so much to be enjoyed through the comic book medium outside of superhero stories.

[Robot Man]

On 7/22/2022 at 12:23 PM, Ken Aldred said:

Eisner’s Spirit stories, though short, are quite brilliant, especially the post-War Sections.

EC’s stories, likewise, were short, often gory, disturbing, political, making social commentary, but could pack a lot in despite their brevity, and were prolifically capable of that.  Hardly vacuous.

Indeed. Don’t forget the Carl Barks ducks. So many great adventures. He wrote and drew them as well. Too many to give examples of. 

I have to throw in a shout out to the late ‘50’s early ‘60’s DC war books. Maybe my favorite as a kid (along with Batman who made me think and try to solve crime clues) just before I discovered Spiderman at #3 and became a “Marvel Zombie”. The DC war stories had excellent writing and art. 

[Robot Man]

It has been said the the GA of comics is when you discovered them as a kid and became hooked. My personal GA is actually the birth of Marvel (SA technically).

A lot like my music. I discovered it and emersed myself. Then I worked backward to what proceeded it and kept going forward.

There is no best age of comics. Every age has it’s hits and misses. 

[sfcityduck]

The comics I enjoy most are two distinct eras (1) late 70s to late 80s (Avengers by Byrne & Perez, Batman by Rogers and Austin, X-Men by Byrne, Miller DD, Perez JLA and NTT, Sinkz Moon Knight, Comico Grendel and Mage, Wildey Jonny Quest, Cerebus High Society, Usagi, Concrete, Dark Knight, Gaiman Sandman, Moore Swampthing and Watchmen, etc etc etc); and (2) late 40s to mid-50s (Barks high period, EC SF and War and Political and humor, especially Kurtzman and Krigstein, Frazetta & Williamson on their own and together, especially Shining Knight, Toth, Danger Trail, Atlas superhero revival, Batman and Superman fun period, Everett high period, Baker high period, Boys Ranch, etc etc).

Honorable mention Silver Age. 

[sfcityduck]

On 7/22/2022 at 11:49 AM, kav said:

some good art to be sure-especially the covers, but the stories had no depth.  They could not compare with say spider man 50 or GL 76.

Read Krigstein’s “Master Race,” Kurtzman’s “Airburst” and “Corpse on The “Imjin”, Feldstein and Wood’s “Judgment Day,” all EC stories and they might change your mind.  If that doesn’t work then Toth’s “Battle Flag of the Foreign Legion” for DC’s Danger Trail (the whole series is great) is worth checking out.  A lot of high quality work in the late 40s to mid-50s that is just fun reads by guys like Frazetta, Williams, Baker, Barks, and many others since comics do not need to be meaningful to be enjoyable.

Edited July 23, 2022 by sfcityduck

[jdandns]

On 7/22/2022 at 2:23 AM, Ken Aldred said:

For me, his peak was the 80s.

Swamp Thing, Miracleman, Watchmen.

Beyond that, there are other writers with just as great an imagination, such as Grant Morrison, but nothing much quite on that level from Moore. Promethea, maybe.

This is reasonable, but I can't just confine his best work to Copper, as the ABC line from the 2000's and his work for Avatar in the 2010's (most notably the Lovecraft stuff), I rank up there with his seminal earlier works (which also includes the "Supreme" stories in the 90's that could have comprised the greatest Superman story ever told, had only DC not been so short-sighted regarding the ownership of "Watchmen").

[jdandns]

On 7/22/2022 at 7:41 AM, InsomniacComics said:

I've heard good things about Web Of Spiderman in the Bronze Age. What's your guy's opinion on that series?

This replaced "Marvel Team Up" which was one of my favorite titles as a kid, so I wasn't too happy with the announcement at the time, but that amazing cover by Vess for the premiere issue and those terrific John Byrne covers that followed pretty quickly changed my mind. I think I collected it up until around issue #35 or so when I largely stopped collecting monthly super-hero titles, but I definitely still have my original issues. It was a must with the other Spidey titles, and all were good reads during that era.

[D2]

80s and 2005 to 2015. 2 decades of perfection 

Edited July 24, 2022 by D2

[Humpty-Dumpty]

On 7/21/2022 at 11:00 PM, shadroch said:

Late bronze/early copper.   Miller Daredevil, Teen Titans, Legion, Watchmen, Crisis, Cerebus, Dreadstar, Elfquest, Swamp Thing, Dark Knight, Groo.

Simonson on Thor, X-Men,Turtles

Much as my heart is with mid silver age and early bronze age, yes, I believe the late bronze, early copper age to be the apex of the art form