What is your favorite Marvel Era?

[Comics N' Toons]

What is your favorite Marvel Era? Specifically by decade... Do you like what Stan and Jack did? Before Stan and Jack? the 70's, 80's, 90's or today? Discuss your favorite stories from Marvel's history, characters etc. If you want to go by age (golden, silver, bronze, modern) you can do that to.

I personally believe that MARVEL was best in and ruled the 1980's. I love 80's X-men, John Byrne's FF etc. They were also great in the 70's with Conway's Spider-man, Claremont/Byrne X-men etc.

Discuss!

 

[Mr. Dent]

The 70s and early 80s.

 

[MMMMM...Pancakes]

The stories I enjoy most are from the late 70's-early 90's and late 90's-until Secret Invasion.

 

[runawayboulder]

All of the 80's and the latter part of the 90's to the early 00's, 98-03.

 

[BillPardy]

70's, early to mid 80's.

 

[Themanofbat]

70's, early to mid 80's.

Same here...

 

[blalex620]

I guess I'm the odd man out. I only started reading comics from Bendis' Avengers Disassembled and I really like what Marvel's been doing save for the one or two not that great crossover. I really like Marvel NOW too.

 

[runawayboulder]

I will say that Marvel NOW has been producing some of the best comics since the Bendis era started at Marvel.

 

[mocomic]

the 70s and early 80s.

x 2

 

[Comics N' Toons]

what are some of your favorite stories from your favorite eras?

 

[Shikamaru]

The 1990's

On a serious note, it is a tie between the 1970's and 1980's for me.

 

[lozzy.94]

I will say that Marvel NOW has been producing some of the best comics since the Bendis era started at Marvel.

I agree with this.

 

[Sardaukar]

Basically anytime before the 90s implosion. Maybe the comics were a bit less sophisticated or mature before then, but Marvel used to respect their characters more imo. Of course there are exceptions.

 

[runawayboulder]

Comics were sophisticated and mature all through the 80's. Even in the 70's, they were starting to break away from the campy style of the 60's.

You're right though, during the 90's the companies didn't respect their characters. It was all about killing or maiming your star, then replacing him with someone else with no history or supporting cast of their own.....all for the mighty buck. It started with the Death of Superman then breaking Batman's back. Marvel saw the dollar signs and we got Spider-Man's clone, teenage Tony Stark, Captain America dying.....the list goes on and on. Finally, Marvel started that "Putting the Character back in Comics" theme and stabilized things again and concentrated on writing quality stories.

 

[blalex620]

Some of the best story's for me would have to be:
"The Five Nightmares" arc in Fraction's run of Iron Man

Cyclops becoming a mutant revolutionist (everything dealing with that) it's definitely interesting to see a character like Cyclops go from being like Xavier to being more like Magneto and I just can't wait to see how exactly they bring him back to who he once was.

The entire mutant messiah three part storyline was awesome.

Secret Warriors is hands down one of my favorite books of all time and Avengers Academy is up there too.

 

[Anubis]

Late 90's to early 00's. Just after Heroes Reborn on until Bendis Blew up the Avengers. After that, Everything started to go downhill.

 

[runawayboulder]

It's gotten a lot better recently though.

 

[Anubis]

I wouldn't know. I"m done.

 

[BLACKVULCAN]

70's is my all time grooviest favorite era!New Xmen! Howard the duck! A good spider clone story! Wolverine was just a psycho little guy! My main man Luke teamed up to become " power man and iron fist! Wonder man came back from the dead! Good stuff! Nothing said keep on trucking like the 70's! Can ya dig!

 

[psylockolussus]

Early to mid 90s!

 

[runawayboulder]

I wouldn't know. I"m done.

You should at least try Thor.

 

[Anubis]

I have, I no longer care.

Only comics I've been able to enjoy is what Image is doing.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Well, given that I've only really read Thor throughout all of the various periods, I'll go by that. So that makes the mid '70s through the '80s my favorite era. The '70s featured Gerry Conway, Len Wein, Alan Zelenetz, Roy Thomas, and others hammering out a lot of what would become the core of Marvel's entire mythological side, building on the Lovecraftian idea of Elder Gods who predated "normal" life on Earth, tying it into some of the Conan lore with Set, and generally expanding the bounds of Thor's world considerably. Then, of course, the '80s brought us the incomparable Simonson run. That was also a good time for the expanding Marvel universe in general, with Secret Wars and some annuals and such bringing the heroes together in interesting ways. I guess I like that era most because it feels like the most intensive as far as universe-building goes. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, et al. had established the major heroes in the era before and given us an idea of how their separate worlds worked, and then the '70s came along and blew those worlds up to gigantic proportions, often intersecting them into the framework of the larger Marvel universe that we still know and love today.

Honorable mention goes to the '90s and early '00s, since that was the era that I really became a huge comics fan, and the quality of stuff like Jurgens' Thor, Busiek and Perez's Avengers, and so on had a lot to do with that.

 

[Mulholland-Jr]

Anything before Civil War really. Even the 90s had some charming elements to them, in nostalgic way of course.

 

[Energist]

Late 90's to early 00's.

Same here, but for different reasons; namely Daredevil. I love those late runs on the first volume from Kesel and Kelly, and even though I didn't care for Smith's opening arc, Bendis's work on the second volume was the best Daredevil had been in years leading up to that point.