I read the Brave and the Bold #200. I remember that I bought this on the newsstand because I loved the cover.  The story inside is really good, too.  It's not a true team-up between the two Batmen, but they do battle the same baddie, though unaware of it. Some excellent Dave Gibbons art here, and a good story by Mike Barr, who'd become the closest thing to a regular B&B writer after Bob Haney left the title (much too late, IMHO).

Aquaman: The Search for Mera HC. Collects Aquaman (1962-1978 1st Series) #40-48.

Written by Steve Skeates. Art by Jim Aparo. Cover by Nick Cardy.

The start of writer Steve Skeates Aquaman run along with artist Jim Aparo in his first DC work.

This run started around the time when I could only afford a handful of titles each month. I always liked Aquaman from the 60's cartoon. So when I had more money in the 70's I was able to follow his stories in Adventure Comics and his solo title. I had always wanted to read the Skeates run from the 60's but it was difficult or too expensive to get in back issues. So I was excited to see his run collected here and in a second volume collecting #49-56 (which I will be reading soon).

I really loved it. Skeates is one of the under rated writers from the 60's & 70's. Paired with Aparo in his first DC work made for a classic run on Aquaman that still holds up today.

Aquaman first solo series had stellar artists... Nick Cardy. Jim Aparo. Don Newton.

I finished reading every post in this thread. Great stuff, guys. Plenty of recommendations for future reading. 

I'm halfway through the Dark Age books in Astro City. A few people in this thread mentioned that the Dark Age books were a slog to get through, but I haven't felt that way. I guess it helps that the arcs I enjoyed the most had a darker edge to them (The Confessor arc and the Steeljack arc). I grew up in the 80s and 90s when superheroes were meant to be darker, and I've spent the past few years exploring the 70s comics where the tonal shift first began. 

I'm still enjoying Starman. James Robinson enjoys writing about things he likes (to put it nicely), and there are moments where the characters have ridiculous debates about pop culture that seem to be influenced by Tarantino, but aren't as universal as Tarantino. Reservoir Dog characters argued about Madonna songs, but Robinson's characters argue about far more esoteric topics. All writers have bad habits, though. I feel like that's something his editor should have curbed. I pretty much love everything else Robinson does in terms of messing with comic book structure. There's no real emotional pull yet, where I have to keep reading, though I do like Jack's relationship with his dad. The art, and character design, is really 90s at times, but I do love the foreshadowing and the preordained sense that the book is leading somewhere.

I was kind of disappointed by Barry Smith's second run on Conan the Barbarian after they announced he was leaving the book. He struggled to keep up with the deadlines and ended up doing a lot of breakdowns. Gil Kane did the fill-in issues between Smith's two stints. Opinion was divided in the letter column over Kane's work, but personally I thought it was much better than Smith's second run. 

I recently finished Omega the Unknown. I'm not a huge fan of Steve Gerber, but as far as deconstructionist takes on the superhero genre go, I think his unfinished run on Omega pretty much encapsulates the heart and soul of what he was trying to do. 

I've been slowly making my way through the Five Years Later Legion of Superheroes. I usually enjoy dystopian future stories, but I've got to be honest, it is really hard to follow what is going on. It's not like I haven't read the famous runs on Legion. Admittedly, it's been a few years, but still... I feel lost from issue to issue, and Giffen's art doesn't hold up.  

My Hal Jordan/Green Lantern binge read has now taken me through Showcase Presents Green Lantern vol. 3 reprinting Green Lantern #39-59. Since this volume includes an issue of the Zatanna's Search story, I decide to also read the two other parts of the story I have in Showcase Presents TPBs from Hawkman and The Atom.

I feel the writing gets more sophisticated in this volume. The Calvinball quality of fight sequences gets toned a bit, and thus the fights get more interesting to follow. In volumes 1 and 2, most issues were split between 2 stories. Book-length stories were infrequent. In this volume, the patterns is reversed. Book-length stories predomiant, especially after #50. Also, after numerous self-contained issues (albeit with references to past issues or subplots), this volume finally has a couple of cliffhangers that are continued in the next issue. Interestingly, the first cliffhanger starts in a half-length story in one issue and concludes in a full-length story in the next.

But my favorite storytelling development in this volume is a major status quo change! After repetition of basically the same dynamics with only minimal changes, Hal leaves Coast City because he is heartbroken when Carol Ferris announces that she's engaged to another man. So Hal loses his supporting cast and does some wandering. When he settles in Washington state, he trades his test pilot job for a much more exciting career: insurance adjuster!!! I really like the character development, the personal change, and the disruption of the monotony of the Hal/Carol dynamic. We have get a bit of the status quo change in the Pol Manning/5700 stories. When he moves, Hal decides to rely on his ring less and his fists more. Although that reasoning is barely mentioned again, it leads to a period were the seemingly limitless extent of GL's powers in early issues are narrowed to the Bronze/Modern Age conception of his powers.

On the villain front, vol. 2 fleshed out most of the classic GL villains that come to mind. There are just a few main additions in vol. 3: Goldface (who actually appears under his real name without his costume in vol. 2), Major Disaster, and Baron Tyrano. I don't Tyrano appears much after this, but he actually has a Who's Who entry. Sinestro also shows up for the first time since #18. On the whole though, recurring villains are de-emphasized compared to vol. 2. Two human who eventually become GLs in one way or another show up: Charley Vicker and Guy Gardner. There's also a minor retcon for consistency sake, as Hal explains that he didn't actually come up with name Green Lantern (as stated in his first story), but rather had the name implanted in his mind by Abin Sur (to be consistent with other GLs using that name).

One last change: around the middle of this volume, Gil Kane starts inking his own pencils instead of being inked by Sid Greene. It's a thicker line and more cartoony. To me the art is even better.

Next, it's on to the unusually short Showcase Presents Green Lantern vol. 4!

It also probably helps that you're able to read through the Dark Age issues all together, rather than having to wait through month after month and year after year of publishing delays that killed any sense of momentum the story arc had. It's not that it was too dark: it was that reading that thing as it came out felt like living through the 1970s in real time!