I voted 20th century, but that's largely because everything since about the late 90s just blends into one homogeneous mass in my memory, which I categorize as "recent" for the sake of convenience. And I'm not just talking about comics.

The original consensus will not change, but now that you mention it, maybe you could finally answer my previous question:

That moment came, but I still don't know how you solved the problem, which is a bothersome one, from a practical point of view. I know that a fixed point in time is even a more arbitrary dividing line, but it saves a lot of effort.

Pretty simple, really. Wack-A-Mole attack plan: If/when someone notices an active thread in the modern comics section that no longer belongs there, we move it. If a thread it sitting there that hasn't been touched in a year and it now becomes ten years old, we're not concerned as it is no longer being used anyway.

That's kind've where I am, though I'd say from the early 90s. (I think I stopped making regular trips to the comic shop around 95 or 96.)

It's probably an unpopular opinion here, but I don't like the idea of a "rolling" timeline for classics and would put a stopping point around the mid-80s, when not just comic creators, but comic fans seemed to become so self-reflexive that everything was seen as someone's "take" on something that appeared before (at least as far as companies and characters that started in the age of newsstand distribution). Classic vs. post-modern.

The downside of this is that it wouldn't include a lit of great indie stuff.

For my personal reference, i.e. what I use at home, not on the board, I use modern comic to refer to anything from the last 25 years (so '91 is the cut off currently)and anything more than 25 years old as "vintage" comics. I reserve Classics for a descriptor of quality/influence/importance, not as a descriptor of age or publishing date. But I don't expect the board to conform to my usage, so I go with the consensus, which was a ten year cut off.

That said, the essence of comic storytelling radically changed between 1985 and 2000 so much so that there is a distinctive change in the way panels and pages, images and text were used to tell stories, the types of stories being told, and intended audience of comics that in many ways they're two separate and distinct pop culture entities. It is a more significant change than that between the Golden and Silver Ages, and definitely more distinct differences than between the Silver and Bronze Age tot he point I think Bronze Age material has more in common with its Golden Age predecessors than with its modern descendants. There is no one book/moment/year you can point to and say this is where it changed, but that 15 year period between '85 and 2000 was definitely a transformative period, and that is why I don't think there can ever be a "correct" or definitive answer as to what is classic and what is not, there can only be a consensus definition we will use for the sake of convenience.

-M

I don't think a thread falls into disuse for two years because someone couldn't find it in the classics section two years before it was eligible to be in the classics section.

If you have a topic in the modern section that meets the criteria for classic now, and you are passionate about seeing it moved, send us a pm. But a topic that hasn't seen activity in two years is going to get buried in whatever section its placed in anyway.


As a reminder, our staff here is all voluntary, and I think we want their energies focused on bigger fish, quite honestly.

Maybe they should look harder.