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Post by tarkintino on Mar 5, 2021 17:59:53 GMT -5
OP: DC. No contest. The New Teen Titans, the Legion of Superheroes, Batman and the Outsiders, Detective Comics, the greatest version of a Star Trek comic (based on post-TWOK movie era), Who's Who, Vigilante, Sword of the Atom, and the seismic, all-important event that actually lived up to its promise of consequence in Crisis on Infinite Earths (and its supplement History of the DC Universe). There's other titles I could list, but its not needed to illustrate how DC became a force it had not been since the early 70s, and before that, their launching of the Silver Age.
Marvel's best of the 80s were the O'Neil/Stern/Romita Jr./Frenz era of The Amazing Spider-Man. All that made Spider-Man a pop culture star was restored to the title after years of just being a sort of random title (especially in the late 70s). Stern (and J.M. DeMatteis) had a memorable run on Captain America, while Star Wars had the great Goodwin/Infantino era, then the Simonson/Goodwin/Michelinie run. AS good or great as some of those books were (especially ASM), Marvel did not have the sheer numbers of great titles like 1980s DC.
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Post by berkley on Mar 5, 2021 18:10:03 GMT -5
DC. the only 80s Marvel series I rate highly are the few things that carried over from the late 70s, like MoKF, so I don't really think of them as 80s comics. The Alan Moore books alone would boost 80s DC over 80s Marvel, n my eyes.
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Post by hondobrode on Mar 5, 2021 19:04:22 GMT -5
Marvel was still actually good back then but it was a mixed bag for both publishers.
Marvel - Daredevil, X-Men, Thor, Byrne's Fantastic Four, Epic Illustrated, Bizarre Adventures, Micronauts, Rom, the Wolverine mini, the early Marvel graphic novels, the Hulk, Iron Man, the Lee / Byrne Silver Surfer and the Lee / Moebius Silver Surfer micro-series
DC - Justice League, Superman & Action, All Star Squadron, Legion of Super-Heroes, Jonah Hex, New Teen Titans, Night Force, Phantom Zone, Blackhawk, Swamp Thing, Sgt Rock, Crisis on Infinite Earths, the Man of Steel mini, Batman : The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Adventures of Superman, the Flash, Batman Year One
They were both doing well with certain titles, but IMO it's still clearly DC ahead, and that margin only gets wider in the 90's
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Post by commond on Mar 6, 2021 7:07:06 GMT -5
This was tough. I started reading comics in 1988, so I don't hate Tom DeFalco era Marvel. Those were the books I got hooked on. I gravitated toward Marvel when I started. I bought Marvel off the shelf and tended to fill in my DC collections through secondhand book shops. I was a kid, so I was mostly attracted to costumes at that stage. I still have a fondness for that era. It just goes to show that the era where things went off the rails for you is the same era where folks get on board.
I chose DC because books like Swamp Thing, Animal Man and Doom Patrol were more sophisticated than Marvel books, but I feel that 80s Marvel gets a bad rap. I don't think there was a single point in the 80s where Marvel was putting out bad books. The first comics I bought were Uncanny X-Men #236 and Amazing Spider-Man #308. I don't think that anyone would argue that that these eras of X-Men or Spider-Man were better than the classic eras that proceeded them, but were they bad comics? I don't think so.
When fans lose interest in a book, they love to say that it jumped the shark. Yes, it jumped the shark for you because you lost interest in it, or it stopped catering toward what you wanted to read, but that doesn't always mean that the book turned bad. I'm not pointing the finger at anyone. I'm guilty of the same thing once I lost interest in superhero comics in '94, but I think it's important to remember how redundant these arguments are. For every post-Crisis DC book that gets pimped, there is a point where it peaked and went downhill. For every Marvel crossover that seemed like a money grab, there's a DC equivalent. It's easy to crap on Secret Wars II, for example, but does anybody enjoy Invasion? Some folks probably do because that was their jumping on point.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Mar 6, 2021 8:10:17 GMT -5
I voted Marvel without too much internal debate. DC put out a handful of great books in the second half of the decade, like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, V For Vendetta, Killing Joke, Byrne's Superman, Star Trek, and Atari Force, for example. But Marvel's quality output was just much greater in number IMO.
You had Stern, DeFalco and Michelinie all producing excellent runs on Amazing Spider-Man, there was Bill Mantlo's seriously underrated (in my view) run on Spectacular Spider-Man, Miller's Daredevil, the death of Captain Marvel in Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars (which was just big, dumb superhero fun), Alpha Flight, Alan Moore's Captain Britain, Clan Destine, The 'Nam, and, excellent licensed titles like The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, to name just some of Marvel's great output. I believe that Uncanny X-Men was also pretty great in the 80s too, though I've never read it.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Mar 6, 2021 8:31:51 GMT -5
DC. the only 80s Marvel series I rate highly are the few things that carried over from the late 70s, like MoKF, so I don't really think of them as 80s comics. My thoughts exactly. X-Men, Daredevil, Star Wars, Dr. Strange, Avengers were all excellent series in the very early '80s, but were like an overtime period after the '70s. (Simonson's Thor and Byrne's FF would be exceptions, but those, too, were an early '80s thing). DC, meanwhile, kept reinvigorating its old titles or trying really cool new things. The '80s Marvel never had books like Hellblazer, Sandman, Watchmen, DKR, the Shadow, or even Arak or Justice League Bwah-ha-ha. And I say that as a mostly Marvel fan!
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Mar 6, 2021 9:36:32 GMT -5
DC's Post Crisis may have ultimately faltered, but it was damn exciting for a few years, maybe the most exciting DC had been since the early Silver Age. Meanwhile, Marvel's 80s largely felt like decline for me. Regardless of inherent quality, it wasn't 70s Marvel.
So I think company trajectory matters to me a lot, here.
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Post by chaykinstevens on Mar 6, 2021 11:43:00 GMT -5
You had Stern, DeFalco and Michelinie all producing excellent runs on Amazing Spider-Man, there was Bill Mantlo's seriously underrated (in my view) run on Spectacular Spider-Man, Miller's Daredevil, the death of Captain Marvel in Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars (which was just big, dumb superhero fun), Alpha Flight, Alan Moore's Captain Britain, Clan Destine, The 'Nam, and, excellent licensed titles like The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, to name just some of Marvel's great output. I believe that Uncanny X-Men was also pretty great in the 80s too, though I've never read it. Wasn't the death of Captain Marvel in its own graphic novel? ClanDestine was mid-90s.
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 6, 2021 11:44:47 GMT -5
You had Stern, DeFalco and Michelinie all producing excellent runs on Amazing Spider-Man, there was Bill Mantlo's seriously underrated (in my view) run on Spectacular Spider-Man, Miller's Daredevil, the death of Captain Marvel in Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars (which was just big, dumb superhero fun), Alpha Flight, Alan Moore's Captain Britain, Clan Destine, The 'Nam, and, excellent licensed titles like The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, to name just some of Marvel's great output. I believe that Uncanny X-Men was also pretty great in the 80s too, though I've never read it. Wasn't the death of Captain Marvel in its own graphic novel? ClanDestine was mid-90s. Yes, the Death of Captain Marvel was its own graphic novel, and it was wonderful.
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Post by jason on Mar 6, 2021 13:41:09 GMT -5
I voted Marvel without too much internal debate. DC put out a handful of great books in the second half of the decade, like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, V For Vendetta, Killing Joke, Byrne's Superman, Star Trek, and Atari Force, for example. But Marvel's quality output was just much greater in number IMO. You had Stern, DeFalco and Michelinie all producing excellent runs on Amazing Spider-Man, there was Bill Mantlo's seriously underrated (in my view) run on Spectacular Spider-Man, Miller's Daredevil, the death of Captain Marvel in Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars (which was just big, dumb superhero fun), Alpha Flight, Alan Moore's Captain Britain, Clan Destine, The 'Nam, and, excellent licensed titles like The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, to name just some of Marvel's great output. I believe that Uncanny X-Men was also pretty great in the 80s too, though I've never read it. Dont forget New Mutants, West Coast Avengers, and what I feel was Marvel's best book of the 1980s, GI Joe.
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Post by earl on Mar 6, 2021 14:48:03 GMT -5
DC has the advantage that Dick Giordano was trying all sorts of different things to see what might work outside the formula. That and so many of the good Marvel guys jumped ship to join the guys that DC took out of First comics and the American indies like Ostrander, Truman, Matt Wagner and the all the UK guys. Huge advantage...just in diversity of content and types of creators.
Marvel was dead set tied to the formula for the most part as Epic Comics never really took that next step. Obviously there was some awesome all time classic super hero comics and they did put out some cool stuff like Moebius and other projects, but overall much more conservative output by comparison. Then there was the New Universe...but I digress.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Mar 6, 2021 20:20:39 GMT -5
You had Stern, DeFalco and Michelinie all producing excellent runs on Amazing Spider-Man, there was Bill Mantlo's seriously underrated (in my view) run on Spectacular Spider-Man, Miller's Daredevil, the death of Captain Marvel in Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars (which was just big, dumb superhero fun), Alpha Flight, Alan Moore's Captain Britain, Clan Destine, The 'Nam, and, excellent licensed titles like The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, to name just some of Marvel's great output. I believe that Uncanny X-Men was also pretty great in the 80s too, though I've never read it. Wasn't the death of Captain Marvel in its own graphic novel? ClanDestine was mid-90s. Yeah, seems you're right about the Death of Captain Marvel. I have it in a collection that also features the issues of Iron Man, Captain Marvel, and Avengers that lead up to the one-shot graphic novel. I think I just misremembered the collection as being reprints of the Avengers. As for ClanDestine, you're right, it was mid-90s, which is surprising to me because I swear I was buying it in the late 80s, around the same time that David Michelinie and Todd McFarlane were on Amazing Spider-Man. Weird.
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Post by dbutler69 on Mar 9, 2021 6:22:24 GMT -5
I voted Marvel without too much internal debate. DC put out a handful of great books in the second half of the decade, like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, V For Vendetta, Killing Joke, Byrne's Superman, Star Trek, and Atari Force, for example. But Marvel's quality output was just much greater in number IMO. You had Stern, DeFalco and Michelinie all producing excellent runs on Amazing Spider-Man, there was Bill Mantlo's seriously underrated (in my view) run on Spectacular Spider-Man, Miller's Daredevil, the death of Captain Marvel in Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars (which was just big, dumb superhero fun), Alpha Flight, Alan Moore's Captain Britain, Clan Destine, The 'Nam, and, excellent licensed titles like The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, to name just some of Marvel's great output. I believe that Uncanny X-Men was also pretty great in the 80s too, though I've never read it.Well, only up until about 1984.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Mar 9, 2021 7:04:28 GMT -5
I voted Marvel without too much internal debate. DC put out a handful of great books in the second half of the decade, like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, V For Vendetta, Killing Joke, Byrne's Superman, Star Trek, and Atari Force, for example. But Marvel's quality output was just much greater in number IMO. You had Stern, DeFalco and Michelinie all producing excellent runs on Amazing Spider-Man, there was Bill Mantlo's seriously underrated (in my view) run on Spectacular Spider-Man, Miller's Daredevil, the death of Captain Marvel in Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars (which was just big, dumb superhero fun), Alpha Flight, Alan Moore's Captain Britain, Clan Destine, The 'Nam, and, excellent licensed titles like The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, to name just some of Marvel's great output. I believe that Uncanny X-Men was also pretty great in the 80s too, though I've never read it.Well, only up until about 1984. In my opinion, Claremont's peak years on X-Men were 1980 thru 1984, with the 1975-1980 stuff far outclassing the post-1984 stuff. Effectively, we get six years of Claremont X-Men in the '70s that were pretty good, five years of X-Men in the 1980s that are amazing, and five years of X-Men in the 1980s that are very lackluster. So does that help the case of Marvel in the 1980s or hurt it?
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Post by commond on Mar 9, 2021 7:05:34 GMT -5
I voted Marvel without too much internal debate. DC put out a handful of great books in the second half of the decade, like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, V For Vendetta, Killing Joke, Byrne's Superman, Star Trek, and Atari Force, for example. But Marvel's quality output was just much greater in number IMO. You had Stern, DeFalco and Michelinie all producing excellent runs on Amazing Spider-Man, there was Bill Mantlo's seriously underrated (in my view) run on Spectacular Spider-Man, Miller's Daredevil, the death of Captain Marvel in Avengers, Simonson's Thor, Secret Wars (which was just big, dumb superhero fun), Alpha Flight, Alan Moore's Captain Britain, Clan Destine, The 'Nam, and, excellent licensed titles like The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones and Star Wars, to name just some of Marvel's great output. I believe that Uncanny X-Men was also pretty great in the 80s too, though I've never read it.Well, only up until about 1984. Forget about great, how many books were as consistently good from 1980 to 1989 as Uncanny X-Men? Amazing Spider-Man? 2000 AD? Cerebus? Elfquest?
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