dadaluholla

You sir, are banned from Comic Book Talk.

Navinabob

Yes... but how does the illustrated Mark Twain stories hold up against The Dark Knight Returns?

bloopbleep

Why because the truth hurts?
I bet you never read a real book and that is why the new comics suck because of current readers and current writers who have never experienced anything but regurgitated retellings of Alan Moore`s Watchmen and Frank Miller`s Dark Knight for the last 25 years, Stan Lee`s favorite writers were Dickens,Twain,H.G. Wells,Jules Verne,Conan Doyle and such,He was influenced by real great writers while the new comic writers all they know is to keep telling the same Dark Knight or Watchmen story over and over again. Modern comics are boring and sales are at a all-time low now with Spidey barely cracking 60,000 comics a month. This industry is kept alive by aging old time fanboys who never want to experience anything but dark violent interpretations of superheroes because hey comics are not for kids but middle aged year old fanboys living in moms basement.

Navinabob

Dude... for a senior member your "take an obvious joke" skills really suck. The "old time fanboys" point you made makes no sense because "old time fanboys" refers to Golden & Silver age comics, NOT the 1980s books you mention.

Stan Lee's favorite authors makes perfect sense if you consider both his age and the little fact that there were very few comic writers of note for him to really admire before him. When Stan was starting out they were still mostly reprinting newspaper comic strips. Superhero books were only just being written and while they were very popular, they were not considered choice writing assignments (Disney animal books aimed a kids were the "choice" writing jobs at the time due to them doubling the sales of even the most popular hero books). It's hard for Stan to pick legendary comic writers as inspirations when they were his friggin' contemporaries.

Your comic book knowledge is astoundingly low and inaccurate considering your defensive tone (yep, you stole bits from wikipedia... congrats!) towards another member here. Stan's kid-friendly tone, which you apparently prefer, was a product of the times and the strict comic-book code that the industry followed. Have you actually read anything by Stan in the last 20 years? Lets just say this is the guy behind "Stripperella" in case you didn't know. Not only that, but his modern reinventions of classic characters (like what he did for DC) and the modern imprint books he wrote or developed were not the same kid-fare he did in the 40s.

He grew up and matured as a writer and, like us, as a fan of comics... while others remain stunted.

toddly6666

Back to the original post. Once again: Cool characters, bad stories. What's one good story from Marvel's 1960 comics?

bloopbleep

My original post was the silver age and modern comics are aimed at adolescent teens not the aging fanboys from San Diego comic con who complain about everything new in comics from digital comics to CGC, if your a aging 40 year old fanboy COMPLAINING THAT you can`t relate to Spidey or the X-mens adventures anymore than too bad, Spidey`s and the X-men adventures are aimed at adolescent teen males and not the 35 year old fan boy living in his momma`s basement. That`s my point, these comics are aimed at a younger male teen audience and not the aging fanboy and that the aging fanboy as William Shatner once said should get a life.

Navinabob

You are factually incorrect. Comic books are not a non-profit charity industry pumped out with educational guidelines and funded by government subsidiaries. It is a business.

Modern comic books are aimed at people with disposable income. The job of a comic book is to sell the advertisements tucked between pages. The average age of the comic book reader has been between 27-29 since the 1980s. Aging fanboys tend to move onwards as other things cut into their lives and teenage readers stick with the comics as adults because of the broad spectrum of titles and sophisticated stories. Any book series targeted towards 15 year olds (and only 15 year olds) will fail because we are only 15 for one year.

I loved comics at 12, but reading those same books at 32 I get an entirely new appreciation of the same exact issue (Ann Nocenti's Daredevil run). I just turned a 73 year old to the Walking Dead series and he loves them (and he's more well read then anyone I've ever met). Any series that's targeted towards 17-71 year old will make more money then any series just for early teens. That's why the kiddie section is usually only 1 bottom shelf at a comic store.

Silver Age and Modern Age are two very different markets.

Lemmy

First one that came to mind:

toddly6666

It's a bit pathetic that this is The Thing's only storyline for the past 50+ years. Thing: "Make me human again, Reed. i don't want to be a monster."
Reed: "Trust me, I'm working on a cure for you."

blah blah blah, same story they have had for ages. I did like it when The Thing got spiky and hooked up with that female Thing, but that's still not a good story.

Lemmy

"Then there is no pleasing you."

Superboy

Try out Grant Morrison's Fantastic Four tpb. Great art, great story.

Superboy

The 80s is still my favorite decade for comics.

Marvel was on fire during the 80s. Actually, comics in general were stellar during this decade.

fujishig

That's only because the mid to late 90's were so awful...

Also depends on when you grew up. I missed the 60's and most of the 70's so my fondest memories as a kid are from the 80's as well.

I can kinda understand bloopbleep's ( point, but I disagree (obviously) with the aging irrelevant fanboys part. I do think that comics are sometimes hogtied by their adult audience, which almost by nature hates change and wishes that things were more like comics in their youth. I'm not talking about going back to anthologies and single-issue stories, but stuff like 'the Hulk must be green," "the FF should be Reed, Sue, Johnny,and Ben," "Superboy should have been in the Legion of Superheroes," etc. I fall into this all the time. Heck, Quesada falls into this as well, which is kinda why he wanted Peter to not be married, and also why readers who grew up with Peter being married hate Quesada (this is besides the fact that they WAY he did it was idiotic, of course... I really doubt even if it had been handed in an ingenious way that fans would have liked it).

Fans also want tight continuity, which is just not possible with the freelancing nature of comics by the Big 2... and longtime readers don't necessarily want to be hogtied by a writer who killed off their favorite character because he hated them, in some one-off issue designed to show how evil some new bad guy is. But excessive continuity also means that it's really hard for new readers to jump on. This is probably why some of the most revered superhero works are stuff that happens outside of continuity or as one-shots(the aforementioned Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, All Star Superman, Killing Joke, Squadron Supreme, etc.)

All that said, there are some great superhero comics coming out that are far from dark and/or boring. Overpriced/expensive? Yes. I do fear that the comic book crowd is aging and dwindling, but I hope stuff like the animated Batman Brave and the Bold and JLU at least introduces these characters to a younger audience who will someday become comic book fans.

Navinabob

Honestly, the more adult oriented a comic book is the more likely a kid will want to buy it. As a kid I recall picking through a rack of comics at the grocery store where I drifted past the obvious kiddy-fare (Disney, Saturday-morning cartoon comics) towards GI Joe that had several Joes shot and injured on the cover and a Daredevil comic that just had his horned head on the cover surrounded by other hero portraits.

As much as I loved the Joe cartoon the promise of actual violence was just astounding to me. Growing up Catholic Daredevil drew me in because of the good/evil balance. The earliest Daredevil books I read questioned my views on religion, Vietnam War & patriotism and suffering through adversity.

My first major Daredevil series had him beaten down and nearly killed by Typhoid Mary and crew. As Daredevil lay near death (or perhaps even dead) his mentor Stick came to him in a vision urging him to not die and fight for every breath of air... It was dark, it was emotional, it was real. That was the first series of books I read in the hospital after getting out from my two weeks in intensive care when I was 13. With half my body destroyed I read that series and wept after I finished it. I healed as Daredevil did and took from it all the inspiration that I could.

Having read ever issue of Daredevil in the 60s and 70s (as well as hundreds of other in that time period) I can tell you that none of those issues could inspire a boy to live and fight. Yes comics were more innocent back then... but they were also more empty and meaningless. They were fluff pieces meant to pass the time and little more. As such, I can't even imagine living in the mind of someone who needs their fantasy to be so removed from reality that it fails to have a soul. I just can't relate to that now, nor could I do that as a kid.

Superboy

I only started reading comics in the late 90s, so it was all back issues. It's just that there was so much good stuff turned out in that decade.

Spider-man was an exciting, dynamic comic with real characters and real consequences.

Same for the Fantastic Four, the X-men family, and the Avengers.

The "satellite era" Justice League.

Wonder Woman was worth reading.

Adams on Batman.

Then there's Miracleman, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, upstart indie comics, and so many more I can't think of off the top of my head.

fujishig

Note that, in my post at least, the "adult" part is not a comic book having adult themes... I agree, at a certain age, kids don't want to be coddled; they want stories that have lasting impact, not stuff that just resets to the norm every issue, cardboard cutouts of heroes and villains, etc. I'm saying that catering to the adult collectors market can limit the kid audience. Take the endless crossovers for example. Even if a kid saved his allowance to buy a 3 dollar comic every month, there are very few monthlies from the Big 2 that do not get pulled into some bigger crossover that is almost incomprehensible if you're reading just one monthly. That's great to get money from adults who may have more disposable income (though I'm sure many of us get tired of it as well) but not so great for the kid who can only get one book.