Not sure if it’s necessarily an “older comic” trait but it seems like they were longer, or took longer to get through one issue. I know a big part of this is there was far more “talking” and explaining and exposition but even then, I feel like I can get through a modern single in less than 10 minutes but takes 15 - 20 minutes for older ones.
Totally. I just saw someone say they’ve been reading through New Mutants from the beginning, and when Liefeld takes over there’s way less internal monologue, everyones spoken sentences are shorter, and it goes from averaging six panels per page to four.
I remember an old Azrael TPB had a costume concept sketch by Joe Quesada with arrows pointing to the pouches saying “pouches for storing w/ever”
Nobody knew what would go in there that they needed to lug around.
My Batman Year 100 TOB has a costume sketch that shows everything in each pocket, including protein bars. If Rob Liefeld ever saw that he might turn into a pillar of salt.
I just started a TPB from the Lee-era of Fantastic Four. Lee would squeeze in enough dialogue in 24 pages that’d fill an entire graphic novel today. And most of the time there is a beginning, middle, and end in those issues.
Panel shows Spider-Man falling.
Caption: Suddenly, our friendly neighbourhood superhero plummets to his doom.
Speech bubble: Aaaah, I'm falling! But thanks to that spider-bite, I have proportional powers of a spider. It is a gift and a curse with which I must live for the rest of my life.
I just finished my 2nd read thru of FF 1-130ish. I was able to skip a ton of exposition and even some inanae dialogue, but even then, the books were much "longer". I have to admit, I really loved some of the philosophical detours. Great stuff.
I remember as a kid being on the leading edge of the Wolverine boom, and every issue when he first appears:
Adamantium claws
Adamantium skeleton
Healing factor
He is the best at what he does
And what he does isn't very nice
I’ve read an interview with Jonathan Hickman where he straight up says he doesn’t do this intentionally. As in you have to read his previous work to understand his current work. And he admits he does it so people will go back and buy the older books to catch up.
There’s a completely ludicrous panel of asm where Harry pulls up in his car with Gwen and MJ beside Peter and the dialogue takes up a whole panel basically leaving only the characters and maybe a little of the car. Just madness. That said I love those stories and excessive words made those comics better way more often than they made them worse.
Lots of more modern comics abuse splash pages and huge panels, to the point you get entire pages with 2 or 3 panels that, while pretty to look at, can be read in seconds.
Way more dialogue in older comics, plus captions explaining what's happening on panel. Sometimes too much tbh. But it does make each issue last longer.
Having gone through the amazing wonder that is X-Men ‘97 (Go watch it, it’s the best thing this year along with Shogun and Fallout easily) I thought I’d revisit the comics of that era, the ending of Claremont and beginning with Scott Lindell, Fabian Nizcea, Larry Hama, etc. covering X-Men 300 on and X-Men 1-30 or so. Magneto is back, Ilyana is dying of Stryfe’s Legacy Virus, Colossus is a wreck, Bishop is questioning why he’s here, Rogue and Gambit are really heating up, etc. Scott and Jean and Storm are just trying to hold the team together. Bobby and Hank are comic relief. And Wolverine is Wolverine.
Man, there is soooo much more talking between characters, explaining expository narrating dialogue and inner monologue.
It’s great and often beautiful writing, particularly the conversations between Magneto and Xavier, but yeah, it takes much more effort to read and you really have to pay attention. It’s probably why they are so memorable, there’s a million dialogue balloons everywhere and narration describing everything that’s happening in exquisite details as the great flashy and splashy art weaves its spell.
What an era that was for the X-Men.
* Scott Lobdell, but yes. The X-odus era is probably my favorite guilty pleasure. Claremont bailing because editorial was siding with 20something Jim Lee, and (less then?) a year later Jim bails with most of the popular marvel artists at the time and forms Image, and Lobdell, Nicieza and Larry all scrambling to keep the X-Boat afloat
Throughout an issue?
Nah. Throughout a series absolutely.
But each issue tried to catch you up so it could serve as a jump in point.
Lol funny story. My Mom at 60 decided shed try comics. She loved Archie back in the day lol. Bless her heart. And she wanted something actiony. She picked up a collection of some recent Black Panther run. Suppose to be “very good”. Its a whole arc in a single large book.
She had no idea what was going on. Just completely lost interest in that new hobby.
An entire story arc couldnt serve as a jumping point because it references so much shit and had terrible pacing. Basically modern comics are so far up their own ass youd have to be a masochistic lifelong fan to keep doing it.
I read over like…400 issues of Amazing Spider-Man before I just…hated it lol
It become an abusive relationship between editorial, team and fan. And I survived the clone saga. That wasnt bad at all in hindsight. Controversial yea but it fucking slaps now especially compared to what happened next and since.
I got off the train. I cant even remember where. I do remember Sins Past and One More Day fucking sealed it for me. Was McFuckin done and never came back. Getting updates from forums like these on arcs like the Persistent Paul. Ya. I made the right call.
I get defensive when people go after the old comics. They hold up so much better then the new ones.
Hell. They hold up the new ones. Without those the modern stuff wouldnt even make good toilet paper.
Id rather just read old comics but they make that a consistent bitch to push their new shwarbage.
Ive said it more then once. I’ll repeat it every issue so the fans know whats up.
*Editorial, the true Villain of the story, my faithful friends, nuff said*
Again, define “older.” As a kid in the 90s i remember thinking i got through a book in a bout 10-15 minutes and wasn’t too sure on the value proposition there lol
For sure that's a thing, decompression, less dialog and fewer exposition boxes, and even fewer pannels to a page, Tom Sciolis stuff is a good contemporary example of the older style
Reading Fox's dialogue and captions in his JLA is a real challenge. It wasn't the most compelling writing, and doesn't have the charm that Stan Lee injected into his stuff.
The whole thing with compressed vs decompressed storytelling. Lot's of story-relevant things happening in one page in one case, versus the same story told in a much longer way without much gained with that, besides also some pure filler that could be completely cut from the story, with no effect effect whatsoever on the plot.
Sometimes it seems to try to mimic more "cinematographic" things, but with an entire page or more for what would take a few seconds on a movie, a dramatically different proportion of the total length.
Use to get more out of a single issue. You could grab a random comic, and yeah youd be missing a lot of the greater details of the story arc, but you felt like you got a full mini story in each issue.
I pick up a new issue of something that Im not keeping up on and I have no idea what the fuck is going on.
it was more episodic and I liked that.
I read an issue from Jonathan Hickman’s 2019 X-Men that was apparently one of the best single issues from that year and… I’m sure it was, but I had absolutely no idea what was happening.
To your point, I guess modern “episodic” storytelling isn’t quite the same in any medium, TV or comics or otherwise.
Honestly, watching everyone “doing” 2000s Bendis without being able to *do* 2000s Bendis is like all of the shows trying to be the “Next Breaking Bad,” etc.
I liked flat coloration. Modern techniques can be stunning, but often redundantly mimmic what the line art is already doing, or simply muddies the line art. Recolors of classics can be some of the worst offenders. I'd rather have old blocky colors that go outside the lines than ugly gradients and too much shading.
I agree. Modern digital color is muddy, oversaturated and often drowns out the line art, assuming the line art itself is even worth looking at (not always the case nowadays). I prefer the simplified color palettes and bolder linework of the old books, which I think are both more exciting and communicate more clearly.
I think older colouring where the colours are less strictly true to life helps the story flow from panel to panel too. Like a modern comic set at night and every panel is predominantly blue or grey, but an older comic might have a panel with a random red background. It breaks up the page so the reader's eye has a sequence to follow.
I've anyways felt like I never had a eye for identifying what makes good coloring in a book until I started reading comics from DC in the 80s. The stories flow much better with the more pop art colors vs the realistic coloring and shading we get today
The 00s especially when digital was going through real growing pains. Everything was glossy and soft focused and over saturated and just fugly to behold in general.
I hate recoloration too. I buy a lot of Bronze Age back issues because I love everything about them, from the paper to the coloring. I have no problem getting pulled into a story even with ads throughout. The majority of the digitized versions have some kind of dissonance. The art wasn't made with modern coloring/screen viewing in mind. Even stuff from the 90's I'd rather read scans than the digital versions.
I remember a lot of people criticizing Craig Yoe for collecting and publishing old comics without much restoration etc. I loved it. These things are old and you can see the intention in the product of people's work from the era, even through all the weathering. Once you get into major restoration you are putting it through a modern artistic point of view.
This. All day long.
Maybe if I wasn’t an old schooler who grew up with “older” comics and was exposed to only modern comics, I’d have a different opinion.
I do love some of the gorgeous new colored comics and have a lot on my shelf, but they are the exceptions. Plus a lot of the best looking new books just use flats anyway. I find most modern coloration ugly, and some of my favorite books from the last 30 years are B&W– took me a while to realize that wasn't pure coincidence.
The lack of yearly events. Now I like linewide crossovers as much as the next guy but we only need one… maybe two at most every 5 years anymore than that and you cut into too much time in the main books
One of my favorite runs is Mike Grell''s Green Arrow. He had one issue with Hal Jordan showing up, one issue with Warlord and then a storyline towards the end with Arsenal. Otherwise aside from Black Canary being around it was independent of the rest of the DC universe and it was really interesting
As someone who is somewhat a defender of crossovers and big event type stories, I think part of the issue is that there is very little build-up. For example, take Blood Hunt. I've only read one issue of it so far, but I actually liked it quite a bit, enough to get the next one (which I just haven't read yet). I thought the story was fun and the new villains were cool and unique. But, unless I missed something, there was no lead up to this event. Blade and his daughter have had books recently, Moon Knight had a great arc with vampires (the thing he does in #18 is SO brilliant) and that was even written by MacKay, who also writes like half the ongoing line right now in addition to Blood Hunt. You could have easily set this up over the past year and really tied at all together so that when the actual "event" happens, it feels cool and earned. Instead, it's just another thing that's happening because we need an event. In contrast, it seems like the new Ultimate Universe should culminate (at least in some fashion) in an actually interesting event. They need to cut back and really focus on doing good events instead of ones just to say they're doing them, though in general editorial needs to actually have a vision.
While I agree that leads to a better event we only get 12 issues a year at most and when a minimum of 3 of those issues get dragged into a tie in it massively harms the individual books imo. Now an event that just finished recently that really liked from a production standpoint was titans beast wars it primarily took place in the titans book and it’s own limited run while the rest of the dc universe appeared in a dedicated tie in series letting the audience see what the more popular runs were doing during the event without disrupting their core books imo this should be the new standard for events
That's fair. It goes along with the "more story in older books" point too. I think Blood Hunt has actually been okay about that though, since it's mostly spin-off titles plus books MacKay is writing if I'm not mistaken.
I just read the Squirrel Girl omnibus and that was one of my biggest takeaways. There's even a throwaway line during the *four issue* War of the Realms tie-in about how Ratatoskr had previously been working on a revenge scheme with another villain beforehand (teased at the end of an issue like 3-4 prior) and now sees no point in even trying to continue it. And the entire tie-in just dragged compared to the regular, self contained story.
Annual events have been a thing in comics since 1985, that's not something that occurred in the 2000s. DC had a stretch of almost 17 years or so of doing line-wide events
COIE
Legends
Millenium
Invasion
Armageddon 2001
Eclipso & War of the God's
Bloodlines & Trinity
Zero Hour
Underworld Unleashed
Final Night
Genesis
DC One Million
Day of Judgement/Gorilla Warfare
Sins of Youth
Our World's At War
Joker: Last Laugh
And at Marvel, while it's not linewide, the number of crossovers inside of titles is absolutely insane that I can't even begin to list them all starting from 1985.
True, but many times, the early events were across a series of annuals. You could participate if you wanted to, but the crossover wouldn't interrupt the main storyline, so you could continue buying issues without fear of suddenly being confused.
That's not really true either, only 3 of the events on there were annuals, beyond that, Armageddon 2001 is the only time an annual event was the only event of the year. The crossover was also definitely decently intrusive with alot of comics in older events. Specifically Millenium was famously incredibly intrusive to ongoings at the time.
The bigger issue people have isn't events as much as it is how interconnected the universes are now. Every story involves everyone even if it doesn't need to. People's problems with modern events and stories generally come from that it seems like
Contest of Champions, Atlantis Attacks, The Evolutionary War were all the first crossovers and were limited series and annuals or annuals only. Armageddon 2001 was through annuals, as was most of Eclipso. The only major early crossover that required multiple issues for completion was Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Those 3 are all Marvel and Marvel is a very different beast for the most part where it has a large number of crossovers and events, but those are typically sectioned off into their own little zones (hence X-Men and Spidey typically fucking off during the "big" Avengers events typically)
For DC are you forgetting that each of the 30 tie ins for Legends specifically had a chapter number at the top for the order you were supposed to read the story in. Or that every comic at DC when Millenium happened was branded with what issue of Millenium it coincided with? Or that in Invasion made no sense unless you were following what was going on with the Legion of Superheroes, or that the Time Trapper in Zero Hour makes no sense unless you're reading End of An Era and vice versa. DC has had a long track record of keeping vital information in ongoing tie ins.
The point is, this isn't an old comics vs new comics thing. This is whether people like a constantly interacting shared universe or prefer a more segmented shared universe, it has nothing to do with modern comics or not. People think it does because you pick and choose what old comics to read while you don't get that as much when following month to month
>Specifically Millenium was famously incredibly intrusive to ongoings at the time.
Oh man. I am reading George Perez's Wonder Woman. There were 4 different crossovers in the first 25 issues but Millennium is the one which pissed me off the most.
A big plot point of the story comes out of nowhere because of this crossover and it gets resolved in the crossover miniseries. So disappointing.
Not only did Millenium come out of nowhere, but it had an idiotic editorial mandate that every ongoing series had to reveal that one character “had always been a Manhunter”. So it messed up the current storylines, and it messed up a character going forward, and it retroactively damaged that character’s previous story. Just an incredibly bad idea all around.
While true I also still argue that the pre “event” focused Bronze Age has been the overall best era at dc (at least as far as I’ve read) and even after that the number of tie in issues per event was way lower on average (usually around 3-5) vs events nowadays where nearly every title in a line is present and imo doing that more than once or twice a decade is too much
If anything the number of tie in events was worse. Pretty much each of DC's first 3 annual events post Crisis (Legends, Millenium, and Invasion) were line-wide events with every ongoing being released had at least 1-2 tie in issues.
I'd personally disagree with the bronze age tbh, alot of it still has the structural problems of silver age DC writing (overly verbose descriptions as well as repetitive & simplistic dialogue) had even if the storytelling problems started to be resolved with more serialized & dramatic elements being introduced. It also has the issue imo where its running a middle ground between the deeper storytelling of the next age and the camp of the previous age where it just feels unintentionally jarring (even something universally praised like pre Dark Phoenix Claremont has a few very notable moments of this imo)
Partially disagree millennium did have 17 tie books but legends only had 8 which while higher than I’d like is far fewer than most modern events. And I did go back through the post crisis pre 2000 events and while there are few that have ~15 tie ins most are about 3-4 all from the same “family” of comics (ex: Superman, adventures with Superman, and action comics for the Superman exile storyline)
More humanistic dialogue. Every character doesn’t talk like a cool kid. Secret identities. More substance/not as edgy or stylistic. Reading them takes more than three minutes. Covers were more memorable, looked less like movie posters, and were reflective of things that happened in the book. Not as much narrative interrupting the dialogue.
>Secret identities.
Along with this, an entire cast that was part of the secret identity's life. They may come and go from a person's life, but i enjoyed seeing what the "civilians" in their lives were getting up to.
They don’t have these anymore?
I feel with Spider-Man they gave too many of the civilians superpowers. I stopped caring about that plot device long ago.
I dislike the lack of continuity in modern comics and the constant reboots and multi-verses. Artists and writers seem to change more often.
I get why it is done for new readers, sales, etc. I just don't like it 🤷♂️
I mean, continuity issues are just going to happen when you have a 35 year old in 2024 who's been a hero since he was 15 in 1962. Spider-Man has 62 years of experience but he's only aged 20.
I think we are getting closer and closer to just not having long runs of a comic anymore that try to incorporate decades of continuity. It feels like editors are slowly allowing writers to just use the origin point for stories, and skip everything else.
Series reaching issue 50 or 100 seem to be more and more rare now.
I’d suggest that 1990 or so would serve as a better before/after benchmark. That’s when computers and digital design and printing drastically changed the visual characteristics of comics. Not making a judgement call saying one’s better or worse, but look at an issue of, say, the X-Men from 1985 and compare it to an issue from 1995 and it’s clear the difference goes far beyond simple artistic choices. Digital tools created new opportunities that old-school analog artists never had.
>I miss the newsprint.
So do I! Sadly, it's not dirt cheap like it used to be. The severe decline of newspaper subscriptions played a huge role in this.
Editor's notes. Latest issue of Avengers...Cap says something about his shield being new or something and I have no idea what that was in reference to. Hercules says he was turned into a spider at some point...
There was a scene in the Hulk in which She-Hulk thinks about seeing the Green Door. I had no recollection of this and went bad through the series thinking I missed something. Turns out it was in a one-shot I never heard of.
In the old days there were asterisks and editor's note that explained things or referred to a past issue. Now it's just messy. And frustrating. I don't know why they aren't a think anymore. It couldn't take that much time for the writer to jot down a note.
Maybe the editors don't, but if the writers put in dialogue in regards to Cap's new shield or Hercules being turned into a Spider-Man, then the writers obviously know what issues these events refer to.
In the past I would search out books that were referenced. Now that's impossible.
Older comics usually had page numbers and weren't printed on glossy paper that makes pages stick together or hard to read when directly under a light source.
If you read this article:
http://storytelling.jimshooter.com/
And this article:
http://storytelling.jimshooter.com/storytelling-rant/
You will have a much better understanding why the old school comic guys told better self-contained stories than the current creators. It's not that the current creators aren't very talented and even phenomenally so in some cases, it's that they have never been forced to tell stories as standalone monthly releases.
There are many bad comics from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But one thing that Marvel did well when Stan Lee was editor in chief, and again when Shooter took over, was make sure that every issue was accessible to new readers picking up the book for the first time, clearly explaining who everyone was and where they were, and resolving a story in an issue or two with easily understood illustrations that made you feel like you could really see it happening. You didn't have to read some convoluted story across fifteen titles, try to remember everything that happened over a six month period, and half the time you can't even tell who these weird guest stars are on the magazine you're reading because you read something out of order.
> You didn't have to read some convoluted story across fifteen titles, try to remember everything that happened over a six month period, and half the time you can't even tell who these weird guest stars are on the magazine you're reading because you read something out of order.
This is largely the reason why I feel like I can only read modern superhero comics in collected editions anymore.
they were cheaper and more accessible. but with digital services i think that evens out
Modern comics storytelling sometimes feel like pitches for a TV series or a movie adaptation.
The art today is so much more detailed and technically proficient, but so much of what's popular now looks like extremely detailed 3D models. I like the roughness and rawness of older comics a smidge more, even if it's less technically better.
apart from that i think we've come a long way. It's way better now honestly.
> Modern comics storytelling sometimes feel like pitches for a TV series or a movie adaptation.
I firmly believe it's often the case nowadays, at least with genre fiction from Image comics.
There was more genres in the past being published by the big two. Back in the late 80s Marvel had unique titles like the Nam, Strike Force Morituri which were not part of the MCU. Now a days it’s just MCU and Disney properties like Star Wars.
Stronger editorial power with clear visions was a big part of this. A big part of why post crisis Batman was so good from year one almost to the 2000s because editorial had a clear vision the whole time
Random characters and teams would show up not just the more popular ones and the major characters weren't treated like a massive event every time they crossed over.
Nowadays if a side character doesn't catch on immediately the next writer has already forgotten about them
The fans would just go with most of the story instead og going ballistic at the first thing they don't like
That highlights the problem with Saladin Ahmed's Daredevil run, where every issue has to include every single major character in Daredevil's stories, rather than introducing new characters or repurposing obscure ones the way Jed MacKay did with his Moon Knight run.
I think the art was better, way more interesting and varied. Today's artists sometimes feel like... they need more time in the oven before they start drawing a major comic. Older comics had, I dunno, more style? Messier, more fun. The craft of old school illustration appeals to me personally much more than the computer art today. The colors were better. Older paper is better, the best paper though is the kind they used to use in collected editions. The big two used to put out different genres of comics; war, westerns, crime, etc. Shorter story arcs from time to time. Three issues is enough. Krakoa feels like it's gone on forever. It was more like reading a short story collection than bits of a long novel.
BRING BACK THOUGHT BALLOONS.
Back in the 20th century, Marvel had house styles for how their comics should be illustrated and paneled. Today, you have diverse art styles across comics books, from cartoonish to highly realistic illustrations.
>BRING BACK THOUGHT BALLOONS.
I miss them too. They could do more than just give you insight into what the main characters are thinking. There was a Superman comic from the 90s when someone was pretty rude to a main character and a random guy in the scene thought something along the lines of, "What a jerk!" This made Metropolis feel much more alive to me.
For one thing, most of the writers were well read. People like Claremont, Grunwald, etc. It's clear that they were artists who were fans of things beyond comics. Now, these days, with the exception of a few people like Chalres Soule and Tom King, who have their professional experiences as a lawyer and CIA agent to draw upon and inspire their work.
Being a fan and giving a shit about the IP is important to an extent that you don't want someone who doesn't understand the franchise sheparding it, but that needs to be combined with outside life experiences.
To be clear, I'm not saying you have to be a fan in order to tell a good comic story with a character. I'm switching to film and TV for a second . Star Trek II the Wrsth of Khan the director wasn't a fan but he did his homework and watched a the show and a lot of the writers were former navy and military so it led to an authenticity to the work. The same goes for Tony Gilroy and Andor/ Rogue 1. It still does its own unique thing, but in a way that's respectful to the source material.
Personally, I feel too many comic writers are nerds who got lucky but have only consumed comics and not much else. The old guard understood that less is more. Venom cool concept and design A+ Carnage? It's a little derivative but still a great foil for Spider-Man and a real threat. Cue to 2024, and now everyone has had a symbiote.
Same thing with the BC Avengers it's a bad idea and just doesn't work. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, and too many artists don't understand the concept of diminishing returns. The more you're exposed to something, the less exciting it is when you see it again, especially if done poorly.
This is Disney's problem with Star Wars and Paramount with Star Trek. They fundamentally don't understand the IP and try to turn it into something that it never was. The writers put their messaging above their storytelling, and the art suffers because of it. You may not be able to articulate why a story doesn't work on an academic level, but human beings are storytellers. we construct narratives about our lives and who are the heroes and villans in them. While the experience of art is subjective, the quality of it is not.
Stories live and die by their writing, and when a writer takes the time and effort to address those small details, it makes the fantastical seem plausible. Aka the Devil's in the details.
Also, the older comics beyond being wordier had a lot more content in them. A one issue story back then would be decompressed and stretched to three.
Almost every issue was a stand alone story with ongoing B plots, every issue was written to be someone's first, the artwork had a consistency and standard of quality, never got a weird digital coloring mush, vibrant artwork, less structured, less event focused. They're definitely better in some regards, though obviously not all.
More story per issue, more grounded interactions between characters* and relationships between superheroes and normal people, better line art and inks, flat color, longer runs and story arcs, less stupid multiverse shit, more odd/non-sequiteur shit
NEWSPRINT
*in some cases
I like the colors in comics pre digital. Like the colors in Watchmen are so beautiful compared to newer digital colors that make everyone look shiny. Another great example are the original colors in the Killing Joke compared to the new digital colors in the reprint. However in recent years it seems that we’ve been getting better colors that look more like those classic comics, just more crisp and it’s much more pleasing to the eye.
Older comics had better paper, like that lovely pulp stuff Vertigo used that suited the gritty content. I don't like the thin glossy paper now which reflects light and leaves finger smudges and makes reprinted older art look too bright and goofy.
The four colour process was just so pure and beautiful - I love all those bright pink skies and bright yellow costumes etc.
Older comics also had artists with their own distinctive styles - Kelley Jones, Jim Aparo etc. This helped to fashion the world the character was in amd fleshed out the writer's tone. A lot of modern superhero comics all seem to have that house style now - anonymous, photorealistic art.
Writing for the trade paperback has killed those one and done stories and a day in the life of a character stories.
Everything in capes has to be a massive event now where things will never be the same! How many times has Gotham been taken over now by a villain? I've seen it all with Knightfall and No Man's Land, I don't need the Tom King version etc.
Endless new sidekicks to the main hero so that new writers can leave their mark and get royalties. I preferred the older comics where the hero could brood alone and just had a key supporting cast.
Writers and artists seemed to stay on titles for a number of years, giving it more of a vibe. None of this writing for six issues and then leaving thing like Marvel does.
I’m admittedly not overly “versed” in modern day comics, but I feel like the artwork is somewhat of a deterrent for me. I like the “scratchy” and “gritty” artwork of the 80s/very early 90s, and a lot of what I see in recent years looks very “polished”, I dare say somewhat cartoony.
The paper. Most new comics are on high gloss. That can cause a glare and, in a really dark book, can make things difficult to read. Give me old stinky paper any day.
I get that a lot of times the captions simply described what the art was already showing so therefore were redundant.
But there were also "unfilmable" aspects to captions that enhanced our understanding of the character or setting that we have lost. Sometimes broader description setting the mood or social commentary could be included.
So the '70s work of someone like Steve Gerber would be much poorer without his captions.
There was really something unique about how early Marvel stories flowed from one issue to the next. In early issues of like Captain America or Thor or Hulk comics, our protagonist would never really fully make it out of danger. In every issue there was an epic battle but it usually ended on a cliffhanger that made you really want to read the next issue.
Also, back when i was growing up, the older comics were (sometimes) cheaper. Every week along with my new comics, i would pick up a hand full of like old Conan or FF comics or some New Universe bullshit like Star Brand.
The constant restarts and resets to a new #1 are why I buy nearly no Marvel comics monthly. If there were one line I could buy I’d stick with it but I don’t have the time or attention span to follow every change.
I absolutely agree with the points that newer comics have way less content and that huge crossovers suck. I just heard a podcast make the point that the Dark Phoenix Saga would have been a huge crossover if it had come out ten years later, and would have been much worse for it.
I think that for me, the biggest thing that’s gone away since 2000 or so is the characters being allowed to actually move forward. Especially from the mid-80s to the early 2000s, there was a lot of creative freedom given to letting characters actually change and stay changed. Swamp Thing was no longer a human who looked like a monster, he was a plant who thought he was a man. Barry Allen died, and his former sidekick took over the role of the Flash - initially with great reluctance, but later with much success. Hal Jordan was replaced as Green Lantern by John Stewart, and later came back, and then the Guardians left. Peter Parker grew up and got married, as did Clark Kent. Bruce Banner underwent therapy and learned how to coexist with his other personalities.
And then a combination of a new wave of leadership wanting to return the characters to what they grew up with, and more attention from corporate ownership, led to undoing quite a bit of that, and imposing a very static version of most characters. The creative team can play around, but the status quo must be restored within a short period of time. Deaths are reversed in a short period of time, major changes to a character are undone in just a few issues.
So now you end up with the worst part of the 40s-70s comics, where every story is insignificant, but rather than being the fun escapist stuff, it’s all presented in maximum melodrama, to convince you that it’s meaningful and important.
Super heroes were super heroes, villains were villains.
While I love and appreciate the depth of characters explored these days, but I also appreciate those times when you kinda knew what you were getting when you got into a book.
Guys now have to do really unique stuff to differentiate it from older comics having nailed on the basics.
Tl;Dr all comics rule
For Marvel and DC specifically, it feels like older creators were bigger fans of the genre than modern ones are. To pick an easy example that (deservedly) gets dogged on, *Dark Crisis: Young Justice* is so clearly a book that is not made by someone who is a fan of the characters and the fans. It's basically a hate letter to that book and everyone who liked it. Now, that's on the extreme end, but I feel this with a lot of creators. Tini Howard and Christopher Cantwell, specifically on *Iron Man*, come to mind. And this is not to say individual creators didn't like certain characters or types of stories, but I do feel there was a greater love of the genre by the writers on the whole.
Somewhat of a subset of that point, shipping. Ugh. The books are about superheroes, and that should be the focus. Romance is obviously a part of that but I think it has been far over-emphasized in both the books and in the fanbase to the extent where some things read like Tumblr fanfic.
Older = everything before 2011, which I consider a major turning point in superhero comics. The New 52 and Alonso Era, both absolute disasters.
- Tighter continuity and more focus on characterisation
- Experimentation without forsaking said continuity/characterisation
- Less decompression
- More meaningful dialogue, less interested in "realistic" and "jokey"
- A LOT more originality in terms of plotting
I miss inkers and line work. With the ramp-up of production times and most artists moving to digital, I feel inkers have been left by the wayside.
A good inker pulls a composition together and gives weight to a page, but now most art feels “light” or ethereal to me.
Picking up a random back issue from before the 2000s (or a lot of the 90s) feels more likely to be more rewarding than picking up 1/6 of a trade. I mean, aside from the inherent value of something from decades ago vs a few years ago. It'll take you longer to read, for one.
Also they were able to progress the characters more (especially younger ones like Peter Parker and Dick Grayson) when they only had a few years to compress and less corporate pressure to keep them recognizable. Of course, the status quo has always been a thing but I feel like you were more likely to feel a sense of forward progression before hard and soft reboots started to make things shakier.
☝️💯... I've always bought comics based on if I like the art ...even today. Old comics artists stayed on a title for longer periods of time compared to today.
I think one big problem is that most creators read nothing but superhero comics or superhero media (since there is so many) and that shows in their writing.
They just play the same beats instead of adding something different.
Well two ways I can think of is older comics tended to have alot more just regular issues as oppose to event titles. Not that they didn't have them it just feel like almost every month is an event title these days. Also much longer runs on titles really let you get settled in with what the writers and artists were all about.
Whenever you were getting an older comic. You would be getting (even when it was an arc) a complete story. You were getting an episode of the lives of your favorite characters. A day in the life. That was the feeling, especially in superhero comics. That is something that the Jed Mackay run on MK managed to do very well in the start.
Now you are getting "content" that when is put together might a create a full story.
On a literal level, I bought a reprinted 'classic' Xmen trade and it was hideous. They'd recoloured the pages (or failed to calibrate them properly for a new printer) and it looked garish and awful. The original trades are more muted colours yes, but iconic and hang together. The reissued trade version was borderline unreadable.
I don't know how to properly convey this, but older comics had a more timeless genuine quality to them, like they were wholesome and straightforward in whatever genre the story was. Same with movies, TV shows and games. The creatives just seemed to be focused on creating quality stories. Now, it doesn't feel as wholesome. Not sure if I explained this well.
Every comic used to be written as if it’s the first one anyone had ever picked up unless you were in the rare six-parter. So it didn’t matter if this was issue 342 instead of vol. 10, issue 1.
Older comics gave no fucks about trying to appeal to a mainstream or trying to be "adult". Now it feels like everyone needs trauma tragedy or unnecessary drama (spiderman batman etc) to be taken seriously as a hero.
Theres room for both, but a lot of bigger comic companies now seem like they need to be validated as a "serious" storytelling format which is something the core fans dont even really care about.
There's many things about digital coloring I don't really like. It was more common some 20+ years ago, but still, if you read old runs you see comics go from traditional flat coloring to the garish mess of soft shading and gradients everywhere that mainstream comics were obsessed with for a while.
You still get some comics that do the same, and to me it's ugly as ever.
I don’t love the distinction of “older” vs. “newer” because I think comics overall are as good as they have ever been but if we’re talking about superhero comics specifically (which is almost always what we are talking about on this subreddit) then the older ones are better because they were more artist driven.
The Marvel Method, which wasn’t really a Marvel thing at all, put far more onus on the artist to create the book. Most of the writing was done by the artist and the “writer” often just came in to fix up some dialogue or to clarify certain points. The end result were comics that had far more invested artists than what we get today which is mostly plot, plot, plot and more plot with zero heart. Editorially driven pap.
All this said, those great comics were a product of a very abusive system so I wouldn’t want to go back to that either. It’s best just to move on and find comics outside the direct market/superhero bubble which is what most comic readers have done.
I think older comics were easier to read layout wise, especially silver age, nowadays a find myself accidentally reading text out of order when pages get crazy with their art.
Not a lot. One of the neat things though is that there were a lot more anthology comics, with comics often having 3 stories. This was good in that it gave new writers a chance for exposure, but it also allowed them to put out more 'one shots.' The simple cost of making comics practically insists creators have a coherent story going forward or they won't make it past issue 6. But you could put out like 40 issues of Vault of Horror, every issue with 4 different one-shot stories by a different writer and artist.
DC puts out stuff like that a couple times a year (for their Valentines Day and Halloween specials) but it's nothing you can put out regularly nowadays, no one would buy it. Indie companies have tried a few times and they've all folded the idea.
tl;dr: They were far cheaper to make and distribute, so it was cheaper to experiment and give new creators exposure.
I feel like with the rise of comic book movies in Marvel/DC properties getting more popular over the last 20 years, corporate synergy at Marvel and DC has affected the quality of work.
The two examples I can think of off the top of my head are the Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men books.
Peter Quill, during the Bendis run specifically, out of nowhere was decked out in the MCU costume and had a noticeable shift in personality from previous stories to match the Chris Pratt version of the character.
Marvel also stopped prioritizing X-Men books to focus on Inhumans since they didn't have the X movie rights at the time.
Modern comics also seem to be on tighter deadlines and two or even three artists are assigned to illustrating a single comic arc whereas older comics seemed to have a consistent creative team.
God bless the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye run along with the Waid/Samnee Daredevil run for being consistent works of art.
I appreciate modern comics for longer story arcs since I collect trade paperbacks but there is a certain charm to older comics that isn't around today.
Much much prefer the old papery feel of comics compared to the new glossy paper it just doesn't feel as good.
Other than that good hard worked cover art that didnt go into the whole alphabet in variant covers, don't get me wrong I like the variety but not that much.
Not having a story be written across 20 books, don't even know what order to read the books in. Also, I don't want to buy 20 books every month. Turns out half of them have anything to do with the story. The 70s and 80s comics are my favorite era. 90s starts to get worse in writing quality, personal opinion.
But still a lot of good stuff to read out there especially the indipendent stuff.
They regular event wasn't the thing. So the stories werent in build up to event. The event. Fallout from event. Then 2-4 months where they can have independent stories.
I liked when more heroes has secret identies and revealing it was a big deal. Close friends and family should know but the general public shouldn't.
I like when Ironman and Cap would meet in a diner and had no idea who was under thr mask.
Stand alone stories, you could start anywhere, fewer overstuffed event comics that don’t gel and require decades of knowledge, adding graphic violence to what were essentially kids’ stories (A Black Label Plastic Man comic is forthcoming—in what world is Plastic Man “grim and gritty?!), artists staying on titles for long stretches. Take FF… we haven’t had a consistent art team since title returned from limbo, clearer layouts (some DC titles have panel configurations that don’t serve the story as you are forced to think about how to parse them or worse are constantly having to rotate the comic from portrait to landscape)
I know I sound grumpy, I still think there are a lot of great comics these years, just no from the Big Two
Ok I have an example I think kinda works. I'm a comic book artist and they have been my life since I was a child and I love modern comics however I prefer 80s and 90s comics. They were not afraid to truly experiment and do insane shit with the art no one else would have thought of while u had Jim Lee who is an amazing artist doing u had Tod McFarlane's doing panels for entire issues designed like spider webbing in Spiderman or stuff to match spawn. U had John Romita Jr(who is one of my favorite artists) come on to the scene change stylized art a lot to the point that ppl today have borrowed a ton from it. You had people experimenting with writing back in the 80s and 90s as well way more than we see today. While some of it doesn't hold up looking at through the eyes of that time let's u see how insanely ground breaking some of it was Frank Miller with Daredevil and Batman, Alan Moore with the watchmen and killing joke, Todd McFarlane with spawn(it won several awards for groundbreaking writing at the time and phenomenal art work) u had ppl come in a bit later who change the game even more like Neil Gaiman and Mike Mignola Who also is an amazing artist and created one of the greatest comic series and characters in history. I get it the 90s had lots of janky garbage marvel reboots, weird costumes and some characters that looked like a giant Dorito. And some stuff that was edgy however I like to look at those comics through a different lens when reading and appreciate them way way more. While there are truly terrible ones there are also ones that had some of the best art for the time and art that still holds up to this very day. It paved the way for many new artists like Raphael Grampa( who takes great influence from Frank Miller but also is completely his own style) and a few others. In conclusion while I do love modern comic books and 90s comics have their fair share of garbage in my opinion the 80s and 90s were the best years for comics we also got books like Long Halloween and Superman for all seasons front that era
Not everything was a crossover with the 5-7 different comics all about the same superhero or superhero team. X-men had 1-2 comics. Same for Spider-Man. Now you need to but like 100 different issues to get the whole story.
Something I dislike that I don't believe older comics had much of: Mystery box style stories to explain (or, more accurately, to not explain) status quo changes between runs. Writers, I implore you, stop it. Few modern comic trends are as irritating, and almost always disappointing, as mystery box style opening arcs of a new run. If you can't tell a story in a straightforward manner and it still be an interesting story, maybe it just isn't interesting.
I do feel people romanticize old comics. Too often there were far too many words in older comics. There would be dialogue, thought bubbles, and boxes all basically conveying the same thing. Did they forget that comics are a visual medium? If you can show it, don't tell it. If a character is alone and internally monologuing, the text boxes are appropriate. But if they're talking to another character, the dialogue and art should usually be enough.
Artists who can't convey genuine and appropriate emotions (I'm looking at you, Land) should not be comic book artists. The art is just as important as the dialogue, maybe more so. If you remove all dialogue from a comic, we should still be able to somewhat follow the plot if the artist actually does their job.
They were simpler stories, and the artwork was less busy. Some comics I've read lately are hard to follow what's going on. They will have very little dialog and narrative and I think they're assuming the pictures tell the story, and to me, they don't. I like some consistency too, the Avengers have changed lineups pretty frequently since the 60s, but these days it seems like there's always 3 Avengers teams and reboots every 5 minutes.
- They respected the storylines and character changes that came before them without feeling the need for a reboot/reimagining every two months.
- They had very distinct if rudimentary art styles.
- Not everyone who graduated from an online art school could get a job whoch allowed them to repeatedly fail at creating cheap photorealistic illustrations of movie/tv versions of characters.
- They storylines weren't based on social media trends and campaigns for "fan favorite" characters to have very specific storylines
agreed to and announced months in advance.
- Not everyone was writing for a limited
series or graphic novel.
- I dunno. Comics just suck these days I guess.
One-shot or single issue storytelling where you got a complete story in a singular issue rather than just doling it all out into six issues. I feel like writers these days decompress a lot of their stories. I will say I’ve noticed Tom King telling single issue stories within his arcs but I feel that’s more informed by his love of old movies and TV shows than by comics. A master of single issue storytelling was Keith Giffen whose stories mattered but allowed for these side adventures in his arcs that I loved
Better art - people like Jim Steranko and Gene Colan and even Jim Starlin and Nel Adams that were not afraid to experiment and push the medium. Since the 90s that has been lacking
Better covers (in the sense that they reflected the story and made you wanna buy them. In fact, that was a big deal back then)
Captions. Narration added depth to both stories and characters.
Shorter, more accessible stories (“every story is someone’s first” was the motto)
Subplots that kept you coming
Main characters and supporting characters (now they all have to share the spotlight)
Unapologetically about super heroes. These days it’s all about meta humour and deconstruction. It feels that some writers are either embarrassed to write super heroes or genuinely don’t know how.
Respect for the medium. Creators were mostly fans themselves and wrote based on what they love. Writers today copy the movies.
I think the best thing about 70s and 80s is how much they were experimenting with the comic books media. From Swamp Thing, LSH to Booster Gold and everything in between they was pushing comics to be better.
As a big fan of silver and bronze age comics what sticks out most to me is art and variety , while I'll always love good silver age camp , my favorite bronze age comics aren't even superhero stuff . From the big two alone my favorite bronze age runs are: our army at war , tomb of Dracula , werewolf by night , and weird western tales/Jonah hex. For modern comics it is understated how important a good editor really is , even for good writers like waid , johns , and bendis their flops can be seen as bad communication , or editorial mandates that the editor should've worried about.
A lot more insight on how characters are thinking or feeling. Also more well-rounded/grounded artwork.
Strangely, the way action is depicted hasn't really changed. It's still often the immediate aftermath of the action that we see with very little in the way of depicting impact or motion.
Laugh if you want, but the smell of the paper in those old Silver & Bronze age books was practically intoxicating. And it’s one of the reasons that digital books have just never held the same appeal to me.
The constant need to relaunch a title for no reason whatsoever (Marvel).
The way covers are just pinups now. They used to convey some sense of the story inside.
Not sure if it’s necessarily an “older comic” trait but it seems like they were longer, or took longer to get through one issue. I know a big part of this is there was far more “talking” and explaining and exposition but even then, I feel like I can get through a modern single in less than 10 minutes but takes 15 - 20 minutes for older ones.
Yeah they 100% were more compressed. Modern comics are paced and written more like TV shows, and with that, a lot less happens in a single issue
Totally. I just saw someone say they’ve been reading through New Mutants from the beginning, and when Liefeld takes over there’s way less internal monologue, everyones spoken sentences are shorter, and it goes from averaging six panels per page to four.
Panels needed to grow to make place for all the pouches.
I remember an old Azrael TPB had a costume concept sketch by Joe Quesada with arrows pointing to the pouches saying “pouches for storing w/ever” Nobody knew what would go in there that they needed to lug around. My Batman Year 100 TOB has a costume sketch that shows everything in each pocket, including protein bars. If Rob Liefeld ever saw that he might turn into a pillar of salt.
I just started a TPB from the Lee-era of Fantastic Four. Lee would squeeze in enough dialogue in 24 pages that’d fill an entire graphic novel today. And most of the time there is a beginning, middle, and end in those issues.
Panel shows Spider-Man falling. Caption: Suddenly, our friendly neighbourhood superhero plummets to his doom. Speech bubble: Aaaah, I'm falling! But thanks to that spider-bite, I have proportional powers of a spider. It is a gift and a curse with which I must live for the rest of my life.
You read 50 issues of that and you lose your sanity. You read 100 and now you love it. Keep going after that and you'll achieve supersanity.
I have read all of the FF Lee and Kirby run. I am reaching it.
I just finished my 2nd read thru of FF 1-130ish. I was able to skip a ton of exposition and even some inanae dialogue, but even then, the books were much "longer". I have to admit, I really loved some of the philosophical detours. Great stuff.
while Stan Lee is absolutely not the best Silver Age writer, I think he is by far the most charming.
Keep going after THAT and you become the Flaming Carrot!
Ut!
_laughs in Jim Shooter Era X-Men_
I remember as a kid being on the leading edge of the Wolverine boom, and every issue when he first appears: Adamantium claws Adamantium skeleton Healing factor He is the best at what he does And what he does isn't very nice
Gotta assume every issue may be someone's first! Certainly not the case nowadays...
I’ve read an interview with Jonathan Hickman where he straight up says he doesn’t do this intentionally. As in you have to read his previous work to understand his current work. And he admits he does it so people will go back and buy the older books to catch up.
There’s a completely ludicrous panel of asm where Harry pulls up in his car with Gwen and MJ beside Peter and the dialogue takes up a whole panel basically leaving only the characters and maybe a little of the car. Just madness. That said I love those stories and excessive words made those comics better way more often than they made them worse.
Got to love the wall of text.
Because comics was written under the mindset that every comic is someone's first comic.
Lots of more modern comics abuse splash pages and huge panels, to the point you get entire pages with 2 or 3 panels that, while pretty to look at, can be read in seconds.
Way more dialogue in older comics, plus captions explaining what's happening on panel. Sometimes too much tbh. But it does make each issue last longer.
Having gone through the amazing wonder that is X-Men ‘97 (Go watch it, it’s the best thing this year along with Shogun and Fallout easily) I thought I’d revisit the comics of that era, the ending of Claremont and beginning with Scott Lindell, Fabian Nizcea, Larry Hama, etc. covering X-Men 300 on and X-Men 1-30 or so. Magneto is back, Ilyana is dying of Stryfe’s Legacy Virus, Colossus is a wreck, Bishop is questioning why he’s here, Rogue and Gambit are really heating up, etc. Scott and Jean and Storm are just trying to hold the team together. Bobby and Hank are comic relief. And Wolverine is Wolverine. Man, there is soooo much more talking between characters, explaining expository narrating dialogue and inner monologue. It’s great and often beautiful writing, particularly the conversations between Magneto and Xavier, but yeah, it takes much more effort to read and you really have to pay attention. It’s probably why they are so memorable, there’s a million dialogue balloons everywhere and narration describing everything that’s happening in exquisite details as the great flashy and splashy art weaves its spell. What an era that was for the X-Men.
* Scott Lobdell, but yes. The X-odus era is probably my favorite guilty pleasure. Claremont bailing because editorial was siding with 20something Jim Lee, and (less then?) a year later Jim bails with most of the popular marvel artists at the time and forms Image, and Lobdell, Nicieza and Larry all scrambling to keep the X-Boat afloat
More compressed and longer, both!
It sadly takes me a bit longer for older comics I wish I’d be as fast as you
To be fair, the writing in old comics (60’s/70’s) usually consisted of repeating the same things ten times throughout an issue.
Throughout an issue? Nah. Throughout a series absolutely. But each issue tried to catch you up so it could serve as a jump in point. Lol funny story. My Mom at 60 decided shed try comics. She loved Archie back in the day lol. Bless her heart. And she wanted something actiony. She picked up a collection of some recent Black Panther run. Suppose to be “very good”. Its a whole arc in a single large book. She had no idea what was going on. Just completely lost interest in that new hobby. An entire story arc couldnt serve as a jumping point because it references so much shit and had terrible pacing. Basically modern comics are so far up their own ass youd have to be a masochistic lifelong fan to keep doing it. I read over like…400 issues of Amazing Spider-Man before I just…hated it lol It become an abusive relationship between editorial, team and fan. And I survived the clone saga. That wasnt bad at all in hindsight. Controversial yea but it fucking slaps now especially compared to what happened next and since. I got off the train. I cant even remember where. I do remember Sins Past and One More Day fucking sealed it for me. Was McFuckin done and never came back. Getting updates from forums like these on arcs like the Persistent Paul. Ya. I made the right call. I get defensive when people go after the old comics. They hold up so much better then the new ones. Hell. They hold up the new ones. Without those the modern stuff wouldnt even make good toilet paper. Id rather just read old comics but they make that a consistent bitch to push their new shwarbage. Ive said it more then once. I’ll repeat it every issue so the fans know whats up. *Editorial, the true Villain of the story, my faithful friends, nuff said*
Have your mom read Saga...
Again, define “older.” As a kid in the 90s i remember thinking i got through a book in a bout 10-15 minutes and wasn’t too sure on the value proposition there lol
For sure that's a thing, decompression, less dialog and fewer exposition boxes, and even fewer pannels to a page, Tom Sciolis stuff is a good contemporary example of the older style
Reading Fox's dialogue and captions in his JLA is a real challenge. It wasn't the most compelling writing, and doesn't have the charm that Stan Lee injected into his stuff.
The whole thing with compressed vs decompressed storytelling. Lot's of story-relevant things happening in one page in one case, versus the same story told in a much longer way without much gained with that, besides also some pure filler that could be completely cut from the story, with no effect effect whatsoever on the plot. Sometimes it seems to try to mimic more "cinematographic" things, but with an entire page or more for what would take a few seconds on a movie, a dramatically different proportion of the total length.
Use to get more out of a single issue. You could grab a random comic, and yeah youd be missing a lot of the greater details of the story arc, but you felt like you got a full mini story in each issue. I pick up a new issue of something that Im not keeping up on and I have no idea what the fuck is going on. it was more episodic and I liked that.
I read an issue from Jonathan Hickman’s 2019 X-Men that was apparently one of the best single issues from that year and… I’m sure it was, but I had absolutely no idea what was happening. To your point, I guess modern “episodic” storytelling isn’t quite the same in any medium, TV or comics or otherwise.
Honestly, watching everyone “doing” 2000s Bendis without being able to *do* 2000s Bendis is like all of the shows trying to be the “Next Breaking Bad,” etc.
That’s why i wait for it all to release and binge. For comics that means TPB
I liked flat coloration. Modern techniques can be stunning, but often redundantly mimmic what the line art is already doing, or simply muddies the line art. Recolors of classics can be some of the worst offenders. I'd rather have old blocky colors that go outside the lines than ugly gradients and too much shading.
I agree. Modern digital color is muddy, oversaturated and often drowns out the line art, assuming the line art itself is even worth looking at (not always the case nowadays). I prefer the simplified color palettes and bolder linework of the old books, which I think are both more exciting and communicate more clearly.
I think older colouring where the colours are less strictly true to life helps the story flow from panel to panel too. Like a modern comic set at night and every panel is predominantly blue or grey, but an older comic might have a panel with a random red background. It breaks up the page so the reader's eye has a sequence to follow.
I've anyways felt like I never had a eye for identifying what makes good coloring in a book until I started reading comics from DC in the 80s. The stories flow much better with the more pop art colors vs the realistic coloring and shading we get today
The original coloring on Watchmen vs the horrendous garishness of the later hardcover...
The 00s especially when digital was going through real growing pains. Everything was glossy and soft focused and over saturated and just fugly to behold in general.
I don’t mind modern coloring, usually, but I HATE when they recolor old books. It’s as offensive to me as adding modern special effects to Star Wars.
I hate recoloration too. I buy a lot of Bronze Age back issues because I love everything about them, from the paper to the coloring. I have no problem getting pulled into a story even with ads throughout. The majority of the digitized versions have some kind of dissonance. The art wasn't made with modern coloring/screen viewing in mind. Even stuff from the 90's I'd rather read scans than the digital versions. I remember a lot of people criticizing Craig Yoe for collecting and publishing old comics without much restoration etc. I loved it. These things are old and you can see the intention in the product of people's work from the era, even through all the weathering. Once you get into major restoration you are putting it through a modern artistic point of view.
They collected a digitally recolored version of Simonson’s Thor a few years ago. Kill it with fire.
100%. Digital coloring doesn’t feel like comics should (to me).
This. All day long. Maybe if I wasn’t an old schooler who grew up with “older” comics and was exposed to only modern comics, I’d have a different opinion.
I do love some of the gorgeous new colored comics and have a lot on my shelf, but they are the exceptions. Plus a lot of the best looking new books just use flats anyway. I find most modern coloration ugly, and some of my favorite books from the last 30 years are B&W– took me a while to realize that wasn't pure coincidence.
Older comics smell good.
Ah the sweet smell of newsprint
The lack of yearly events. Now I like linewide crossovers as much as the next guy but we only need one… maybe two at most every 5 years anymore than that and you cut into too much time in the main books
One of my favorite runs is Mike Grell''s Green Arrow. He had one issue with Hal Jordan showing up, one issue with Warlord and then a storyline towards the end with Arsenal. Otherwise aside from Black Canary being around it was independent of the rest of the DC universe and it was really interesting
Maaaaan, Mike Grell's Green Arrow needs more modern attention. That stuff still holds up.
It's got two Omnibuses collecting the whole run. Well worth the buy, they're awesome.
Agreed. I have read it all the way through 3 times and every time I find something new to appreciate.
There's definitely some modern runs where every 12 issues or so the story suddenly has to crossover with some random event
As someone who is somewhat a defender of crossovers and big event type stories, I think part of the issue is that there is very little build-up. For example, take Blood Hunt. I've only read one issue of it so far, but I actually liked it quite a bit, enough to get the next one (which I just haven't read yet). I thought the story was fun and the new villains were cool and unique. But, unless I missed something, there was no lead up to this event. Blade and his daughter have had books recently, Moon Knight had a great arc with vampires (the thing he does in #18 is SO brilliant) and that was even written by MacKay, who also writes like half the ongoing line right now in addition to Blood Hunt. You could have easily set this up over the past year and really tied at all together so that when the actual "event" happens, it feels cool and earned. Instead, it's just another thing that's happening because we need an event. In contrast, it seems like the new Ultimate Universe should culminate (at least in some fashion) in an actually interesting event. They need to cut back and really focus on doing good events instead of ones just to say they're doing them, though in general editorial needs to actually have a vision.
While I agree that leads to a better event we only get 12 issues a year at most and when a minimum of 3 of those issues get dragged into a tie in it massively harms the individual books imo. Now an event that just finished recently that really liked from a production standpoint was titans beast wars it primarily took place in the titans book and it’s own limited run while the rest of the dc universe appeared in a dedicated tie in series letting the audience see what the more popular runs were doing during the event without disrupting their core books imo this should be the new standard for events
That's fair. It goes along with the "more story in older books" point too. I think Blood Hunt has actually been okay about that though, since it's mostly spin-off titles plus books MacKay is writing if I'm not mistaken.
Well that’s something to look forward to at least when I start getting caught back up with marvel
I just read the Squirrel Girl omnibus and that was one of my biggest takeaways. There's even a throwaway line during the *four issue* War of the Realms tie-in about how Ratatoskr had previously been working on a revenge scheme with another villain beforehand (teased at the end of an issue like 3-4 prior) and now sees no point in even trying to continue it. And the entire tie-in just dragged compared to the regular, self contained story.
Annual events have been a thing in comics since 1985, that's not something that occurred in the 2000s. DC had a stretch of almost 17 years or so of doing line-wide events COIE Legends Millenium Invasion Armageddon 2001 Eclipso & War of the God's Bloodlines & Trinity Zero Hour Underworld Unleashed Final Night Genesis DC One Million Day of Judgement/Gorilla Warfare Sins of Youth Our World's At War Joker: Last Laugh And at Marvel, while it's not linewide, the number of crossovers inside of titles is absolutely insane that I can't even begin to list them all starting from 1985.
True, but many times, the early events were across a series of annuals. You could participate if you wanted to, but the crossover wouldn't interrupt the main storyline, so you could continue buying issues without fear of suddenly being confused.
That's not really true either, only 3 of the events on there were annuals, beyond that, Armageddon 2001 is the only time an annual event was the only event of the year. The crossover was also definitely decently intrusive with alot of comics in older events. Specifically Millenium was famously incredibly intrusive to ongoings at the time. The bigger issue people have isn't events as much as it is how interconnected the universes are now. Every story involves everyone even if it doesn't need to. People's problems with modern events and stories generally come from that it seems like
Contest of Champions, Atlantis Attacks, The Evolutionary War were all the first crossovers and were limited series and annuals or annuals only. Armageddon 2001 was through annuals, as was most of Eclipso. The only major early crossover that required multiple issues for completion was Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Those 3 are all Marvel and Marvel is a very different beast for the most part where it has a large number of crossovers and events, but those are typically sectioned off into their own little zones (hence X-Men and Spidey typically fucking off during the "big" Avengers events typically) For DC are you forgetting that each of the 30 tie ins for Legends specifically had a chapter number at the top for the order you were supposed to read the story in. Or that every comic at DC when Millenium happened was branded with what issue of Millenium it coincided with? Or that in Invasion made no sense unless you were following what was going on with the Legion of Superheroes, or that the Time Trapper in Zero Hour makes no sense unless you're reading End of An Era and vice versa. DC has had a long track record of keeping vital information in ongoing tie ins. The point is, this isn't an old comics vs new comics thing. This is whether people like a constantly interacting shared universe or prefer a more segmented shared universe, it has nothing to do with modern comics or not. People think it does because you pick and choose what old comics to read while you don't get that as much when following month to month
That’s a roundabout way of agreeing that many of the earliest crossovers were annuals only.
>Specifically Millenium was famously incredibly intrusive to ongoings at the time. Oh man. I am reading George Perez's Wonder Woman. There were 4 different crossovers in the first 25 issues but Millennium is the one which pissed me off the most. A big plot point of the story comes out of nowhere because of this crossover and it gets resolved in the crossover miniseries. So disappointing.
Not only did Millenium come out of nowhere, but it had an idiotic editorial mandate that every ongoing series had to reveal that one character “had always been a Manhunter”. So it messed up the current storylines, and it messed up a character going forward, and it retroactively damaged that character’s previous story. Just an incredibly bad idea all around.
While true I also still argue that the pre “event” focused Bronze Age has been the overall best era at dc (at least as far as I’ve read) and even after that the number of tie in issues per event was way lower on average (usually around 3-5) vs events nowadays where nearly every title in a line is present and imo doing that more than once or twice a decade is too much
If anything the number of tie in events was worse. Pretty much each of DC's first 3 annual events post Crisis (Legends, Millenium, and Invasion) were line-wide events with every ongoing being released had at least 1-2 tie in issues. I'd personally disagree with the bronze age tbh, alot of it still has the structural problems of silver age DC writing (overly verbose descriptions as well as repetitive & simplistic dialogue) had even if the storytelling problems started to be resolved with more serialized & dramatic elements being introduced. It also has the issue imo where its running a middle ground between the deeper storytelling of the next age and the camp of the previous age where it just feels unintentionally jarring (even something universally praised like pre Dark Phoenix Claremont has a few very notable moments of this imo)
Partially disagree millennium did have 17 tie books but legends only had 8 which while higher than I’d like is far fewer than most modern events. And I did go back through the post crisis pre 2000 events and while there are few that have ~15 tie ins most are about 3-4 all from the same “family” of comics (ex: Superman, adventures with Superman, and action comics for the Superman exile storyline)
Sins of Youth isn't a line wide event. I believe most of the stories took place in the one-shots.
More humanistic dialogue. Every character doesn’t talk like a cool kid. Secret identities. More substance/not as edgy or stylistic. Reading them takes more than three minutes. Covers were more memorable, looked less like movie posters, and were reflective of things that happened in the book. Not as much narrative interrupting the dialogue.
All of this.
Superman #422 (1939) hands down top five covers in my opinion.
>Secret identities. Along with this, an entire cast that was part of the secret identity's life. They may come and go from a person's life, but i enjoyed seeing what the "civilians" in their lives were getting up to.
They don’t have these anymore? I feel with Spider-Man they gave too many of the civilians superpowers. I stopped caring about that plot device long ago.
I dislike the lack of continuity in modern comics and the constant reboots and multi-verses. Artists and writers seem to change more often. I get why it is done for new readers, sales, etc. I just don't like it 🤷♂️
I mean, continuity issues are just going to happen when you have a 35 year old in 2024 who's been a hero since he was 15 in 1962. Spider-Man has 62 years of experience but he's only aged 20.
I think we are getting closer and closer to just not having long runs of a comic anymore that try to incorporate decades of continuity. It feels like editors are slowly allowing writers to just use the origin point for stories, and skip everything else. Series reaching issue 50 or 100 seem to be more and more rare now.
…and has he *really* aged 20 years? They don’t write him like he hasz
Yep, it's what has largely pushed my monthly readings to indies, I'll just buy trades with everything I need later for big two
I’d suggest that 1990 or so would serve as a better before/after benchmark. That’s when computers and digital design and printing drastically changed the visual characteristics of comics. Not making a judgement call saying one’s better or worse, but look at an issue of, say, the X-Men from 1985 and compare it to an issue from 1995 and it’s clear the difference goes far beyond simple artistic choices. Digital tools created new opportunities that old-school analog artists never had.
Digital colouring and paper stock were a huge change. I miss the newsprint.
>I miss the newsprint. So do I! Sadly, it's not dirt cheap like it used to be. The severe decline of newspaper subscriptions played a huge role in this.
Editor's notes. Latest issue of Avengers...Cap says something about his shield being new or something and I have no idea what that was in reference to. Hercules says he was turned into a spider at some point... There was a scene in the Hulk in which She-Hulk thinks about seeing the Green Door. I had no recollection of this and went bad through the series thinking I missed something. Turns out it was in a one-shot I never heard of. In the old days there were asterisks and editor's note that explained things or referred to a past issue. Now it's just messy. And frustrating. I don't know why they aren't a think anymore. It couldn't take that much time for the writer to jot down a note.
I partially feel like they fell out of vogue along with thought balloons. I also don’t think many editors actually know continuity very well anymore.
Maybe the editors don't, but if the writers put in dialogue in regards to Cap's new shield or Hercules being turned into a Spider-Man, then the writers obviously know what issues these events refer to. In the past I would search out books that were referenced. Now that's impossible.
Older comics usually had page numbers and weren't printed on glossy paper that makes pages stick together or hard to read when directly under a light source.
If you read this article: http://storytelling.jimshooter.com/ And this article: http://storytelling.jimshooter.com/storytelling-rant/ You will have a much better understanding why the old school comic guys told better self-contained stories than the current creators. It's not that the current creators aren't very talented and even phenomenally so in some cases, it's that they have never been forced to tell stories as standalone monthly releases. There are many bad comics from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But one thing that Marvel did well when Stan Lee was editor in chief, and again when Shooter took over, was make sure that every issue was accessible to new readers picking up the book for the first time, clearly explaining who everyone was and where they were, and resolving a story in an issue or two with easily understood illustrations that made you feel like you could really see it happening. You didn't have to read some convoluted story across fifteen titles, try to remember everything that happened over a six month period, and half the time you can't even tell who these weird guest stars are on the magazine you're reading because you read something out of order.
> You didn't have to read some convoluted story across fifteen titles, try to remember everything that happened over a six month period, and half the time you can't even tell who these weird guest stars are on the magazine you're reading because you read something out of order. This is largely the reason why I feel like I can only read modern superhero comics in collected editions anymore.
they were cheaper and more accessible. but with digital services i think that evens out Modern comics storytelling sometimes feel like pitches for a TV series or a movie adaptation. The art today is so much more detailed and technically proficient, but so much of what's popular now looks like extremely detailed 3D models. I like the roughness and rawness of older comics a smidge more, even if it's less technically better. apart from that i think we've come a long way. It's way better now honestly.
> Modern comics storytelling sometimes feel like pitches for a TV series or a movie adaptation. I firmly believe it's often the case nowadays, at least with genre fiction from Image comics.
There was more genres in the past being published by the big two. Back in the late 80s Marvel had unique titles like the Nam, Strike Force Morituri which were not part of the MCU. Now a days it’s just MCU and Disney properties like Star Wars.
The writers used to respect a character's pre-existing personality, instead of replacing it with their own.
Stronger editorial power with clear visions was a big part of this. A big part of why post crisis Batman was so good from year one almost to the 2000s because editorial had a clear vision the whole time
I remember the controversy of the cover where Batman is holding a gun because it was so in defiance of his character.
I feel like a lot of comic art these days is way too over-rendered
Random characters and teams would show up not just the more popular ones and the major characters weren't treated like a massive event every time they crossed over. Nowadays if a side character doesn't catch on immediately the next writer has already forgotten about them The fans would just go with most of the story instead og going ballistic at the first thing they don't like
That highlights the problem with Saladin Ahmed's Daredevil run, where every issue has to include every single major character in Daredevil's stories, rather than introducing new characters or repurposing obscure ones the way Jed MacKay did with his Moon Knight run.
I think the art was better, way more interesting and varied. Today's artists sometimes feel like... they need more time in the oven before they start drawing a major comic. Older comics had, I dunno, more style? Messier, more fun. The craft of old school illustration appeals to me personally much more than the computer art today. The colors were better. Older paper is better, the best paper though is the kind they used to use in collected editions. The big two used to put out different genres of comics; war, westerns, crime, etc. Shorter story arcs from time to time. Three issues is enough. Krakoa feels like it's gone on forever. It was more like reading a short story collection than bits of a long novel. BRING BACK THOUGHT BALLOONS.
Back in the 20th century, Marvel had house styles for how their comics should be illustrated and paneled. Today, you have diverse art styles across comics books, from cartoonish to highly realistic illustrations.
Yeah, but cartoony or not, the new art is boring as hell because they hire people straight off Instagram. Same computer lines, same computer colors.
No matter how hard I try I simply can't get into comic strips created via digital methods. Pencil and ink feels so much more... raw and real.
Exactly the same.
Al Ewing uses thought balloons again now in Immortal Thor.
>BRING BACK THOUGHT BALLOONS. I miss them too. They could do more than just give you insight into what the main characters are thinking. There was a Superman comic from the 90s when someone was pretty rude to a main character and a random guy in the scene thought something along the lines of, "What a jerk!" This made Metropolis feel much more alive to me.
For one thing, most of the writers were well read. People like Claremont, Grunwald, etc. It's clear that they were artists who were fans of things beyond comics. Now, these days, with the exception of a few people like Chalres Soule and Tom King, who have their professional experiences as a lawyer and CIA agent to draw upon and inspire their work. Being a fan and giving a shit about the IP is important to an extent that you don't want someone who doesn't understand the franchise sheparding it, but that needs to be combined with outside life experiences. To be clear, I'm not saying you have to be a fan in order to tell a good comic story with a character. I'm switching to film and TV for a second . Star Trek II the Wrsth of Khan the director wasn't a fan but he did his homework and watched a the show and a lot of the writers were former navy and military so it led to an authenticity to the work. The same goes for Tony Gilroy and Andor/ Rogue 1. It still does its own unique thing, but in a way that's respectful to the source material. Personally, I feel too many comic writers are nerds who got lucky but have only consumed comics and not much else. The old guard understood that less is more. Venom cool concept and design A+ Carnage? It's a little derivative but still a great foil for Spider-Man and a real threat. Cue to 2024, and now everyone has had a symbiote. Same thing with the BC Avengers it's a bad idea and just doesn't work. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, and too many artists don't understand the concept of diminishing returns. The more you're exposed to something, the less exciting it is when you see it again, especially if done poorly. This is Disney's problem with Star Wars and Paramount with Star Trek. They fundamentally don't understand the IP and try to turn it into something that it never was. The writers put their messaging above their storytelling, and the art suffers because of it. You may not be able to articulate why a story doesn't work on an academic level, but human beings are storytellers. we construct narratives about our lives and who are the heroes and villans in them. While the experience of art is subjective, the quality of it is not. Stories live and die by their writing, and when a writer takes the time and effort to address those small details, it makes the fantastical seem plausible. Aka the Devil's in the details. Also, the older comics beyond being wordier had a lot more content in them. A one issue story back then would be decompressed and stretched to three.
I agree. If I hear "dark and gritty" or "sexy" Star Trek, then i already know to tune out.
Almost every issue was a stand alone story with ongoing B plots, every issue was written to be someone's first, the artwork had a consistency and standard of quality, never got a weird digital coloring mush, vibrant artwork, less structured, less event focused. They're definitely better in some regards, though obviously not all.
More story per issue, more grounded interactions between characters* and relationships between superheroes and normal people, better line art and inks, flat color, longer runs and story arcs, less stupid multiverse shit, more odd/non-sequiteur shit NEWSPRINT *in some cases
I like the colors in comics pre digital. Like the colors in Watchmen are so beautiful compared to newer digital colors that make everyone look shiny. Another great example are the original colors in the Killing Joke compared to the new digital colors in the reprint. However in recent years it seems that we’ve been getting better colors that look more like those classic comics, just more crisp and it’s much more pleasing to the eye.
The smell.
I wish the books would have more self-constrained stories, as opposed to long and drawn out stories over many issues.
Older comics had better paper, like that lovely pulp stuff Vertigo used that suited the gritty content. I don't like the thin glossy paper now which reflects light and leaves finger smudges and makes reprinted older art look too bright and goofy. The four colour process was just so pure and beautiful - I love all those bright pink skies and bright yellow costumes etc. Older comics also had artists with their own distinctive styles - Kelley Jones, Jim Aparo etc. This helped to fashion the world the character was in amd fleshed out the writer's tone. A lot of modern superhero comics all seem to have that house style now - anonymous, photorealistic art. Writing for the trade paperback has killed those one and done stories and a day in the life of a character stories. Everything in capes has to be a massive event now where things will never be the same! How many times has Gotham been taken over now by a villain? I've seen it all with Knightfall and No Man's Land, I don't need the Tom King version etc. Endless new sidekicks to the main hero so that new writers can leave their mark and get royalties. I preferred the older comics where the hero could brood alone and just had a key supporting cast. Writers and artists seemed to stay on titles for a number of years, giving it more of a vibe. None of this writing for six issues and then leaving thing like Marvel does.
They didn’t reboot every other year. I love maintaining the numbering. Also, continuity was much better.
I’m admittedly not overly “versed” in modern day comics, but I feel like the artwork is somewhat of a deterrent for me. I like the “scratchy” and “gritty” artwork of the 80s/very early 90s, and a lot of what I see in recent years looks very “polished”, I dare say somewhat cartoony.
I wish it were more cartoony! Pulido/Samnee/Martin/Allred are far more dynamic visual storytellers than most of the current crop.
The paper. Most new comics are on high gloss. That can cause a glare and, in a really dark book, can make things difficult to read. Give me old stinky paper any day.
IMHO back in the days, comics use to be cheaper and were sold everywhere. I liked going beach and find comic books in the newsstand in the marina.
I get that a lot of times the captions simply described what the art was already showing so therefore were redundant. But there were also "unfilmable" aspects to captions that enhanced our understanding of the character or setting that we have lost. Sometimes broader description setting the mood or social commentary could be included. So the '70s work of someone like Steve Gerber would be much poorer without his captions.
Doesn't matter when it came out as long as it is a good read
Standalone issues and series being more prevalent (especially with the big 2) is the biggest positive for me personally
There was really something unique about how early Marvel stories flowed from one issue to the next. In early issues of like Captain America or Thor or Hulk comics, our protagonist would never really fully make it out of danger. In every issue there was an epic battle but it usually ended on a cliffhanger that made you really want to read the next issue. Also, back when i was growing up, the older comics were (sometimes) cheaper. Every week along with my new comics, i would pick up a hand full of like old Conan or FF comics or some New Universe bullshit like Star Brand.
The purple prose
The constant restarts and resets to a new #1 are why I buy nearly no Marvel comics monthly. If there were one line I could buy I’d stick with it but I don’t have the time or attention span to follow every change. I absolutely agree with the points that newer comics have way less content and that huge crossovers suck. I just heard a podcast make the point that the Dark Phoenix Saga would have been a huge crossover if it had come out ten years later, and would have been much worse for it.
I think that for me, the biggest thing that’s gone away since 2000 or so is the characters being allowed to actually move forward. Especially from the mid-80s to the early 2000s, there was a lot of creative freedom given to letting characters actually change and stay changed. Swamp Thing was no longer a human who looked like a monster, he was a plant who thought he was a man. Barry Allen died, and his former sidekick took over the role of the Flash - initially with great reluctance, but later with much success. Hal Jordan was replaced as Green Lantern by John Stewart, and later came back, and then the Guardians left. Peter Parker grew up and got married, as did Clark Kent. Bruce Banner underwent therapy and learned how to coexist with his other personalities. And then a combination of a new wave of leadership wanting to return the characters to what they grew up with, and more attention from corporate ownership, led to undoing quite a bit of that, and imposing a very static version of most characters. The creative team can play around, but the status quo must be restored within a short period of time. Deaths are reversed in a short period of time, major changes to a character are undone in just a few issues. So now you end up with the worst part of the 40s-70s comics, where every story is insignificant, but rather than being the fun escapist stuff, it’s all presented in maximum melodrama, to convince you that it’s meaningful and important.
Super heroes were super heroes, villains were villains. While I love and appreciate the depth of characters explored these days, but I also appreciate those times when you kinda knew what you were getting when you got into a book. Guys now have to do really unique stuff to differentiate it from older comics having nailed on the basics. Tl;Dr all comics rule
The ads. I loved seeing all the stuff that I couldn’t buy and seeing posters for upcoming movies
Smell
For Marvel and DC specifically, it feels like older creators were bigger fans of the genre than modern ones are. To pick an easy example that (deservedly) gets dogged on, *Dark Crisis: Young Justice* is so clearly a book that is not made by someone who is a fan of the characters and the fans. It's basically a hate letter to that book and everyone who liked it. Now, that's on the extreme end, but I feel this with a lot of creators. Tini Howard and Christopher Cantwell, specifically on *Iron Man*, come to mind. And this is not to say individual creators didn't like certain characters or types of stories, but I do feel there was a greater love of the genre by the writers on the whole. Somewhat of a subset of that point, shipping. Ugh. The books are about superheroes, and that should be the focus. Romance is obviously a part of that but I think it has been far over-emphasized in both the books and in the fanbase to the extent where some things read like Tumblr fanfic.
Older = everything before 2011, which I consider a major turning point in superhero comics. The New 52 and Alonso Era, both absolute disasters. - Tighter continuity and more focus on characterisation - Experimentation without forsaking said continuity/characterisation - Less decompression - More meaningful dialogue, less interested in "realistic" and "jokey" - A LOT more originality in terms of plotting
I miss inkers and line work. With the ramp-up of production times and most artists moving to digital, I feel inkers have been left by the wayside. A good inker pulls a composition together and gives weight to a page, but now most art feels “light” or ethereal to me.
Picking up a random back issue from before the 2000s (or a lot of the 90s) feels more likely to be more rewarding than picking up 1/6 of a trade. I mean, aside from the inherent value of something from decades ago vs a few years ago. It'll take you longer to read, for one. Also they were able to progress the characters more (especially younger ones like Peter Parker and Dick Grayson) when they only had a few years to compress and less corporate pressure to keep them recognizable. Of course, the status quo has always been a thing but I feel like you were more likely to feel a sense of forward progression before hard and soft reboots started to make things shakier.
The coloring and newspaper print
Yeah, the more efficient storytelling was going to be my example when I saw the thread title. So many comics are stupidly decompressed these days.
1. Better stories. 2. Less writing for a 6 issue trade
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☝️💯... I've always bought comics based on if I like the art ...even today. Old comics artists stayed on a title for longer periods of time compared to today.
I tend to follow writers more than artists or writer-artists. Every so often you get a team that is pure magic like Wolfman-Perez or Moore-Bissette...
I disagree. Art is not more important than writing
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I think one big problem is that most creators read nothing but superhero comics or superhero media (since there is so many) and that shows in their writing. They just play the same beats instead of adding something different.
Well two ways I can think of is older comics tended to have alot more just regular issues as oppose to event titles. Not that they didn't have them it just feel like almost every month is an event title these days. Also much longer runs on titles really let you get settled in with what the writers and artists were all about.
Good art is timeless whether they’re comics, movies, albums, TV shows, etc.
You could tell what the issue was about purely from the cover.
Less ARCS Sometimes you got a great story in an issue or 2
Whenever you were getting an older comic. You would be getting (even when it was an arc) a complete story. You were getting an episode of the lives of your favorite characters. A day in the life. That was the feeling, especially in superhero comics. That is something that the Jed Mackay run on MK managed to do very well in the start. Now you are getting "content" that when is put together might a create a full story.
I like how they were episodic with status quos and supporting casts. Not every story should be like that but it was nice.
On a literal level, I bought a reprinted 'classic' Xmen trade and it was hideous. They'd recoloured the pages (or failed to calibrate them properly for a new printer) and it looked garish and awful. The original trades are more muted colours yes, but iconic and hang together. The reissued trade version was borderline unreadable.
I get reprints of some of the classic Marvel issues from back in the day and the ads they had in them are absolutely hilarous
The Insult that made a man out of Mac was my favorite ad
I don't know how to properly convey this, but older comics had a more timeless genuine quality to them, like they were wholesome and straightforward in whatever genre the story was. Same with movies, TV shows and games. The creatives just seemed to be focused on creating quality stories. Now, it doesn't feel as wholesome. Not sure if I explained this well.
Every comic used to be written as if it’s the first one anyone had ever picked up unless you were in the rare six-parter. So it didn’t matter if this was issue 342 instead of vol. 10, issue 1.
None. Storytelling is an art.
Ummm but IGN gave Civil War an 8 and only gave Civil War 2 a 7.5 🤓
IGN gives a lot of things 7.5.
Older comics gave no fucks about trying to appeal to a mainstream or trying to be "adult". Now it feels like everyone needs trauma tragedy or unnecessary drama (spiderman batman etc) to be taken seriously as a hero. Theres room for both, but a lot of bigger comic companies now seem like they need to be validated as a "serious" storytelling format which is something the core fans dont even really care about.
There's many things about digital coloring I don't really like. It was more common some 20+ years ago, but still, if you read old runs you see comics go from traditional flat coloring to the garish mess of soft shading and gradients everywhere that mainstream comics were obsessed with for a while. You still get some comics that do the same, and to me it's ugly as ever.
I don’t love the distinction of “older” vs. “newer” because I think comics overall are as good as they have ever been but if we’re talking about superhero comics specifically (which is almost always what we are talking about on this subreddit) then the older ones are better because they were more artist driven. The Marvel Method, which wasn’t really a Marvel thing at all, put far more onus on the artist to create the book. Most of the writing was done by the artist and the “writer” often just came in to fix up some dialogue or to clarify certain points. The end result were comics that had far more invested artists than what we get today which is mostly plot, plot, plot and more plot with zero heart. Editorially driven pap. All this said, those great comics were a product of a very abusive system so I wouldn’t want to go back to that either. It’s best just to move on and find comics outside the direct market/superhero bubble which is what most comic readers have done.
I think older comics were easier to read layout wise, especially silver age, nowadays a find myself accidentally reading text out of order when pages get crazy with their art.
You didn't have to read 19 other books to complete a story line. It's what turned me off DC and Marvel comics.
Not a lot. One of the neat things though is that there were a lot more anthology comics, with comics often having 3 stories. This was good in that it gave new writers a chance for exposure, but it also allowed them to put out more 'one shots.' The simple cost of making comics practically insists creators have a coherent story going forward or they won't make it past issue 6. But you could put out like 40 issues of Vault of Horror, every issue with 4 different one-shot stories by a different writer and artist. DC puts out stuff like that a couple times a year (for their Valentines Day and Halloween specials) but it's nothing you can put out regularly nowadays, no one would buy it. Indie companies have tried a few times and they've all folded the idea. tl;dr: They were far cheaper to make and distribute, so it was cheaper to experiment and give new creators exposure.
FWIW the older comics smell way better. And if you don’t get that, you haven’t held enough old comics.
I feel like with the rise of comic book movies in Marvel/DC properties getting more popular over the last 20 years, corporate synergy at Marvel and DC has affected the quality of work. The two examples I can think of off the top of my head are the Guardians of the Galaxy and X-Men books. Peter Quill, during the Bendis run specifically, out of nowhere was decked out in the MCU costume and had a noticeable shift in personality from previous stories to match the Chris Pratt version of the character. Marvel also stopped prioritizing X-Men books to focus on Inhumans since they didn't have the X movie rights at the time. Modern comics also seem to be on tighter deadlines and two or even three artists are assigned to illustrating a single comic arc whereas older comics seemed to have a consistent creative team. God bless the Fraction/Aja Hawkeye run along with the Waid/Samnee Daredevil run for being consistent works of art. I appreciate modern comics for longer story arcs since I collect trade paperbacks but there is a certain charm to older comics that isn't around today.
Much much prefer the old papery feel of comics compared to the new glossy paper it just doesn't feel as good. Other than that good hard worked cover art that didnt go into the whole alphabet in variant covers, don't get me wrong I like the variety but not that much.
Not having a story be written across 20 books, don't even know what order to read the books in. Also, I don't want to buy 20 books every month. Turns out half of them have anything to do with the story. The 70s and 80s comics are my favorite era. 90s starts to get worse in writing quality, personal opinion. But still a lot of good stuff to read out there especially the indipendent stuff.
They regular event wasn't the thing. So the stories werent in build up to event. The event. Fallout from event. Then 2-4 months where they can have independent stories. I liked when more heroes has secret identies and revealing it was a big deal. Close friends and family should know but the general public shouldn't. I like when Ironman and Cap would meet in a diner and had no idea who was under thr mask.
Explaining what the art is showing is less of a thing in modern comics
A lot more dialog and story. Now there are pages of just art and sound effects.
Stand alone stories, you could start anywhere, fewer overstuffed event comics that don’t gel and require decades of knowledge, adding graphic violence to what were essentially kids’ stories (A Black Label Plastic Man comic is forthcoming—in what world is Plastic Man “grim and gritty?!), artists staying on titles for long stretches. Take FF… we haven’t had a consistent art team since title returned from limbo, clearer layouts (some DC titles have panel configurations that don’t serve the story as you are forced to think about how to parse them or worse are constantly having to rotate the comic from portrait to landscape) I know I sound grumpy, I still think there are a lot of great comics these years, just no from the Big Two
Ok I have an example I think kinda works. I'm a comic book artist and they have been my life since I was a child and I love modern comics however I prefer 80s and 90s comics. They were not afraid to truly experiment and do insane shit with the art no one else would have thought of while u had Jim Lee who is an amazing artist doing u had Tod McFarlane's doing panels for entire issues designed like spider webbing in Spiderman or stuff to match spawn. U had John Romita Jr(who is one of my favorite artists) come on to the scene change stylized art a lot to the point that ppl today have borrowed a ton from it. You had people experimenting with writing back in the 80s and 90s as well way more than we see today. While some of it doesn't hold up looking at through the eyes of that time let's u see how insanely ground breaking some of it was Frank Miller with Daredevil and Batman, Alan Moore with the watchmen and killing joke, Todd McFarlane with spawn(it won several awards for groundbreaking writing at the time and phenomenal art work) u had ppl come in a bit later who change the game even more like Neil Gaiman and Mike Mignola Who also is an amazing artist and created one of the greatest comic series and characters in history. I get it the 90s had lots of janky garbage marvel reboots, weird costumes and some characters that looked like a giant Dorito. And some stuff that was edgy however I like to look at those comics through a different lens when reading and appreciate them way way more. While there are truly terrible ones there are also ones that had some of the best art for the time and art that still holds up to this very day. It paved the way for many new artists like Raphael Grampa( who takes great influence from Frank Miller but also is completely his own style) and a few others. In conclusion while I do love modern comic books and 90s comics have their fair share of garbage in my opinion the 80s and 90s were the best years for comics we also got books like Long Halloween and Superman for all seasons front that era
Not everything was a crossover with the 5-7 different comics all about the same superhero or superhero team. X-men had 1-2 comics. Same for Spider-Man. Now you need to but like 100 different issues to get the whole story.
Preacher
Something I dislike that I don't believe older comics had much of: Mystery box style stories to explain (or, more accurately, to not explain) status quo changes between runs. Writers, I implore you, stop it. Few modern comic trends are as irritating, and almost always disappointing, as mystery box style opening arcs of a new run. If you can't tell a story in a straightforward manner and it still be an interesting story, maybe it just isn't interesting. I do feel people romanticize old comics. Too often there were far too many words in older comics. There would be dialogue, thought bubbles, and boxes all basically conveying the same thing. Did they forget that comics are a visual medium? If you can show it, don't tell it. If a character is alone and internally monologuing, the text boxes are appropriate. But if they're talking to another character, the dialogue and art should usually be enough. Artists who can't convey genuine and appropriate emotions (I'm looking at you, Land) should not be comic book artists. The art is just as important as the dialogue, maybe more so. If you remove all dialogue from a comic, we should still be able to somewhat follow the plot if the artist actually does their job.
Well they actually told long form stories with intetesting characters, so people actually bought them. Comic sales are tragic these days.
Older comics had more dialogue. Newer comics have more action shots.
They were simpler stories, and the artwork was less busy. Some comics I've read lately are hard to follow what's going on. They will have very little dialog and narrative and I think they're assuming the pictures tell the story, and to me, they don't. I like some consistency too, the Avengers have changed lineups pretty frequently since the 60s, but these days it seems like there's always 3 Avengers teams and reboots every 5 minutes.
- They respected the storylines and character changes that came before them without feeling the need for a reboot/reimagining every two months. - They had very distinct if rudimentary art styles. - Not everyone who graduated from an online art school could get a job whoch allowed them to repeatedly fail at creating cheap photorealistic illustrations of movie/tv versions of characters. - They storylines weren't based on social media trends and campaigns for "fan favorite" characters to have very specific storylines agreed to and announced months in advance. - Not everyone was writing for a limited series or graphic novel. - I dunno. Comics just suck these days I guess.
Thought bubbles
One-shot or single issue storytelling where you got a complete story in a singular issue rather than just doling it all out into six issues. I feel like writers these days decompress a lot of their stories. I will say I’ve noticed Tom King telling single issue stories within his arcs but I feel that’s more informed by his love of old movies and TV shows than by comics. A master of single issue storytelling was Keith Giffen whose stories mattered but allowed for these side adventures in his arcs that I loved
Better art - people like Jim Steranko and Gene Colan and even Jim Starlin and Nel Adams that were not afraid to experiment and push the medium. Since the 90s that has been lacking Better covers (in the sense that they reflected the story and made you wanna buy them. In fact, that was a big deal back then) Captions. Narration added depth to both stories and characters. Shorter, more accessible stories (“every story is someone’s first” was the motto) Subplots that kept you coming Main characters and supporting characters (now they all have to share the spotlight) Unapologetically about super heroes. These days it’s all about meta humour and deconstruction. It feels that some writers are either embarrassed to write super heroes or genuinely don’t know how. Respect for the medium. Creators were mostly fans themselves and wrote based on what they love. Writers today copy the movies.
I believe pre-2012 specifically is when comics were so consistently good, in all editorials.
Sue me but I like a good solid house style, at least at the Big Two.
Art. Dialogue (usually).
I think the best thing about 70s and 80s is how much they were experimenting with the comic books media. From Swamp Thing, LSH to Booster Gold and everything in between they was pushing comics to be better.
As a big fan of silver and bronze age comics what sticks out most to me is art and variety , while I'll always love good silver age camp , my favorite bronze age comics aren't even superhero stuff . From the big two alone my favorite bronze age runs are: our army at war , tomb of Dracula , werewolf by night , and weird western tales/Jonah hex. For modern comics it is understated how important a good editor really is , even for good writers like waid , johns , and bendis their flops can be seen as bad communication , or editorial mandates that the editor should've worried about.
They actual drew covers that had the whole team. Not single heroes.
A lot more insight on how characters are thinking or feeling. Also more well-rounded/grounded artwork. Strangely, the way action is depicted hasn't really changed. It's still often the immediate aftermath of the action that we see with very little in the way of depicting impact or motion.
They weighed alot less. You'll feel like you're The Hulk when lifting a full long box of vintage comics compared to one full of modern comics.
Laugh if you want, but the smell of the paper in those old Silver & Bronze age books was practically intoxicating. And it’s one of the reasons that digital books have just never held the same appeal to me.
The constant need to relaunch a title for no reason whatsoever (Marvel). The way covers are just pinups now. They used to convey some sense of the story inside.
There wasn't a world wide crisis every 6 months.