Favourite era in comics?

palmers · Forum Member Joined: Jun 07, 2002 Posts: 379

Does everyone have a favourite setting in time for comics? Superhero stories set in the 1940s always seem to have a special flavour for me, and I've noticed Hasdrubal's done quite a lot of renders featuring WWII characters. Does everyone else here feel the same, or does anyone favour another decade? Even the '90s?

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electranaut · Forum Member Joined: Jan 03, 2004 Posts: 91

For me, it seems to be the early 80's through the 90's but then that's just because when I really discovered American comics and bought the majority of them. I was a big fan of the mystery/spooky comics and that time seems to be the last gasp of the genre. I've still got some of those issues that were among the last to be printed (and in the case of Unexpected, the actual last issue).

That said, I've got a load of comics that although printed in Britain in the 80's and early 90's are actually reprints of American '50s comic stories and I love them. They're very much in the Twilight Zone style and the fact that they were done then really makes you step back in time. It's just great nostalgia. Apart from that warm glow, some of the stories are actually pretty neat.

palmers · Forum Member Joined: Jun 07, 2002 Posts: 379

Are those the Alan Class reprints? I've got a stack of those, and they were my first introduction to the Archie/Red Circle, Tower and Charlton superheroes.

Have you seen the new DC Showcase Presents reprint of The House Of Mystery? 500 pages of classic stories from the end of the '60s. It's what I'm reading this week.

Oh, and there was a Twilight Zone comic from Continuity in the early '90s. Bruce Jones, Neal Adams, people like that.

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electranaut · Forum Member Joined: Jan 03, 2004 Posts: 91

Yeah, they were the Alan Class publications. Some great stories in some of them, though some of the later ones I found seemed to be scraping the bottom of the barrel a bit. I suppose they were just running out of source material by that time.

I didn't know about the House of Mystery reprint. I might look into that a bit more.

palmers · Forum Member Joined: Jun 07, 2002 Posts: 379

It's about a tenner. Dirt cheap.

I wrote to Alan Class a million years ago, offering to edit collections of the various superhero stories he had, mainly so I'd have access to them. Well, I was young and it was before the internet (that's how very old I am). Got a nice letter telling me to go away.

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palmers · Forum Member Joined: Jun 07, 2002 Posts: 379

The Class reprints were also where I discovered that Paul Reinman could draw. I'd only seen his inks over Kirby in superhero titles. There is some fine artwork there, by people we never heard of after 1961.

IMP.
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