The Bronze Age
The Golden Age, but dropping off WAY before the OP's end date.
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The Bronze Age
The Golden Age, but dropping off WAY before the OP's end date.
[QUOTE=Jim Kelly;5075850]Even though I bought some Superman comics in the 1960s, it was a short stack of comics in the box under my bed. Not more than 30, I'd say. My comics buying exploded in the 1970s when I was a bit older and I had some more money from my paper route. The great thing about the 1970s comics was they reprinted lots of stories from 1938 onward--and there was an attitude that it was all good and worthwhile. Plus I was getting some back issues from the 1960s, also. It's really that era that gave me a love for Superman comics.
Granted 2020 is probably the best of all times, since you can get pretty much every Superman story ever printed, with just a little effort.[/QUOTE]
I've been working on doing that,with the omnibuses, and even the Showcase books to fill in those expensive older books. I obviously prefer a comic in glorious color, but the stories still entertain in B&W. I've been reading through the Silver Age. Interestingly, I can tell a shift in tone and style as I make my way into the late 60s, that Bronze Age influence is already coming through.
[QUOTE=witchboy;5084729]I've been working on doing that,with the omnibuses, and even the Showcase books to fill in those expensive older books. I obviously prefer a comic in glorious color, but the stories still entertain in B&W. I've been reading through the Silver Age.[B] Interestingly, I can tell a shift in tone and style as I make my way into the late 60s, that Bronze Age influence is already coming through.[/B][/QUOTE]
One of the nicest things my big brother did for me was in the early 1970s I had told him that I really liked the Superman comics from around 1964--a few stories from this period had been reprinted--and he surprised me on Christmas morning with a good stack of SUPERMAN issues from that period (about twenty I'd say) that he had bought from the Comicshop on the other side of town. Which set me up to fill in most of my Superman collection from the early 1960s onward. I now have most issues of ACTION, SUPERMAN and WORLD'S FINEST going back that far. My JIMMY OLSEN, LOIS LANE and SUPERBOY runs are a bit more patchy.
Around the time that I first started buying comics (circa 1967), there was a developing change up at National Periodicals that would affect the Superman books in a big way. I didn't know it at the time, but the books I loved were about to lose their best artists and writers. Some say this is because certain writers or artists tried to start a union--and that might be part of it--but other writers and artists left for other reasons. And some were just shifted onto other titles--and a few people even died. So by 1968, the Superman comics didn't seem the same--except for the 80 Page Giants, of course, which reprinted earlier material. In addition, Mort Weisinger seems to have gone through his own issues, where he just wasn't interested in the job (he was writing for READER'S DIGEST, which gave him a good living), so a lot of that creative eruption that distinguished the first half of the 1960s had expired.
In terms of Superman's character in specific, how my tastes have evolved and when I think he was at his best, Silver/Bronze Age. It terms of a favorite time period of personal reading, it still would be my childhood, so from DOS till around The Dominus Effect.