Anything before Clone Saga.
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
Surprised to see the '80s voted for so highly. I've been reading through everything and the '80s was, for me, kind of a slog. Obviously not all of it was bad, but it was the first time I started to feel like reading all of Spider-Man was not good times. I would say either the '60s or '70s. I recall it was all mostly good through that period.
Really? You found reading through that decade of Spidey titles a slog? Surprised to hear that; curious what stories you found to be sub-par. I could understand if you read the very early '80's stuff when Denny O'Neil was on ASM but I thought the Stern and DeFalco runs on ASM are among the very best ever. And when Michelenie took over in the late '80's the title was still very good though perhaps not as good as the aforementioned runs. Additionally, both Bill Mantlo and Peter David had perhaps the best runs ever on PP:SSM in the 1980's as well, at least IMO.
The 80s did have some weak runs. O'Neil is probably the worst Amazing Spider-Man writer up until that point. There was also Milgrom's Spectacular Spider-Man, Marvel Team-Up when it wasn't Claremont or DeMatteis, and some forgettable stuff in Web.
The 80s still had a lot of good material, but I could see someone noticing the dreck.
Sincerely,
Thomas Mets
I started reading regularly in the 90's (So thank god I can't vote for that as it is the worst decade in my opinion.) Having read almost all of the 50 plus years of Spidey, I can safely say the 80s was probably the best. That decade had Stern/JRjr, Defalco/Frenz and Michelinie/Mcfarlane on Amazing; Bill Mantlo, Peter David and Conway on Spectacular; and Claremont and DeMatteis on Marvel Team-up. Plus a majority of well-regarded stories were written during that decade.
I've been reading through pretty much everything for the last year and a half, so its possible I'm confusing my eras a little. However, I feel like it was surely late-70s to early-80s that it just felt like there wasn't anything important going on. The comics themselves weren't bad, but there wasn't a particular storyline that really grabbed me. Not to say its all bad; obviously in a span of 10 years you're going to have some good and bad in any decade. I just felt like it was a little bit of a struggle working through this era.