The 2000s

[your_name_here]

So I see that the 2000s are often beloved or very disliked. It’s known for being a divisive era in Marvel Comics. Everyone has an opinion. I personally love it and think they took interesting directions.

What are your opinions?

[Personamanx]

I think it had a lot to offer, especially if you were someone trying to get into the comics for the first time. The Ultimate line while not to everyone's taste made for a series of comics that were easier to get into than the mainstream universe. There were several solid efforts to create new titles/characters for potential fans to grab onto, even if some of them never took off (Livewires, Spellbinders) or took a long time in doing so (Runaways). Not to mention for a while there before House of M, the X-Men books were surprisingly accessible.

It's when I managed to become a regular reader of cape comics after a long childhood of reading B&W reprints. I think it's as valid as any other period in comics.

[your_name_here]

One thing I liked was how brave they seemed to be. For a good portion of a decade, whatever COULD go wrong, DID go wrong. House of M, Civil War, Annihilation, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign. They really took us to daringly high extremes.
I’m not surprised that superhero films became a popular thing around this era.

[jackolover]

The 2000’s had a lot of problems.

Marvel were struggling with bankruptcy, and bringing in Alternative comics creators to start radically new starts like the Ultimate Line. This was a very risky step, and no one knew this was going to work.

Marvel had a lot of leftover plot lines to negotiate and tried rebooting Spider-Man, while letting the Avengers just ramble on.

New starts began to happen.

Then you have these very adventurous ideas being planted in the Skrull Invasion, the destruction of the Avengers and X-Men, and the war of 2006 -2007 killing Captain America and elevating Iron Man.

Then coincidentally the MCU attempted to make comics into movies with “Iron Man” and because of its success it bled into a whole franchise schmorgasboard right up till today, and it doesn’t look like stopping.

The inventiveness of the 2000’s was the springboard for Disney’s takeover and the splurge of movie development that uses Civil War, Winter Soldier, and Secret Invasion from 2000 storylines. The movies may not have happened but for the success of the 2000’s. Hail Kevin Feige.

[gurkle]

The early 2000s was a time when Marvel finally modernized its writing style after decades of being way behind the rest of the industry. Up until 2000 most Marvel comics, good and bad, were basically written like Chris Claremont comics: Marvel-style plot format, lots of captions, tons of exposition, thought balloons, continuity references and characters saying exactly what they meant. The new management changed this and within a couple of years even Chris Claremont was writing less like Chris Claremont.

This had to happen and it led to a big improvement for many titles, especially the X-books, which no longer felt like the editors had dictated them to the writers.

The problem is that many of the comics from that period now seem even more dated than the comics they replaced, with the post-9/11 militarism, the digital inks, the "realistic" coloring and the widescreen explosions.

Overall I think things had improved by the mid-2000s when Bill Jemas left and Marvel became open to a true diversity of styles. You had militaristic Edgy comics like Millar's Civil War but you also had more old-fashioned, old-school books by the likes of Dan Slott, and a nice mix of nostalgic and modern styles across the board. Today Marvel has much less diversity of style, but that's true of most eras; it was kind of a fluke that for a few years, they had a bunch of different ideas about what the comics should be all co-existing with each other.

[Mike]

The 2000s, the beginning of the end of my collecting and reading Marvel.

[U.N. Owen]

2000s, specifically 2010s, started the trend of annoying me by rebranding on a yearly basis. Marvel Now!, All New All Different, Marvel Now!, Legacy, and a Fresh Start. Thanks, I don't want to deal with it. Stop switching around creative teams I like!

[Digifiend]

2000s means the decade - 2000-2009 - not the whole 21st century. What you're describing is only the 2010s. Heroic Age in 2010 was the first of the almost annual relaunches. Though, ANAD in 2015 was the only one that relaunched every book. That one went too far, if the creative team didn't change, then the book shouldn't have relaunched - that applies to Howard the Duck, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Silk, Spider-Gwen, Spider-Woman, Ms Marvel, Amazing Spider-Man, Thor, and Guardians of the Galaxy.

[ARkadelphia]

Not as good as the decades that preceded it and followed it.

[Agent Z]

The 2000s had good stories and bad ones. Same as any other decade.

[Adset]

My last impression of the 2000s:

Started off weak -- the luster of 1997's Heroes Return launch was mostly gone, w/ Waid and Busiek jumping off Captain America and Iron Man prior to 2000 (I think) and Fantastic Four treading water w/ Claremont. Busiek's Avengers was still going strong, naturally. But the X-Books were a mess by 2000, and the Spider-books were still getting kicked in the nuts by John Byrne. Just not a good all-around time.

Grant Morrison and JMS' arrival at New X-Men and Amazing Spider-Man were much-needed breaths of fresh air, but I wasn't super-impressed with much else. The middle part of the decade brought us Brubaker's Captain America and, though far less acclaimed but arguably more important in shaping the Marvel U the rest of the decade, Bendis' Avengers (and shortly thereafter: New Avengers). New Avengers seemed to be the flagship the drove the bus on what became a series of never-ending events. I re-read the series (volume 1, anyway) from start to finish not long ago and it basically read as a blueprint through the mid/late 2000s.

I didn't hate Brand New Day over in the Spider-books, but I jumped off after the third volume or so. Just didn't hold my interest. I thought Whedon's Astonishing X-Men was fantastic and Mike Carey did some wonderful things on X-Men/X-Men Legacy but I wasn't too keen on much else coming from the X-offices.

I guess if I had to nutshell this thing I'd say the decade started and ended kind of weak, but the middle part had some gems.

[Vordan]

2000s for Marvel remind me a bit of the 80s for DC. You had the Brits coming in and shaking the universe up: Morrison on X-Men, Ellis on Iron Man, Millar writing Civil War. It was a time when Marvel was really pushing the envelope to see what they could get away with. I think the highs were fantastic but the lows were REALLY bad. The Hulk title was terrible imo during this decade. JMS Spidey was really enjoyable (Sons Past aside) until OMD. The X-Men peaked with Morrison and Whedon and then started to decline to where we are now.

[charliehustle415]

The 2000's were my formative years reading Marvel, to me, it will be my favorite era of the Marvel Universe. I mean all of the radical changes, it felt like a organic, living, breathing world.

You had Civil War, Death of Cap, Secret Invasion, Siege, House of M, my favorite Dark Reign and the Dark Avengers.

I personally consider New Avengers the start of my love affair with it and Secret Wars the end.

[jackolover]

The 2000's were my formative years reading Marvel, to me, it will be my favorite era of the Marvel Universe. I mean all of the radical changes, it felt like a organic, living, breathing world.

You had Civil War, Death of Cap, Secret Invasion, Siege, House of M, my favorite Dark Reign and the Dark Avengers.

I personally consider New Avengers the start of my love affair with it and Secret Wars the end.

There certainly was an aspect of that to my enjoyment of that 2000’s era. A lot of people criticise that era, too, because of those events. I suppose there was a to-and-fro between the traditional sense of comicbooks, and an urge to have something different, that people either loved or hated the 2000’s.

I think you have to look at it like Pearl Harbour. Everyone looks at it from Hawaii’s POV. But on mainland USA, who were insulated from direct attacks, Pearl Harbour scared the hell out of the normal population in America. I read some of the first Captain America Comics from 1941, and a club for kids called the Sentinel of Liberty, (20,000 kid membership), was asked to identify every aircraft they saw, as to type, altitude, direction, and time. Kids. People were terrified by Pearl Harbour because International War was creeping to their doorstep, and spies and saboteurs were already in the country causing havoc. They wanted kids in this club to combat spies and traitors. Imagine if that was telecast today to your country, how unsafe you’d feel?

Bankruptcy was Marvels Pearl Harbour and the enemy was everywhere just waiting to tear their world apart. It took Bill Jemas to be courageous, and Joe Quesada to point it in the right direction so Marvel could be relevant again, before DC bought it up.

After that, it was easy to criticise Marvel, and the direction it took, because it was still there. Much like the Illuminati could criticise Namor for blowing up a planet, because the Illuminati were still alive to complain.

[gurkle]

Started off weak -- the luster of 1997's Heroes Return launch was mostly gone, w/ Waid and Busiek jumping off Captain America and Iron Man prior to 2000 (I think) and Fantastic Four treading water w/ Claremont. Busiek's Avengers was still going strong, naturally. But the X-Books were a mess by 2000, and the Spider-books were still getting kicked in the nuts by John Byrne. Just not a good all-around time.

I agree with this. The Heroes Return era with its neoclassical, back-to-basics approach, was my introduction to Marvel and I still love it, but I also know that by 2000 that whole approach had burned itself out. Even Avengers was not as good that year as it had been the first two years, and that was one of the few books that still worked, along with Nicieza's Thunderbolts and Jurgens' Thor (basically, Tom Brevoort's books - that's why he's still there). Something had to change.