Originally Posted by
Raye
Well, a lot of this varies more from writer to writer than decade to decade, no one writer will encompass all the hallmarks of any particular time period, some were ahead of their time in the olden days, some writers now are throwbacks to an earlier era... but... as someone who began reading in the late 90's, and has gone back and read some earlier stuff:
- more natural dialogue with less blatant exposition dumps, villain monologues explaining their plans, and characters explaining their powers to no one in particular every other issue
- less exposition in general, readers are often expected to put things together themeslves and infer what is happening
- themes tend to be a bit more layered and subtle
- less black and white take on morality, many more anti-heroes and anti-villains roaming around and less certainty on what is right or wrong
- more decompressed storytelling, usually (but not always) with more intricate plots to match. Really, this is the key thing, because it is those extra pages that allow for the more natural dialogue etc. because now we can spend time seeing these things happen rather than have them explained to us. Sometimes it is abused to pad out a story when not warranted, sure, but in general, it was a positive move.
- on that note you tend to see more in depth character studies, because there is more time to devote to that sort of thing due to the decompression
- less thought balloons, though these are coming back in vogue lately. but generally, they switched from thought balloons to internal captions, more of a stylistic change, since the purpose behind them is about the same a lot of the time
- more intricate art, coloring and lettering as printing and coloring/lettering processes improved
That's what comes to me off the top of my head. Some of these are neutral, some I prefer over the old stuff. Mostly I prefer the modern stuff in general, but there are some that are modern, but have elements more associated with older comics, like Squirrel Girl, that I enjoy.