Tough question, a lot of superhero comics age terribly. I can't think of many series that don't lose something after putting a few years on, topical references become dated, and even something that is largely innovative is likely to be dulled as those features are spread out or even become cliche. I think Spider-Man has had more luck with this than a lot of comics characters/series. There are some surprisingly fun reads going back to the sixties, and it's hard to find a large chunk of consecutive issues that are all bad going through the decades.
Continuity, even in a "shared" comics universe is often insignificant if not largely detrimental to the quality of a comic.
Immortal X-Men - Once & Future- X-Cellent - X-Men: Red
Nobody cares about what you don't like, they barely care about what you do like.
Then team up between Dr. Strange and Dr. Doom to save the soul of Doom’s mother. The Tome and Torment it’s called I think.
I'm surprised Claremont's X-Men hasn't been brought up. I wouldn't consider that dated at all (At least the early issues).
"We are Shakespeare. We are Michelangelo. We are Tchaikovsky. We are Turing. We are Mercury. We are Wilde. We are Lincoln, Lorca, Leonardo da Vinci. We are Alexander the Great. We are Fredrick the Great. We are Rustin. We are Addams. We are Marsha! Marsha Marsha Marsha! We so generous, we DeGeneres. We are Ziggy Stardust hooked to the silver screen. Controversially we are Malcolm X. We are Plato. We are Aristotle. We are RuPaul, god dammit! And yes, we are Woolf."
I recently completed Roger Stern's Avengers run and loved it. I had read parts of it as a kid and it still holds up well. I will soon be re-reading Claremont's Uncanny X-Men post issue 150 to see if its as amazing as I remember.
X Statix is from the Ultimates mold so to speak, but I don't think the things that make it great really have lost their charm. We've gotten deeper into the reality tv/celebrity/social media hole so it's probably more relevant in some ways.
I think the Spider-Man of Stan, Steve, and John is pretty dated but completely lovable. Same with the Thomas and Everett era Namor.
My age and exposure to the material don't seem to stop me from loving the purple Claremont and Wein X-Men type stuff.
This is actually my example of the opposite. For all the people who threw McKenzie under the bus, Miller's stuff was just as dated decades later in my first readings, with the added problem of also being edgy in a way surpassed by later generations. The references, depictions of African Americans, and body language of the characters are far behind what I'd consider in a classic.
O'Neil with his Loves Labors Lost stuff to me has aged better. Hama's Wolverine, Moench's MK and also the Fist of Khonshu hold up well as action comics. The writing of Busiek and the Ennis Punisher stuff don't seem to ever feel dated. And Conan with Thor to a lesser extent seem eternal by design.
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I'm just now starting McGregor and restarting Priest, they seem pretty solid so far.
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Felt like listing my favorite 80s runs from various titles:
Amazing Spider-Man - Tom DeFalco
Avengers - Roger Stern
Captain America - Mark Gruenwald
Daredevil - Frank Miller
Fantastic Four - John Byrne
Incredible Hulk - Peter David
Iron Man - Dennis O'Neil
Thor - Walt Simonson
Uncanny X-Men - Chris Claremont
Last edited by Electricmastro; 11-18-2019 at 10:51 PM.