Rank the Decades

[Venomous Mask]

Personally, I see 90s Spider-Man beginning with the introduction of Venom (which happened very close to the marriage and the 'death' of the Hobgoblin) and ending with the Revenge of the Green Goblin arc. Before then, it was a noticeably different period, with the original Hobgoblin dominating everything and the art still being relatively traditional. Then McFarlane and his spiritual successors started drawing the comics and symbiotes (and then clones) became the big thing, as well as big events like the 'death' of Harry. Even after the reboot, I personally feel that the Spider-Man comics still had a very strong post-Clone Saga vibe which stayed in place until after the Revenge storyline, where new elements were added in like JMS' totems and Morlun that took Spider-Man in a very different direction than before. After Ben Reilly 'died' in 1996, I feel like the Spider-Man comics felt quite rudderless for some time until JMS came along, with the writers unsure to completely whip back to a traditionalist, pre-Clone Saga Spider-Man or continue with new stuff. What we got I feel was an awkward mixture of the two.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The (very) early 90s was pretty good. Michelinie was still writing, and you had JMD on Spectacular Spider-Man. But then you had Maximum Carnage, and you had Robotparents...which were low points but still salvageable, and then you had the Clone Saga which is this great sadness. The Clone Saga lasted from 1994-1996, after that you had (I think) Defalco in his second and much weaker run (though since it's Defalco, there's still some good bits there), and then Howard Mackie's run which followed that. Mackie's run had a cool story with Identity Crisis but then Mackie's run got severely hampered by editorial, leading to Aunt May being revived in the absolutely worst way, followed by Mary Jane's "death" which ruined the books and made it too depressing to continue.

JMS freaking saved ASM. People don't appreciate that but he did. I mean it was because of the low output of Mackie's run that Bill Jemas greenlighted Ultimate Spider-Man by Bendis and that became the first AU to outsell the main title.

The 90s actually started the explosion of the Spider-Man AU Comics. I mean before Spider-Man 2099 (which came out in 1992) the most significant AU story is Superman Vs. The Amazing Spider-Man though I guess the Newspaper Strip also counts (but it's an Alternate Medium as well as an AU). But in the 90s you had Spider-Man 2099 and then followed that by Spider-Girl. John Byrne's Chapter One is another one (and the worst as well). Turn of the Millennium you had USM. And since then AU has remained a constant with Spider-Man.

[Fan of Mystery]

My quick thoughts:

06.) 2010s: Easily the weakest decade for the character in my opinion. 2010-2018 in particular was a very rough time quality-wise for the character. Still, there were some definite bright spots.

05.) 1990s: There's a lot of bad this decade, but also a lot of good that I feel doesn't always get the credit it deserves.

04.) 1970s: A good, occasionally great decade, but mostly just good. There were definitely a lot of bland spots, but rarely truly terrible.

03.) 2000s: There were some definite low points this decade, but I feel the good greatly outweighs them.

02.) 1980s: Pretty excellent all around...for the most part.

01.) 1960s: It doesn't get much better than this. I generally don't even like Silver Age comics, but Spider-Man is the one huge exception to this.