Quote Originally Posted by ducklord View Post
Yeah, Crisis is pretty, but it HEAVILY depends on the reader being invested in the Pre-Crisis mythology to pack any oomph. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone coming into the Bronze Age cold.

The immediate pre-Crisis era had a number of good-to-great runs, which others have mentioned:

Alan Moore's Swamp Thing - It's early Moore, so it's a bit on the wordy side, but it does a fair amount of romping through the DCU.
Wolfman/Perez Titans - I recently went through a re-read of these. Wolfman's dialogue hasn't aged well (a problem with Crisis, as well), but the book remains a masterpiece of plotting, and you can't beat the Perez art.
Levitz/Giffen (and others) Legion - Speaking of plotting masterpieces, you could do far worse than to simply start at the Legion Annual #1 and read every Legion story up through the end of the Baxter series.
Thomas/Ordway All-Star Squadron - Heck, I'd even throw in Young All-Stars.
DC Comics Presents (various) - Superrman's team-up book, like most team up books, was always hit an miss, but the good ones (like Starlin's Martian Manhunter/Supergirl/Spectre trilogy) were great.
Cyborg's dialect. Can we get a rousing "Mebbe," everyone?