Marvel Comics - the 1970s

[Banner]

I think Marvel comics between the 70s and Secret Wars in the mid-80s is Marvel's golden age. A lot of the writers had free hands to do stuff that would have been hard to do today. And there were very few if any political messages and preaching going on.

The hundred first Spectacular Spider-Man were the best in the whole run.

With Fantastic Four, you had the George Perez era.

There was Gene Colan and Marv Wolfman's Dracula.

Byrne and Claremont's X-Men.

The Sal Buscema era in Hulk (again, pre-Secret Wars).

Jon Buscema in Conan.

Jim Starlin's Captain Marvel and Warlock

Just to name some of the comics.

Interesting stuff has been made since then, but it will never reach the same level as the titles back then.

[Phoenixx9]

I love the 1970's comics!

Avengers, Defenders, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Champions, Daredevil and Black Widow, Son of Satan, Dracula, Power Man/Iron Fist, Marvel Team-Up, Marvel Two-In-One, Ms Marvel, Inhumans, Invaders, and so on.

Many, many good books and they laid the ground work for the characters in today's comics.

[gurkle]

The 70s was rich in weird and unique small titles: because there was very little editing in the way we understand it today (simply because they had one editor in charge of all the monthly comics and nobody had the time to read them all), and because the Comics Code became so much more lenient, writers could pretty much do whatever they felt like and use superhero comics to work out their own personal obsessions. Gerber, Englehart, Starlin, Claremont and others made their books into their own unique little corner of the comic book universe.

I think the era was not nearly as strong in the traditional super hero books, the ones that editorial probably cared more about. There are good stories in Fantastic Four and Thor after Kirby left, or Spider-Man after it killed off Gwen and Norman Osborn, or Daredevil after Gene Colan left, but they were kind of spinning their wheels and doing things that had already been done, and it wasn't really until the 1980s that writers or artists (Miller, Byrne, Simonson, etc) made these titles their own.

An exception is Steve Englehart on Avengers and Captain America. He was able to combine the freaky '70s style with more conventional superhero comics. But when Jim Shooter restructured Marvel editorial toward the end of the decade he finally had a staff of editors who would work with creators on individual books, and that meant fewer wildly personal books but I think it eventually led to a higher standard among the flagship comics.

The biggest weakness of the era for me is the inconsistent art. There is a lot of rushed-looking pencils and inks, and nobody could seem to keep the same letterer on a book for two months in a row. Sal Buscema admitted that in this era he was taking on too much work and working too fast (and don't get me wrong, Captain America and Defenders are two of the best titles of the era and it's partly thanks to Sal Buscema being such a workhorse). I think Shooter's era had more consistent art quality, tried to have one letterer do as much of a book as time would allow, etc.

[Phoenixx9]

But I also think some of the best and most beautiful art was from the 1970's.

Character "personalities", powers and characterization seemed to be the most consistent across various books in the 1970's, at least to me. Those things are all important to me.

[K7P5V]

I'll try to list some of the longer-lasting titles (at least 10 issues) aside from one that started in the 1960s:

Adventure into Fear (1970)
Amazing Adventures (1970)
Astonishing Tales (1970)
Conan the Barbarian (1970)
Li'l Kids (1970)
The Outlaw Kid (1970)
Ringo Kid (1970)
Western Gunfighters (1970)
Where Monsters Dwell (1970)
Kull the Conqueror (1971)
Marvel Feature (1971)
Marvel Spotlight (1971)
The Defenders (1972)
Hero for Hire (1972)
Journey into Mystery (1972)
Jungle Action (1972)
Marvel Premiere (1972)
Marvel Team-Up (1972)
Marvel Triple Action (1972)
Supernatural Thrillers (1972)
Tomb of Dracula (1972)
Warlock (1972)
Werewolf by Night (1972)
Dead of Night (1973)
The Frankenstein Monster (1973)
Ghost Rider (1973)
Uncanny Tales (1973)
War is Hell (1973)
Weird Wonder Tales (1973)
Doctor Strange (1974)
Ka-Zar (1974)
Man-Thing (1974)
Marvel Two-in-One (1974)
Master of Kung Fu (1974)
The Savage Sword of Conan (1974)
Adventures on the Planet of the Apes (1975)
The Champions (1975)
Howard the Duck (1975)
The Inhumans (1975)
The Invaders (1975)
Iron Fist (1975)
Marvel Presents (1975)
Super-Villain Team-Up (1975)
2001, A Space Odyssey (1976)
The Eternals (1976)
Marvel Classics Comics (1976)
Nova (1976)
Omega the Unknown (1976)
The Spectacular Spider-Man (1976)
Black Panther (1977)
Godzilla (1977)
The Human Fly (1977)
John Carter Warlord of Mars (1977)
Ms. Marvel (1977)
Red Sonja (1977)
Star Wars (1977)
Tarzan (1977)
What If? (1977)
Laff-A-Lympics (1978)
Machine Man (1978)
Spider-Woman (1978)
Battlestar Galactica (1979)
Micronauts (1979)
Rom (1979)
Shogun Warriors (1979)

Truly a great list, Electricmastro. But don't forget Creatures on the Loose (1971), where you'll find the first fully published stories in comics from George Perez:

[Banner]

Kids and teenagers those days could easily find a title they would love reading. Not restricted to the 70s of course, but as mentioned, it was a good decade.

When I see some of the comics from Marvel (and DC) today, much of it is stuff that I personally would never have bothered to read and far less buy if it had been around when I was a kid. If you have a character like Goofy or Mickey Mouse, there is a limit for how far you can push those characters in new directions without losing everything that used to define them. Had they made Goofy a vigilante that punished criminals like for instance parents who sexually abused their own children, and almost beating them to death, which children would even care reading it? It's the same with established superhero universes; you can only go so far before the original characters and stories are gone. If they need to make something new, edgy and adult dealing with social issues, perhaps a new superhero universe would be better.

[Electricmastro]

Some of my favorite stories from the 1970s:

Sub-Mariner #37 (May, 1971)

Captain America #156 (December, 1972)

Amazing Spider-Man #122 (July, 1973)

Marvel Premiere #10 (September, 1973)

Captain Marvel #33 (July, 1974)

Jungle Action #17 (September, 1975)

Warlock #11 (February, 1976)

Avengers Annual #7 (November, 1977)

Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2 (December, 1977)

X-Men #108 (December, 1977)

Fantastic Four #200 (November, 1978)

Iron Man #128 (November, 1979)

[babyblob]

The only 70s comics that I have read are Amazing Spiderman, Peter Parker Spiderman, Daredevil and Marvel Teamup. I am really enjoying them. I am going to be reading other 70s titles soon as soon as I catch up with the back issues I am reading. I enjoyed 60s Spiderman and that is my favorite era so far but the 70s were pretty good.

[616MarvelYear is LeapYear]

Review: Kull The Conqueror #1

[Electricmastro]

Cool page from Our Love Story #5 (June, 1970). Art by Jim Steranko: