Was the late 90s/early 2000s the last 'normal' period for Marvel?

[KingsLeadHat]

Any particular reason that you start so early? I may have gone 1995 as the downfall. That's when all at once, Captain America got the armor, Thor lost his shirt, Avengers had their Crossing, Onslaught, Age of Apocolypes, The clone Saga....

1992 Marvel seemed at the top of their game. Dan Ketch's Ghost Rider was restarting the whole Marvel/Horror franchise, Everyone was getting multiple books and brand new characters were given their own books out the gate like Darkhawk and Sleepwalker... My pull list had to be about 30 books long with 80% Marvel...

By 94/95 it was spiraling pretty fast, but the early 90's I still consider pretty traditional/classic/normal. I remember someone stating once that the traditional Marvel Universe died with Age of Apocylpse and when the timeline/world was reset that was the line in the sand for when the 'good' days ended...

I agree for the most part. I started regularly buying comics in 1987, so the early 90's was the height of my collecting days. I think 1991 was the beginning of the end, more accurately, given that Claremont was the last long tenured holdover from the Shooter era. But you're right to point out that it still felt like "classic" Marvel, probably up until 1993/94. Peter David's Incredible Hulk run was still going strong into 1994, for example.

[JKtheMac]

So you'd rather have books where the character abitrarily changes from title to title, sometimes issue to issue that have no sense of history or permanence? We have that right now and fans are pissed, which is why sales are down.

It really isn't why sales are down, that was an economic circumstance that will slowly resolve itself.

But you are pointing at the thing without seeing what it is. Making a problem out of a strength.

Comic characters should not be set in stone, they should be allowed to be part of stories. The writer should be free to interpret the characters as they wish because superheroes are mutable symbols not real people. Nobody is suggesting that they become warped out of recognition, but that is what trying to stick to continuity does to characters. It twists them and bends them and makes them unwieldy. Better to see them as simple and unburden them from the decades of story that they carry around like a millstone around their neck.

The hardcore character fans expect too much of characterisation, they want all the tiny little things they like about the character represented every time they appear. But the problem is no two hardcore fans can agree on what that set of traits, associations, love interests and rivalries should be. The answer is to tell stories assuming the core concept of the character, and then when a writer wants to explore specific parts of the canon then they can do that with a discrete story with a limited scope.

The great example of this right now is Aaron. He boils down the characters to a simple concept, and then asks various questions of that concept. He often uses canon to do that, but he takes his time, one or two questions at a time, never overburdening the characters with the weight of canonicity. He allows the natural process of storytelling to do the work, and brings in new fans to a wider world.

[daredevil1]

I think 1998 or so when they started renumbering everything was the start of a new 'era' at Marvel that lasted until 2008 or 2010, and it hasn't been the same since. Quesada revamped a lot of titles but many of the creators and storylines carried over; conversely, nothing today is even remotely like how it was in even 2009. One More Day was kind of the end of an era, and then Alonso's regime totally put the nail on the casket. Out of those years I like the Jemas time (2000-2004) the best. I know everyone loves Busiek's Avengers but if you were just reading Spider-Man, X-Men or Hulk, it was a pretty terrible time to be a fan. Marvel Knights/Daredevil also began in 1998, which led to him taking over but it wasn't like a day and night switch in tone as a result. You could even call 1998 the start of a new 'age' in comics, as that's when Lee went over to DC also and both companies were set on their current course. Old era might not have 'died' in 1996 per se, but I never bought that the modern age of comics began with Image in 1992; not everything was so out of sync from where the trends were already heading from the 80s that Image created a huge paradigm shift, whereas 2000s brought the whole Authority/Ultimate aesthetic to all mainstream comics. Disney for better or worse paved Marvel's destiny.

[Anthony W]

I think the real question is if the 90s still deserve to be the "worst" period in Marvel history? I think that 2010s have replaced the 90s as Marvels worst period.

Let me explain myself. Everything the 90s Marvel did 10s Marvel did more of.

More events!
More cover gimmicks! Variants for everyone!
More bad writing!
More bad art!

[Baron of Faltine]

This philosophy is only seen as bad because it goes against the then prevailing ideas of the direct market readers of the time. The people that were lapping up the idea that comics were supposed to be dark, hard edged, logically consistent to the point of obsession, and certainly not for children. Frankly the comic's community had lost touch with what comics actually were. It is pretty much the only age of comics that criticised the Golden Age and tried to erase any trace of that philosophy from contemporary comics.

Thank goodness for the editors that were prepared to accept that comics were supposed to be about larger than life characters that were fun to read and not overly obsessed with creating a world. They pulled us out of a dark hole and at the same time helped Marvel survive as a going concern when it was literally about to shut up shop because what they were publishing was just awful.

I respect what you are saying and I understand where you come from with it, since it does address the conundrum of modern comics.
I nonetheless do ot agree with you. But I agree that was inevitable. Not for the reason you said, because they are surface level. But more for how the market and new readers/consumers are changed.
They are no more loyal to one medium, one hobby or whatever. The new generations ore than anyone previously have access to endless options and lot of contents of it. For them "loyalty" be it to a comic line, book writer, movie or even job position is unthinkable. You get what you get whe you can/want and move on. Everything is fast consumption.and consumption is the key word. Most entertainments products these days are slowly becoming like fast food, intellectual junk food. Nothing too complex, or elaborated. Merely contents meant to be consumed fast and as fast being forgotten and replaced by the next big thing. And the window you can catch the public is always very short. Miss it and you fail. So you have it. No time to build up any interesting world, nor time to show it(hence the prevalence of the easy Iseaki genre in fantasy anime) no time or resources to create a new interesting characters/story with no a known name to tie it down to more known and famous things(an old practice of Hollywood now translated to most entertainment fields), and no hope to raise loyalty or love to fandom(at this point I wonder how much love the new generations of rewder will ever get toward their comics when they will get older. At this point I doubt anyone will pay any sum for old comics)
So yeah we are dinosaurs on their way of extintion. Enjoy what few bits of pop culture you can digest and go on. ( of freaking course jazz and opera still go on with limited public but still go on without have have compromise is themselves too much, and without betraying their nature, but those are two different mediums, all literature is pretty much in same boat as comics)

[Huntsman Spider]

I respect what you are saying and I understand where you come from with it, since it does address the conundrum of modern comics.
I nonetheless do ot agree with you. But I agree that was inevitable. Not for the reason you said, because they are surface level. But more for how the market and new readers/consumers are changed.
They are no more loyal to one medium, one hobby or whatever. The new generations ore than anyone previously have access to endless options and lot of contents of it. For them "loyalty" be it to a comic line, book writer, movie or even job position is unthinkable. You get what you get whe you can/want and move on. Everything is fast consumption.and consumption is the key word. Most entertainments products these days are slowly becoming like fast food, intellectual junk food. Nothing too complex, or elaborated. Merely contents meant to be consumed fast and as fast being forgotten and replaced by the next big thing. And the window you can catch the public is always very short. Miss it and you fail. So you have it. No time to build up any interesting world, nor time to show it(hence the prevalence of the easy Iseaki genre in fantasy anime) no time or resources to create a new interesting characters/story with no a known name to tie it down to more known and famous things(an old practice of Hollywood now translated to most entertainment fields), and no hope to raise loyalty or love to fandom(at this point I wonder how much love the new generations of rewder will ever get toward their comics when they will get older. At this point I doubt anyone will pay any sum for old comics)
So yeah we are dinosaurs on their way of extintion. Enjoy what few bits of pop culture you can digest and go on. ( of freaking course jazz and opera still go on with limited public but still go on without have have compromise is themselves too much, and without betraying their nature, but those are two different mediums, all literature is pretty much in same boat as comics)

I think a lot of the issue with "loyalty" to a brand, an individual creator, or even a job is that nowadays, people are realizing that "loyalty" is more-or-less a one-way street. Brands, even comic books, are creations of corporations that make money off consumers who buy (or buy into) those brands. Creators are also often beholden to corporations and thus restricted, one way or another, with regard to what and how they create by the corporate bottom line. Jobs will give you a certain amount of money, hopefully enough to live on, but only if you're willing to subordinate your own wants and needs to the bottom line of your bosses, who can and will let you go if you don't sufficiently perform and replace you with someone else to keep the machine going. In the end, it's all a transaction, in one form or another, and often a lopsided transaction largely in favor of the more powerful end.

[jackolover]

There had to be an evolution at Marvel from the late 1990’s/2000’s to the present. The 1990’s ran comics into the ground. The early 2000’s were finding a grounding; a footing. When they found it, due to 9/11 and Civil War, and the flow-on conditioning of the 2008 MCU/Disney on the comics, the new grounding in the comics had found its New World. We all had to go through that process at the time.

Call it post-Cold War euphoria, followed by sudden Terrorist reality-check, but comics had to react to the changing atmosphere after the Cold War ended.

[daredevil1]

I think the real question is if the 90s still deserve to be the "worst" period in Marvel history? I think that 2010s have replaced the 90s as Marvels worst period.

Let me explain myself. Everything the 90s Marvel did 10s Marvel did more of.

More events!
More cover gimmicks! Variants for everyone!
More bad writing!
More bad art!

I agree. 2010s are the worst, but people don't want to say it because they're trying to be "PC" and think it's taboo to criticize the era where comics became more woke (or at least compared to what it had been). To me it was pandering to an imaginary audience that didn't care, as only the same 40-50 year olds were buying physical comics that had been since the 2000s. But I think said same people are also the ones who keep the narrative going that 90s were terrible, because it's practically a running joke at this point they don't want to let go. No one is able to accurately assess whether a new comic movie is worse than Batman & Robin, it just gets repeated because it's ingrained in the minds of people of a certain age.

I heard something that made a a lot of sense awhile back, which is that there were very few fans buying hundreds of copies of comics in the 90s; it was mostly stores buying them in bulk who got stuck with the back stock, and so the idea that speculators killed the industry is a myth. There almost seems to be more speculation today (especially with more information than ever online) and yet comics sell really poorly month to month, but people just cannot get preconceived notions out of their heads to think 2010s could be as bad or worse. I think there are a ton of new young READERS in 2022, and none of them buy comics, most pirate them online. But no one wants to say any of this out loud.

[Baron of Faltine]

I agree. 2010s are the worst, but people don't want to say it because they're trying to be "PC" and think it's taboo to criticize the era where comics became more woke (or at least compared to what it had been). To me it was pandering to an imaginary audience that didn't care, as only the same 40-50 year olds were buying physical comics that had been since the 2000s. But I think said same people are also the ones who keep the narrative going that 90s were terrible, because it's practically a running joke at this point they don't want to let go. No one is able to accurately assess whether a new comic movie is worse than Batman & Robin, it just gets repeated because it's ingrained in the minds of people of a certain age.

I heard something that made a a lot of sense awhile back, which is that there were very few fans buying hundreds of copies of comics in the 90s; it was mostly stores buying them in bulk who got stuck with the back stock, and so the idea that speculators killed the industry is a myth. There almost seems to be more speculation today (especially with more information than ever online) and yet comics sell really poorly month to month, but people just cannot get preconceived notions out of their heads to think 2010s could be as bad or worse. I think there are a ton of new young READERS in 2022, and none of them buy comics, most pirate them online. But no one wants to say any of this out loud.

I think you are right. Only few, who undergo the painstaking process of watch really every movie can say if one is really he worst movie ever. And even that it neednto be contextualised about the time it was made(each decade has different sensibilities) on e the budget it was made and if was genre movie or not( high budget movie need to be judged more harshly that cheap indie movie, as they have less excuses ) and so on.
Same for comics. Only with time and re-contextualizing things, you get better judgement. Now lot of 90's comics was meh, with something very bad, lot of "cannot believe marvel did not sued for cy-blade design" moment, but also soem good stories, interesting artistic experiments, as per usual in arts and commercial entertainment. We only remember the good stuff., but really every decade had its own share of bland to horrible ****.
And every decade has its own share of"messages" that they enforce preaching in various medium either it work or not. Be it "don't do drugs"(or Mr T will kick the **** out of you", "do not pollute"( or captain planet and denver the friendly dinosaur will annihilate you), "beware false friends"(satanists istareeveywhereomg!). Nowadays thing seem worst because media coverage is insane, and than to "phone game" effect what was a positive message got distorted in impossible to recognise way. Also the insurgency of "hate consumption" where it was noticed that people can be lead to consume an entertainment product not by looking but by hating either the product per se or the people behind it. Something you notice arise exactly toward the end of 2000 and first part of 2010's. When huge net aggregators/social media become mainstay of media empires, no more new things but common things as TV or cellular phone.

[phantom1592]

I think the real question is if the 90s still deserve to be the "worst" period in Marvel history? I think that 2010s have replaced the 90s as Marvels worst period.

Let me explain myself. Everything the 90s Marvel did 10s Marvel did more of.

More events!
More cover gimmicks! Variants for everyone!
More bad writing!
More bad art!

Agreed.

Events:
Outside the X-men and Batman, the events were a lot more self contained. Now they bleed into ALL the books. In fact people used to complain that things like Gotham getting condemned was just ignored by Superman and Flash... but compared to Civil War and Infinite Crisis?? Ughhh so much worse. Infinity Gauntlet and Crusade had a few tie in issues... but nothing that you had to read to understand the story. Now? Major plot points are in the tie-in books and the actual events read like an outline. Winner? 90's easily.

Cover Gimmicks? Still happening. But WORSE. Back then, we had things like holographic covers and foil covers... and yeah, they jacked the prices up, but they were still less then comics cost now. And they were AWESOME, and they made sense. I'll take a Holocover like Dr. Strange #50 or a silver foiled Silver Surfer over pointless variants of characters as Legos, or a Venom month or Deadpool month... Covers should sell the books. If Venom or Deadpool aren't in the book... Keep them off the cover!! That's just plain false advertising. I was just talking with my comic dealer last week about that. too many variants and they all suck. It's pain to buy, and he hates the added trouble it comes just from ordering the things. Again, I'll take 90's any day for that.

Bad writing and Bad art are subjective, but I tend to prefer the 90's for that too. yeah, I couldn't stand Leifeild... but he was easy to avoid but at least the characters looked like the characters. I remember a 'silent issue' of Daredevil where Alex Maleev drew in Boomerang and Shotgun as assassins... But they were in street clothes and I had ZERO idea who they were. They were some of the first villains I had read, so I KNEW Boomerang and Shotgun... but they had to come out and identify them in a script a month or two later. Just... Bad art. Bad writing.

I also like to toss in the 'ultra violence' that the 90's get criticized for too. MUCH worse now. 90's had big guns and lots of blood.... 2000s-2010s had Civil Wars and Superboy Prime ripping established characters in half.

The violence, the gimmicks, the events... They never went away. they only escalated. If you hated them in the 90's, they've only gotten worse now.

[HaveAtThee]

Agreed with Phantom above. The gimmickry of the 90's never went away, it just evolved.

[HaveAtThee]

Elaborate?

Shooter was the last EIC who tried to adhere to a general concept of continuous storytelling from the 60s Stan/Jack era. Few deaths and even fewer resurrections, the ones that happened were (at that time) meant to be permanent. His reign was "dictatorial" but many of the most seminal runs on beloved properties happened under his stewardship (X-Men, Avengers, Thor, Spider Man, Daredevil, Hulk etc.). If you start in the 60's with the major characters/properties, their general storytelling through the 1980's evolves. After him came the Clone Saga, the Masterson Thor, the Blue/Gold teams X-Men, etc. and the general stunting of story evolution, coupled with the gimmickry we see today with variant covers, et. al.

[Anthony W]

Agreed.

Events:
Outside the X-men and Batman, the events were a lot more self contained. Now they bleed into ALL the books. In fact people used to complain that things like Gotham getting condemned was just ignored by Superman and Flash... but compared to Civil War and Infinite Crisis?? Ughhh so much worse. Infinity Gauntlet and Crusade had a few tie in issues... but nothing that you had to read to understand the story. Now? Major plot points are in the tie-in books and the actual events read like an outline. Winner? 90's easily.

Cover Gimmicks? Still happening. But WORSE. Back then, we had things like holographic covers and foil covers... and yeah, they jacked the prices up, but they were still less then comics cost now. And they were AWESOME, and they made sense. I'll take a Holocover like Dr. Strange #50 or a silver foiled Silver Surfer over pointless variants of characters as Legos, or a Venom month or Deadpool month... Covers should sell the books. If Venom or Deadpool aren't in the book... Keep them off the cover!! That's just plain false advertising. I was just talking with my comic dealer last week about that. too many variants and they all suck. It's pain to buy, and he hates the added trouble it comes just from ordering the things. Again, I'll take 90's any day for that.

Bad writing and Bad art are subjective, but I tend to prefer the 90's for that too. yeah, I couldn't stand Leifeild... but he was easy to avoid but at least the characters looked like the characters. I remember a 'silent issue' of Daredevil where Alex Maleev drew in Boomerang and Shotgun as assassins... But they were in street clothes and I had ZERO idea who they were. They were some of the first villains I had read, so I KNEW Boomerang and Shotgun... but they had to come out and identify them in a script a month or two later. Just... Bad art. Bad writing.

I also like to toss in the 'ultra violence' that the 90's get criticized for too. MUCH worse now. 90's had big guns and lots of blood.... 2000s-2010s had Civil Wars and Superboy Prime ripping established characters in half.

The violence, the gimmicks, the events... They never went away. they only escalated. If you hated them in the 90's, they've only gotten worse now.

Preach! The 2010s were awful! Let it ring out from every mountaintop! The 2010s was Marvel's worst period! Whenever someone makes a 90s Marvel joke just laugh and say "Yeah, but the 2010s were worse" because they were.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Agreed with Phantom above. The gimmickry of the 90's never went away, it just evolved.

It went away but it came back. But there a market for it so as long as people buy them, it'll stay.

[phantom1592]

I agree. 2010s are the worst, but people don't want to say it because they're trying to be "PC" and think it's taboo to criticize the era where comics became more woke (or at least compared to what it had been). To me it was pandering to an imaginary audience that didn't care, as only the same 40-50 year olds were buying physical comics that had been since the 2000s. But I think said same people are also the ones who keep the narrative going that 90s were terrible, because it's practically a running joke at this point they don't want to let go. No one is able to accurately assess whether a new comic movie is worse than Batman & Robin, it just gets repeated because it's ingrained in the minds of people of a certain age.

I tend to rank this up with 'bad writing'. They did the same thing in the 90's... heck they did it in the 80's taking well loved characters and switching them out for new characters and ticking off the main audience. The difference is that these new characters either were already established and passing a mantle seemed natural and/or they grew from their and became their own characters. It wasn't a 'real' replacement.... and it didn't take as long to 'fix'. Eric Masterson had been around since 1988 before he became replacement Thor in 1991. By 1993 he was Thunderstrike. Also, his whole run was about finding the Real Thor because he's such a great hero and he never felt he measured up. Even when Thor was gone... he was still respected. Compare it to Jane Foster who had been around forever... but she was Thor in 2014 for over 5 years before becoming Valkrye... And Thor was 'unworthy'. For that matter, Thor STILL hasn't got control of his hammer today. Every story since 2014 was basically Thor sucks and everyone is better with his hammer than he is. That's not a 'woke' problem... that's just a bad writing problem. We need more War Machines, USAgents and Thunderstrikes than we ever need 3 Captain America's, 3 Spider-mans, 2 Thors, etc.

I heard something that made a a lot of sense awhile back, which is that there were very few fans buying hundreds of copies of comics in the 90s; it was mostly stores buying them in bulk who got stuck with the back stock, and so the idea that speculators killed the industry is a myth. There almost seems to be more speculation today (especially with more information than ever online) and yet comics sell really poorly month to month, but people just cannot get preconceived notions out of their heads to think 2010s could be as bad or worse. I think there are a ton of new young READERS in 2022, and none of them buy comics, most pirate them online. But no one wants to say any of this out loud.

I don't know. I don't remember anyone ever buying 100 of the same comic. i really don't believe that was a thing. I DO remember people buying 3-4 of the same book. I remember people jumping at the polybags and #1s... FYI, Polybags were a fad that was pure 90's and I'm glad that died back then. Always hated those stupid things. To my knowledge that did NOT carry over to the 2000's+. I do remember books coming out with 4-5 variant covers... and people wanting to get one of each one. Especially things like X-men #1 that all connected to make one image, or Robin II mini series with holograms built into 4 different covers... GOTTA have one of each, you don't know what's going to be teh 'rare one'...

I really don't hear about that now days. I haven't really heard ANYTHING about Speculation now days... other than what Marvel and DC are trying to artificially create. They keep rebooting seriies and pushing new #1's with every new writer... but I haven't heard anyone actually CARING anymore. They just yawn and get the next issue. The companies have a lot of excitement with the relaunches or events or crisises or what not... but the customers? I can't even remember what the last 'big' issue that everyone needed to own was. Death of Captain America maybe? So I think they want us to think there is a new speculator boom... but I haven't seen any evidence of it existing.

And I do believe it's because of the online thing. Nobody actually NEEDS to buy them anymore. there's at least 3 youtubers I watch out there who will keep you up to date with the stories and post the pictures and words online and save $5 a shot. They claim they're doing it to stir up excitement and encourage people to buy their own copy.... but does it actually ahppen? I haven't watched any of these videos and run out to buy a book I already know every thing about... Never happens. In the old days if someone died or if there was a first appearance... You HAD TO HAVE IT. Now? meh.. People would rather Trade wait or download the issue online or watch the video... Without that panic of FOMO... there can't be a resurgance. The companies have become a victim of their own success.