The Best of 1980-1984

[Air Wave]

What are your favorite stories, arcs, etc., from this period?

[Rincewind]

I'm not as familiar with this period, since I began reading DC post Crisis. But the 2 I can think of are:

Swamp Thing by Alan Moore (began in 1984)
New Teen Titans

[Mike]

My favorite period:
The Great Darkness Saga in Legion of Super-Heroes
Justice League of America #200
The first year of The Fury of Firestorm, the Nuclear Man
The New Teen Titans vs. Blackfire.

[Air Wave]

Green Lantern #136 from 1981. The first appearance of the Omega Men.

GreenLantern136.jpg

[Jim Kelly]

Even though this was pre-Crisis, a lot of the things that were happening at this time would set the stage for the post-Crisis comics going forward. Marvel had already become a success through marketing to the direct sales market, instead of the traditional newsstands mass market. Now DC was trying to appeal to that audience--thus bringing over talents from Marvel like Marv Wolfman, George Perez, Al Milgrom, Ross Andru, Roy Thomas, Jim Starlin, Gene Colan, Frank Miller and John Byrne.

They also experimented with new formats that offered a higher quality product (in theory). Bob Rozakis was production chief at this time and he introduced new paper and new printing processes. I know Marvel had their Epic line, but I wonder if DC wasn't the one that really established the new format that would become the industry standard with offset printing and better paper stock.

You had special projects like CAMELOT 3000 and RONIN presented with new priinting and paper formats.

In addition to superior work on established DC characters in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, THE NEW TEEN TITANS, JONAH HEX, DC COMICS PRESENTS, SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING, ALL-STAR SQUADRON and GREEN LANTERN, there were innovative new concepts in AMETHYST PRINCESS OF GEMWORLD, NATHANIEL DUSK, BLUE DEVIL, THRILLER and ARAK SON OF THUNDER.

[Sutekh]

Lots of great Legion of Super-Heroes (Great Darkness Saga) and Teen Titans issues and arcs in this run (Judas Contract, Who Is Donna Troy?). This was, for young me, DC's golden age, and while some great storytelling has happened since, this was, for me, as good as it got.

Also All-Star Squadron, Infinity, Inc., Sword of the Atom, Arion, Lord of Atlantis, etc. Lots of neat stuff that I really loved.

IIRC, Moore's run on the Swamp Thing started at the very tail end of this time period, but was amazing.

Batman and the Outsiders got it's start, but, IMO, didn't really find it's niche until later.