I'm abusing my power as a Curmudgeon to promote one of my comments to full post status, in the hope that it sparks some discussion:
I don't think that Big Two superheroes have declined in the last two years. I think that there are a lot of bad high-profile books right now, but also a lot of terrific things that aren't being hyped at all. I think I'm buying more comics now than I've ever bought at any time in my life, and I'm enjoying a lot, too.
Top of the line in Big Two superheroes are Gail Simone's Birds of Prey, Ennis's Punisher (black as the space between the stars), Baker's Plastic Man, and Greg Rucka's Wonder Woman, possibly the best run that title has ever had. And, of course, the Big Event, Seven Soldiers, which is everything that other crossovers want to be but aren't and which seems to be flying below most peoples' radar. (Admittedly, I'm probably its precise target audience.)
There're a lot of really-good-but-just-short-of-great books out there, too, from Milligan's X-Men and Robert Aguirre-Sacasa's Marvel Knights: 4 to Dan Slott's She-Hulk and GLA to Ellis's Iron Man, Many Hands's JLA Classified, and David Hine's District X. I also have a weakness for the American shojo of New X-Men: Academy X, but if I admit that in public, people will mock me.
Now, I don't think that this is the new Golden Age of comics--for a variety of reasons, I think that was 20 years ago, say from the launch of Love and Rockets to the end of Watchmen. This is the long mellow period following the tremendous expansion of both the comics artform and the superhero genre that the early 1980s gave us.
So what else is good out there in panties-and-capes land? Put aside the painful messes that are Wanda Gone Berserk and the Return of Jason Todd and Infinite Doldrums. What else is actually good?
Posted by Kevin J. Maroney at June 18, 2005 11:08 PM