30 Days of Marvel: Time present and time past

[fajrdrako]

The 30 Days of Marvel meme:

Day #28: Your favourite comic time period

Today. Or maybe next week. Now. I love the unfolding suspense, wondering what is about to happen: How will Wolverine get out of Hell? What's going to happen to one of the Fantastic Four? Will Wanda Maximoff get her memory back, or will there be another twist in her story? - That sort of thing. The whole joy of fresh, new stories - especially since I think there are good writers and artists among the current crop.

Though it ebbs and flows, I've always enjoyed this: the cusp of things happening in comics, the anticipation of the next development in themes or characters or stories. Watching the business, as well as reading the books. Seeing what's happening, seeing what's coming up. It's always in the process of unfolding.

Previously... there was a period, perhaps a decade, say the late 1970s and early 1980s, in which comics were very exciting to me. Chris Claremont and John Byrne on X-Men (1977), Frank Miller on Daredevil (1979), Moench and Gulacy on Master of Kung Fu, Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz on New Mutants. Gene Colan on Tomb of Dracula. Marvel Team-Up had some great stories. Outside Marvel, there was Cerebus the Aardvark, Love & Rockets, Howard Cruise, Mike Hembeck. Good memories, all of them.

And of course I have a great fondness for the Marvel comics I read as a kid in the early 1960s, my first discovery of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, and of course Thor in Jounrey into Mystery. Soon after that, X-Men and Daredevil came out. My comics-reading world was complete.