If you had to pick the biggest stories in the DCU by decade, what would you pick?
Not the best necessarily... but the ones with a lasting legacy. Infinite Crisis was a huge story but 10 years on it doesn't really matter and the DCU isn't any different for it existing.
Caveat: The 1980s is Crisis on Infinite Earths. I hate it and it is poorly structured... but it is woven through the DCU's DNA. No debating that one.
Do we count the stuff from other companies that DC bought out later, or just stuff that DC themselves published?
90s would be death of superman
DC stuff that was DC at the time.
For me:
1930s -- Action Comics #1. Superman is introduced, spawning a horde of imitators and creating the 'superhero' as we know it. Plus it is a decent story and cements the social justice stance that defined superheroes until WWII.
I'm not fond of making 'character debuts' the most important story of their decade but Superman's first appearance literally did lay the foundation for the entire genre. (Some early precursors aside.)
>90s would be death of superman
Bullshit. 90s is Kingdom Come.
Death of superman almost crippled a whole industry
Fair point. I was talking about the universe, not thew wider industry... but your argument is valid.
Why are you idiots only focused on big "events" instead of what actually influenced the artform? The answer is the 80s. Not just for DC but for the medium. Stuff like Watchmen and Dark Knight/Year One have much stronger legacies than any action-figure smashing does.
Oh well kingdome come wouldnt matter anyway because lol elseworlds
i'm trying to think of a good one for the 60s and the flash of two worlds feels like the best choice. it established the multiverse and gets referenced even today
I thought this thread was going to be which is the best decade for DC, to which the answer is the 80s
DC was in its prime for like 10-15 years after crisis inmho
1930s specifically 1938
I thought the current trend was to blame that on X-Men #1?
Big time. The immediate years following Crisis I think are the best comics ever.
>Swamp Thing
>Watchmen
>Killing Joke
>Animal Man
>Doom Patrol
>Sandman
>Longbow Hunters
>Atlantis Chronicles
>Hawkworld
>Suicide Squad
>Justice League International
>The Question
Off the top of my head. Such a fertile period.
Starman and Spectre are pretty good too.
Post Crisis to like Infinite Crisis is the best DC era
The 80s were pretty big in retrospective:
>COIE
>The Dark Knight Returns
>Watchmen
>The Killing Joke
>New Teen Titans
>Morrison's Animal Man
>Moore's Swamp Thing
>Morrison's Doom Patrol
Shit I even forgot all the great Batman stuff like Dark Knight, Year One, The Cult, Son of the Demon, Knightfall and others. Jim Starlin's run on Batman will always be a favorite of mine.
Forgot those too. Yeah the decade following Crisis is just incredible.
>Oh well kingdome come wouldnt matter anyway because lol elseworlds
The mainline DCU spent a spent decade chasing Kingdom Come though.
Agree on that one fore the 1960s.
Oh, and
>Suicide Squad
>The Sandman
>Justice League International
People bought death of superman thinking it was the last appearance of superman and they would wait 20-30 years and sell the last issue for millions of dollars but that never happened because so many people bought it. Comics are valuable because they're genuinely rare, ac 1 is valuable because most copies were destroyed or thrown out or whatever. Xmen 1 and other (marvel) books sell so shittily that they reboot the series and have a big 1 on them, but the legacy number is still going higher. It also doesnt help that theres 20 variant covers so theres more copies of the same issue essentially floating around.
DoS is why everyone hates collectors
Look at wonder woman
>Xmen 1 and other (marvel) books sell so shittily that they reboot the series and have a big 1 on them, but the legacy number is still going higher. It also doesnt help that theres 20 variant covers so theres more copies of the same issue essentially floating around.
I'm talking about X-Men #1 of the adjective adjectiveless series from 1991. It's the highest selling comic of all time but they sold so many to comic shops that they could never move them all and it partially helped tank the industry.
Late 80s/90s/early 2000s DC was peak.
so essentially most of the jeanette kahn eera
New Earth Defense Force detected
Oh shit yeah that contributed also. I bought a copy of xmen 1 for cover price a few weeks ago online.
When did DC became what it is today?Kinda like how Marvel became what it is today with Avengers Disassembled.
I would say it was Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day, with identity Crisis and (later on) Flashpoint being the ones that solidified the change.
For me, its doom patrol and JLA, Grant Morrisons greatest works.
Unironically when dan didio and jim Lee took control
Yeah, that's another way of putting it.
Also when they thought it was a great idea to put bendis on action and superman. Jurgens run was really good and they messed it all up
It can be exactly pinpointed to Graduation Day. That's when it all started going downhill.
>Jurgens run was really good
Holy shit you must be a fucking retard. Jurgens wa shucking awful, nothing but jacking off to his shitty Cyborg Superman character.
Paul Levitz retiring was the end
Graduation Day was the first of a series of editorial dictates that killed DC's age of prosperity. But all of those dictates were just individual parts of a single vision. So yeah... Graduation Day is the first chime of a clock which ran the hour in 5 stages... or some other metaphor.
90s: Death of Superman, Kingdom Come, Knightfall, and Morrison JLA
00s: Johns Green Lantern, Morrison Batman, Flash: Rebirth, Flashpoint
10s: Snyder Batman, Johns Justice League, Dark Knights Metal
Compared to bendis it was good
Oh yeah I’d also say Injustice for the 10s. I thought it was a trash story myself but it’s become “baby’s first Batman vs. Superman story” and has really poisoned Superman to a certain extent. Now everyone thinks he’s going to go crazy if Lois dies.
No it fucking wasn’t you tasteless faggot. I’ll take Bendis Action Comics over Jurgens any day, Jurgens is the most boring fucking writer to still work for the Big 2. Nothing but rehashes of his old stories.
I won't even address whether I agree with that or not, I will simply say that you mongoloids can only think in binary terms and you're ruining this website for it.
>someone on the internet has different better taste than you
Why does this upset you
Definitely a milestone issue and I'll also add Green Lantern #40. It's Krona's first appearance in the DC mythos, this story serves as the jumping off point for Crisis on Infinite Earths #7. Krona wanting to witness the birth of the universe unleashes evil into the multiverse and he even travels to Earth 2 to corrupt Alan Scott's power ring. This brings the empty hand into the DC Universe and the reason why the Green Lantern Corps was formed in the first place.
From the 80s to flashpoint DC was good. After flashpoint DC has been getting worse and worse. It doesn't help that they hired Dan didio and bob Harris, the 2 that almost bankrupt marvel in the late 90s. Also having jim Lee as a idea man was horrid idea. I used to like his artwork but it seems to be getting worse and he hasn't evolved it in anyway. One could argue it's gotten worse than when he first started.
None of these are even disputable.
30s: Action 1 (Defined the American superhero concept)
40s: All Star Comics 8 (First superhero team, and the introduction of the shared universe)
50s: Showcase 4 (Flash II debuts, the first true Legacy hero, and the start of Earth-One)
60s: Flash 123 (Flash of Two Worlds, the multiverse begins)
70s: Green Lantern/Green Arrow (Grounded political topics, questionable grey morality, and realistic detailed anatomy ushered in the Bronze Age, which would define the industry for years to come)
80s: COIE (nuff said)
90s: Death of Superman (essentially removed the concept of death from capeshit comics forevermore, and would constantly be the aim of later attempts to copy its success)
00s: Identity Crisis (ruined DC for many years, with negative ramifications still echoing to this day)
10s: New 52 reboot, of course. Whether you want to define this by Flashpoint or by Justice League #1 is up to you.
As I said, none of these are even debatable, but feel free to discuss why all of these choices are correct. And perhaps come up with runners-up for each decade.
Ironically, I think COIE is the most debatable one if we count Watchmen as "DC".
didio never worked for marvel my dude.
Of course we should "count" Watchmen. What was more influential on all the comics that followed it? Nothing.
Bendis's Action hasn't had nearly the reaction of that shitshow when Jurgens had a white man who had just lost his job after being replaced by illegal immigrants (who wore Muslim clothes) shoot up the factory
Wrong. OP said "DCU" not "DC Comics"
Oh. Nevermind then. Still it's worth pointing out that Watchmen informed the tone of the DCU after its release. But yeah, not a DCU story.
In that case I would switch my answer to Dark Knight which is DCU and equally influential.
By DCU do we mean mainline DCU ?
DKR isn't half as influential as COIE. It's up there, but COIE inevented the line-wide "NOTHING WILL BE THE SAME" crossover event, which is STILL happening every couple months. DKR's influence has really come and gone in that period, despite its stature and importance.
>DKR's influence has really come and gone in that period, despite its stature and importance.
Yeah but DKR also ruined the DCEU. (And a lot of other stuff as fuckheads latched onto its trappings and signifiers but missed everything about what made it work.)
Crisis wasn’t even the first big event, Secret Wars was.
Paul Levitz was part of the problem. He let many of DC's most competent editors like Rasper and Helfer get fired while grooming guys like Dan Didio to be DC's top editor. As publisher Levitz imposed arbitrary censorship and editorial guidelines that drove guys like Morrison, Ellis and Millar over to Marvel. He is just as much responsible for the current state of current day DC as Didio and Lee.
It had lasting impact because the publisher and EiC of DC wanted it to mark the beginning of their decades long reign. So stuff like Kara Zor-el and Barry Allen being dead lasted until there was a regime change at DC
>publisher and EiC of DC wanted it to mark the beginning of their decades long reign.
You're either leaving some stuff out or are talking out your ass. DC did Crisis to make their universe more "modern", more "like Marvel." In the first half of the 80s, DC was getting absolutely annihilated in sales . Pic related tells the tale.