What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

[OddHat]

Just trying to put a more positive spin on this, as I can find something to like in all ages of comics.

 

1) Golden Age - The original Marvel Family stories are my favorites. Fun, wild, silly, optimistic, a little wacky mythology, strange villains and all. Just fantastic books.

 

2) Silver Age - I always loved the Legion of Super Heroes stories of this age, and the Green Lanterns. Much later I tracked down the original Lensman books by E.E. Doc Smith on which much of the Green Lantern mythology was based; fantastic reading.

 

3) Iron/Bronze Age - Miracleman started out very well, and was a great try at bringing the Super-Hero into the modern world. Hellblazer and Sandman were fantastic books, and the first three novels of the Wild Cards series hold some of my all time favorite Super-Hero stories.

 

My campaigns: Most of the time they tend to be optimistic in tone. The heroes want to be heroes and are doing their best, the villains want to achieve their goals and rarely think of themselves as Evil (excepting some supernatural villains), ordinary people act like people. Super-tech is usually powered by the psionic energies of its creator, and pro- and anti-Metahuman fanatics are not uncommon. The proven reality of Magic has driven many people to occult religions and hucksters, and many more into Churches, Temples and Mosques. Every government tries to recruit supers, and even a minor power guarantees employment for life. Super Criminals tend to be young, very new to their powers, cultists, or political terrorists. Call it Aberrant meets the WOD meets the Champions Universe.

 

So, what stories do you love, and from what ages? What kind of campaigns do you run?

[Doug McCrae]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age - Agree with you, Captain Marvel's the best. I don't really enjoy reading most GA stuff, it's too crude.

 

Silver Age - I like virtually every DC comic from the late 50s and early 60s, especially Superman.

 

Bronze Age - I enjoy the slightly sinister dark twist to a lot of 70s stuff, both Marvel and DC. As a kid I had a brilliant Batman comic in which Gotham's worst criminals think Batman is dead and hold a reverse-trial where all the defendants want to be found guilty. There's a gruesome scene where the Joker dissolves a man's face with acid.

 

Wolfman & Perez's Teen Titans is probably my favourite Bronze Age series.

 

Iron Age - Alan Moore's Captain Britain, Dark Knight Returns, Walt Simonson's Thor, John Byrne's She-Hulk, Marshal Law #1-6, Supreme, Moore's Judgement Day, Moore's Youngblood (okay, it was only three issues, but it was still the best superhero team book ever written), Astro City and Busiek's Avengers run.

[palehorse]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

If I tried to list them all I'd be here all night.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Favorite Golden Age books:

The Marvel Family line of books - truly fantastic comics in every sense.

ALL STAR COMICS - The JSA have always been a class act.

The early Batman stories, through the mid/late 40's, were inventive, fun and often creepy, not to mention well-written and beautifully drawn.

 

Silver Age -

Lee/Kirby's FF, Lee/Ditko's DR.STRANGE and SPIDER-MAN - the core Marvel books

GREEN LANTERN, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, DOOM PATROL, Weisinger-era SUPERMAN

 

Bronze Age - UNCANNY X-MEN,AVENGERS - From 100 through Stern's run.

ZOT!, SWAMP THING

 

Iron Age - HELLBLAZER, PREACHER, WATCHMEN, SUICIDE SQUAD, SPECTRE, STARMAN, ANIMAL MAN, Morrison's DOOM PATROL

[Chimpira]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age - I have been a fan of the Justice Society since I was a small boy. Something about them always just seemed more mythic to me.

 

Silver Age - I was really reading a lot of Sgt. Rock, Jonah Hex and Haunted Tank but I did have this amazing soft spot for The Flash.

 

Bronze Age - I was really into Bill Willingham's The Elementals. It was pretty dark and the heroes did not act like the heroes that I was used to reading. I still feel sad that Porter Scott died.

[Nuadha]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden- Superman. I loved the early Superman who fought against corrupt politicians and businessman. Superman as social crusader was fun. I also really liked the GA Spectre stories.

 

Silver- Once again- Superman. I loved the sense of adventure in the SA Superman comics.

 

Bronze Age- Probably my favorite period. I loved Kirby's DC stuff from the 70's (particularly the Fourth World stuff), the Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics, Aparo's Spectre series and short-lived Ragman series.

 

Iron Age- Superman again. The Byrne reboot and the years following it were some of my favorite comics. I also loved the Giffen Justice League International (JLA/JLE).

 

Current- Currently, I'm really hooked on Aquaman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman and Astonishing X-Men.

[Theron]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age - A Gardner Fox JSA story where Solomon Grundy is once again on a rampage. The JSA splits up to track down clues in the path of destruction and terror he's wrought. A reprint of it was the first JSA story I ever read.

 

Anything involving the Marvel Family.

 

Anything involving Superman

 

Silver Age - Green Lantern. Gil Kane's artwork defines "Silver Age" for me. The Galactus Trilogy. The Julie Schwartz run on Batman before the camp effect of the TV series began to influence the book. Jim Shooter's run on Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes, which might be Bronze Age by date, but was pure silver in terms of tone and feel.

 

Bronze Age - Lordamercy, lots of stuff. The Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run on Batman, Paul Levitz's stints on LSH. X-Men. New Teen Titans (The Judas Contract, Who Is Donna Troy?). The Shooter/Perez run on Avengers. Walt Simonson's Thor. Alan Moore's Superman stories (For The Man Who Has Everything, The Last Superman Story), Justice League International (Bwahahahahaha!), Byrne's relaunch of Superman. The Crisis, even if I think it was a bad idea in retrospect.

 

Iron Age - Watchmen, Stormwatch, New X-Men, Ultimate X-Men, The Ultimates

[Metaphysician]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age: Haven't really read much golden age stuff.

 

Silver Age: Silver Surfer, Doom Patrol. Probably should track down some of the essential Fantastic Four volumes.

 

Bronze Age: JSA, Astro City, Claremont X-Men ( could be Silver Age ), Starman

 

Iron Age: Planetary, Ultimates, Supreme Power, Miller Daredevil ( might be Bronze Age )

[humantorch101]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

From the Silver/Bronze age the Avengers have always been my favourite book.

Something about the hybrid Family/Military feel of the book which i love. Also the Villains such as Ultron, Kang, Graviton etc.

 

My favourite period is the Engelhart/Shooter era of the late seventies early eighties. Some simply amazing stuff there.

 

rgds

Torch

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age - I really enjoy the Plastic-Man stories from back then. Interesting, odd at times, and well-done.

 

Bronze - Spidey, Avengers + individual titles (Cap, Iron Man), X-men. When I go back-issue shopping, these are the bins I'll usually hit first.

[zornwil]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

How do you guys classify Flaming Carrot Comics? One of my all-time favorites and has influenced strongly my superhero stuff.

[Fry Daddy]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age:

 

The original Batman stories where he carried a pistol and fought vampires and werewolves --- the period where he was part superhero, part pulp hero.

 

The JSA was awesome --- I still think the GA Green Lantern costume is the best design ever for GL, as well as the "Mercury helmet" Flash costume.

 

Silver Age:

 

Fantastic Four, Avengers, Thor, and Spider-Man --- all of these books were awesome in scope and fun to read all the way up to the mid-80s

 

Jim Steranko's Nick Fury stories

 

Bronze Age:

 

Green Lantern/Green Arrow, the entire Atlas Comics run (anyone remember those?), the X-Men from GS #1 through Dark Phoenix, the Defenders, Iron Fist, Master of Kung Fu, and Tomb of Dracula

[wylodmayer]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age: Marvel family, like so many others on this thread. I really think that's where some of the best writing was to be found. Also, the Black Terror. I never really enjoyed much other GA stuff, although I have stolen characters liberally from the Golden Age, since so few players know them.

 

Silver Age: Definitely Green Lantern, Spider Man, Legion of Super Heroes.

 

Bronze Age: Cliched or not, Uncanny X Men was pretty fresh back then. Jim Shooter's run on Avengers - dude, he made Hank Pym a wife beater and freakin' kicked him out of the Avengers! Shooter's work on the Avengers influences my gaming style and appreciation for comics to this day. Early Defenders, back when it was still Doc Strange, Silver Surfer, Namor, Hulk, Nighthawk, etc. In case you didn't notice, I really didn't care for DC in this period. I also quit reading Marvel titles when Jim Shooter left as Editor In Chief (may Tom DeFalco rot in Hell). His insistence on continuity and believability, as well as character development, was directly responsible for the greatest period in Marvel history (although he deeply, deeply disappointed me with the resurrection of Jean Grey in X Factor - shame, Jim, shame). I acknowledge nothing that happened afterward. Zot! was and is one of the greatest comics ever; I also steal villains from that title, as well, because I *know* my players haven't read it (sigh).

 

Iron Age: Ultimates, Alias, Ultimate FF, Fables, Tom Strong (honestly, I am so tempted to put him in Silver Age just on principle). Ultimate FF is honestly as good as Ultimates - anyone who's missing his or her fix, grab some of that stuff to tide you over. Likewise for Ultimate Nightmare. Ultimate War, Ultimate Six, and any other Ultimate Title except maybe Ultimate Spider Man, well, not so much.

[Just A Guy Name]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

How do you guys classify Flaming Carrot Comics? One of my all-time favorites and has influenced strongly my superhero stuff.

Said it before..Burden was a comic genius

Classify? They don't really fit perfectly into the 'metals' grading, but I'd say they most resemble the early Silver Age in spirit.

[tgrandjean]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age: Honestly, I haven't read much here. Early Batman and Superman mostly. Good stuff in a crude sort of way. However, I don't really care all that much for one-shot stories. I generally credit Stan Lee and The Fantastic Four for usering in the Silver Age.

 

Silver Age: Oh, Spider Man, X-Men, Excaliber (not so much the other X-books), Crisis of Infinite Earths, The Secret Wars, Iron Man, etc... I have a big soft spot for Marvel books published during this time... so long as they follow a story arc... and before they spread a story over ALL of their titles.

 

Bronze Age: Hmmm... Tough to say. I think a lot of Dark Horse Comics fall into this slot. I enjoyed the Terminator stories and picked up a lot of the imports. I love manga but more importantly I love manga TRANSLATED.

 

Iron Age: Vertigo comics (DC); all of them. Wonderful stuff. Hellblazer, The Books of Magic, Swamp Thing, Sandman, etc... Also Hell Boy by Dark Horse.

While classification might place him in Bronze or even Silver Age, almost anything Frank Miller touches is gold. I'm also enjoying the Ultimates series. While the Ultimate X-Men does occasionally annoy me with the fact that instead of heroes we get a group of super powered freedom-fighters, it's still good stuff. Now if they'd just take their time with their soap operas... Also, why is it that the story going on in the background is more interesting than what is on screen?..

[Scott Heine]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age: As many folks have mentioned, the Marvel Family books were great. I also get a kick out of some of the early Batman stories.

 

Silver Age: The Green Lantern books were probably my favorites overall, though I really enjoyed the transition from the JSA characters to the JLA versions overall. In fact, I've got a particular affinitity for those old annual JSA/JLA crossover storylines (the ones that ultimately necessitated Crisis on Infinite Earths to clean things up).

 

More Recent: Nothing (and I mean nothing!) beats the run from Steve Engleheart and Marshall Rogers in Detective Comics — the highlight being the retooling of the Joker in the legendary "Joker Fish" two-issue story. Great stuff.

 

I liked The Watchmen tremendously. Loved Giffen's goofy Justice League International stuff. Byrne's retooling of Superman was fun for a while (though I got weary of the artistic approach eventually). The Killing Joke was a great book. I enjoyed Perez' efforts to revamp Wonder Woman, though the cool Greek mythos tie-ins faded far too quickly and I lost interest. I enjoyed the storyline when Captain America became The Nomad for a while.

[TheImperialKhan]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Golden Age - Sorry but I've never really read any, at least not enough to have a favorite one way or the other.

 

Silver Age - Spider-man, particularly from around issue 50 through the Death of Gwen Stacy that ended the Age.

 

Bronze Age - Iron-man, I got back into comics just in time for Tony Stark's first bout with the bottle. It was what got me reading again.

 

Iron Age - The Nick Fury vs SHIELD limited series. Fury has to destroy the agency that he built after it becomes rotten with corruption from within. Great stuff that completely obliterated the old SHIELD and killed several well-liked characters.

[Rene]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

I never read much of the Golden Age comics, and DC's Silver Age, even though I like the crazy ideas, I think the characters are a bit too bland and a bit too interchangeable, and I'm unable to really get involved. I prefer Stan Lee's bombastic melodramatic Marvel comics, but the only one I've read many issues of is "Fantastic Four".

 

I'm really a scion of the Bronze Age, my favorite Marvel series would be:

 

- John Byrne's Fantastic Four (IMO, the definitive Marvel comic book)

- Claremont's X-Men (until they "died" in Dallas, it went kinda downhill after that), New Mutants, and Excalibur

- Walt Simonson's Thor

- Louise Simonson's X-Factor issues

- Miller's Daredevil, Ann Nocenti's run I also liked

- Micheline's Iron Man

- JMdeMatteis's Captain America and the first half of Gruenwald's run (the last half is pretty hideous IMO).

- Stern and deFalco's Spider-Man

- Peter David's Hulk (okay, that is very late Bronze Age)

 

On the DC side, the only series I liked were Wolfman's Teen Titans, Levitz's Legion, and the occasional Batman story I got to read. Most of the other titles seemed like Silver Age-y icons desperately trying to become more modern and failing utterly.

 

It all changed after Crisis (IMO for the better), and I confess I kinda switched to DC for a while, favorites would be:

 

- Byrne's Superman

- Perez's Wonder Woman

- Bill Messner-Loebs's Flash

- Stern's Starman (Will Payton)

- Morrison's Animal Man

- Captain Atom

- Hawk & Dove

- Truman's Hawkworld (probably the utmost test to see whether you valued good stories or continuity. The series pretty much wrecked DC's continuity, but was beautifully written with a rare thing: a introspective, sensitive Iron Age character, IMO)

 

I liked the beginning of Giffen and deMatteis's Justice League, but I got tired of it pretty quickly, and positively started to abhor it when all the "light-hearted" sitcom spin-offs started.

 

By then I had pretty much given up on Marvel, except for Nicieza's New Warriors. That series was the last survivor of the Bronze Age Marvel. Whenever I looked Marvel had became all-flash no-content.

 

Iron Age superhero books from the 80s... let me see... Watchmen I loved, but today I think that perhaps I don't loved it as much as everyone else anymore. If we're talking Alan Moore, I think "Miracleman" has aged better. I was never a fan of Miller's Dark Knight and felt kinda vindicated by the atrocious sequel Miller produced recently. Hm... and the Wild Cards series probably is my favorite superhero work from all time, I've read each book ten times, but that isn't comic books...

 

And so I gave up on comics but got back years later and my favorite modern comics would be a good blend of Retro and Iron:

 

Alan Moore's Tom Strong

Astro City

Powers

JMS's Rising Stars (went a bit downhill after the first trade, but still kinda good IMO)

JMS's Supreme Power

Warren Ellis's Planetary

The Ultimates

James Robinson's Starman (Jack Knight)

 

That pretty much sums up my life as a superhero fan.

 

I occasionaly sampled and liked current "lighter" comics such as Waid's Fantastic Four, New Teen Titans, Outcasts... but I couldn't say I'm really into them. As I got older, it seemed like I started to require a diet of weirder stuff and they seem too straightforward superheroics for me, even though they're damned good straightforward superheroics.

[Metaphysician]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

As an aside, for anybody who likes Alan Moore, I'd recommend V for Vendetta. Arguably his best *story*, as opposed to Watchmen ( essentially an exploratory piece ).

[CantThinkOfName]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Haven't read many Golden Age or Silver Age comics so I can't say what my faves are.

 

Bronze- Spider-Man (actually, this is the only comic that I've read a lot of issues of, my brother had a lot from the '70s)

 

Iron- Powers, Preacher, Spider-Man(Maximum Carnage storyline), the Valient comics (Turok, X-O, and Magnus)

[st barbara]

Re: What Gold/Silver/Iron Age story or series do you love?

 

Like Scott Heine I have a soft spot for those old JLA/JSA crossovers of yore ! "Crisis On Earth One/Crisis On Earth 2"was one of the first Superhero comics that I read and I have enjoyed just about every one since. I guess i'm just a sucker for the "menace so big that EVERYONE has to get together to face it"type of story.