Those early years I spent reading, and buying books (but before I really started collecting), there were major comic book events that I was completely unaware of. The 3 biggest being Marvel's Secret Wars (the original published between 1984 & 85), DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986) and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (1986).
I'm making myself feel old, because that all happened 30 years ago. Today, comic books are everywhere. The 90's saw a rise in their popularity, but also revealed what happens when a title is too popular. (I'm talking about the Death of Superman fiasco, where everyone and their mother went out and bought an issue or the entire series thinking that in 50 years, it would make them rich. Little did they know, that by purchasing an issue that they were causing the comic book bubble to grow. When it finally popped, DC has printed millions of the same issue and was king, but Marvel had declared bankruptcy and that's why the movie rights to X-Men and Fantastic Four are currently owned by Fox Studios and the rights to Spider-Man are owned by Sony).
In the early 00's, comics were no longer as popular as they were in the 90's. But there was a new exciting media that was beginning to grow. The most popular comics of the 90's, the X-Men, hit the silver screen in 2000, followed by Spider-Man in 2002. These movies would help to revitalize comic book popularity.
Crossover events became more common. A crossover event is something in comic books that involves heroes from all over the universe. In Marvel, crossover events are usually centered around The Avengers, while DC the stories are centered around the Justice League. Both teams are composed of most of the companies' major characters. I alone have collected (almost) all major Marvel and DC crossover events since the 80's. In the last 10 years, Marvel has published a crossover event almost every year! Sometimes multiple in 1 year!
A couple of years back, both Marvel and DC announced plans to "reboot" their comic book universes. Because of the success of movies like The Avengers and Iron Man, both companies went after all of the potential new readers that these movies created. Now, many long time readers believe that comics are too reflective of the movies. I, personally, understand why these companies would choose to do this, but a lot of people are not happy with this path.
DC comics has rebooted twice in 2 years, because their first attempt (the New 52) didn't go as well as they liked, and book sales fell. Marvel has been leading sales since at least 2007 when they released Civil War. After Civil War came World War Hulk (one of my personal favorites), then Secret Invasion (great story and concept, another favorite), which led to Utopia (where the Dark X-Men were created), which then led to Dark Reign, which led directly to Siege. A little after that came Chaos War, Fear Itself, Schism (the only X-Men centric story I'm listing here, AWESOME read), Avengers vs. X-Men (so much fun), the poorly recieved Age of Ultron (not the movie, the comic that movie took the title and some story elements from), Infinity (Inhumans centric, not the first Inhumans crossover story, but one worth listing); Original Sin in 2014 revealed the darkest secrets of the Marvel Heroes (very fun, whodunnit story, with some great team-ups that you wouldn't think of before it happened ie Doctor Strange and the Punisher), Death of Wolverine (character centric, but Wolverine was such a presence in the Marvel Comics Universe, so his death was very significant, especially now), AXIS (have yet to read it, not at the top of my list), then Spider-Verse (again Spider-Man character specific, but from what I'm told, it's a FANTASTIC read. I'm looking forward to it). All of these events were mostly successful, and I purposefully left out a lot of smaller events that were specific to the X-Men or other characters. Point being, there has been a shit ton of crossover events.
2014 brought us Marvel's Time Runs Out event. This was the beginning of the end of the Marvel Comics Universe(s) I had grown up with. ***Sidenote, Marvel had created an alternate universe called the Ultimate Universe. It first debuted in 2000 with Ultimate Spider-Man, The Ultimates (the Ultimate Universe's version of The Avengers), Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four. This universe, also called Earth 1610, introduced fans to Miles Morales who would become Ultimate Spider-Man after that universe's Peter Parker died.**** Time Runs Out is on my "To Read" list, and it only covers 2 titles, but it tells the story that leads to the demise of the original Marvel Universe (Earth 616) and the Ultimate Universe (Earth 1610). This leads to the 2015 Marvel crossover event, SECRET WARS.
Secret Wars was awesome! I don't want to go too into detail, but it featured heroes and villains like we've never seen them before. Doctor Doom is God and controls the universe, but there are remnants (heroes, original Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, original Reed Richards, Ultimate Reed Richards, Black Panther, and a handful of others) from the original 616 and 1610 Ultimate universes. They develop a plan to overthrow Doom and bring back the world they know. This all takes place on a new planet that Doom created called BattleWorld. Marvel literally blew up their universe and started from scratch. Definitely give this a read.
So, Marvel was really busy right? Well, DC was too, but just not nearly as successful. DC was having a tough time keeping up. Their comic sales were down, and their Universe reboot plan was not going well. Fans were just not enjoying the New 52. One event that I really enjoyed was called Forever Evil. Basically all the villains took over their rivals monthly titles for a month, for example, instead of an issue of Batman it was Joker #1. Instead of Superman it was Lex Luthor #1, or instead of the Man of Steel it was Doomsday #1, etc etc...
Forever Evil did not sell the way DC hoped, and overall reviews were mixed. On top of this, DC released their first attempt at rivaling Marvel at the movies. In 2013 (1 year after The Avengers came out), Man of Steel was released. It performed well, made enough money for DC and Warner Bros. studio to move forward with their own shared cinematic universe just like Marvel was doing. Except, Man of Steel was no where near as good as The Avengers. DC was on purpose doing something different than Marvel. Where Marvel released several solo hero movies that led to The Avengers, DC went with introducing Superman and then moving directly into a movie introducing the begining of the Justice League in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Without giving the rest of the heroes (The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg) an introductory solo movie. They will come out after the first Justice League movie.
After the failure of the New 52, DC decided to reboot their universe once again. That's 2 reboots within 2 years! Fans were already aggravated with all of the changes to their favorite characters, and the story they went with was a bit confusing and sales remained low. The storyline that connected the New 52 to the new universe was GREAT though. Actually, I think the books were some of the best comics I have read in years. The details are a bit confusing, but totally worth the read. It's called The Darkseid War and is told over 10 issues in Justice League. From the ashes of the Darkseid War rose Rebirth, DC comics' new universe. So far, I have been really enjoying this new direction. Check it out.
Marvel's crossover events did not take a break at all. After last year's reboot, they jumped right in to keep up with the movies. Marvel's Civil War II was released in April just in time to coinicide with the release of Captain America: Civil War in theaters. Neither story has anything to do with the other, but new readers and young fans don't know that and so once again Marvel dominated monthly comic sales.
Reading comics and collecting comics are very different things. As a reader, I like to keep up with current story lines of my favorite heroes. For example, Wolverine is one of my absolute favorite characters. His death was a major moment for me. Once that story was told, I figured he would be brought back to life by now. He's not. Instead, Marvel went with a character introduced in an alternate universe called Old Man Logan (my absolute FAVORITE Wolverine graphic novel, it's SO FRIGGIN GOOD!). This Wolverine was an old man, who was taken from his world during Secret Wars, and brought back into present day New York City. In his lifetime he saw the bad guys take over the world, and watched all of this friends die, so in his world he had no one but his wife & kids. Until they were taken from him too. When this Wolverine is brought back to New York, he's not only a man out of time, but he's an old man thrust back into a world he thought was long gone. It's been very interesting with how they're writing him now. I recommend Old Man Logan, the graphic novel, the Brian Michael Bendis Secret Wars issues, and the current run very highly.
As I said before, reading comics and collecting comics are very different. As a collector, there are specific issues I want. For example, I am collecting Wolverine's career from the 80's to his death and beyond, the major moments of Batman's career (Year One, Long Halloween, Dark Victory, Death in the Family, Knightfall, Hush, Dark Knight Returns, the Killing Joke, etc...) and all major Marvel and DC crossover events. Collecting is more about obsession than it is about enjoyment. Although I enjoy my collection more than I do my new monthly readings. There's something extremely satisfying about looking over at my bookshelf and seeing my comic book library.
So what's the actual state of comics today? They are more popular than ever, more titles are being published more than ever before and there is no sign in slowing down. There is a lot of great stuff to read out there, and it is much more acceptable to be reading a comic book or graphic novel now than it was in the 80's or even the 90's. I read my books openly and often in public. Adults and kids ask me about what I'm reading.
Today is truly a great time to be a comic book fan.
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