Article:
Looking at the one of the biggest decades in comics

Hello again one and all! Firstly, apologies for my brief absence. I had every intent of putting something up last week but I was hospitalized with surgery due to an ongoing medical problem. Surgery was successful, I’m feeling much better now, and I’m ready to talk about comics once again!

Last time I said I’d be taking a speculative look past the “Siege” event into Marvel’s so called “Heroic Age” but that was with the assumption that I would have something out the week of Christmas. Since that didn’t happen, I decided to table that for next time because with the year and the decade ending I felt I’d be remiss if I didn’t do a bit of a retrospective here about the last 10 years in comics. Because to me, I think when people go over the most important decades in comics they’re going to talk about the 40’s (biggest boom period), the 60’s (Marvel breaks out and redefines super hero comics, underground, alt comics start), and this decade right here.  Easily to me the biggest since the super hero renaissance. So hop into the way back machine as I take a look at some of the landmark events, and personal favorites over the last decade in comics.

Marvel comes out of bankruptcy, Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada gain power: “NuMarvel” was a pretty controversial time in the history of the world’s biggest comics publisher without question. But it lead to a heck of a lot of success too. Jemas and Quesada’s abrasive attitude towards the internet, aggressive pursuit of change, and hiring of new talents revitalized Marvel and turned them from a once proud titan of their industry, recovering from a horribly wounding, and near company closing bankruptcy (I strongly recommend Dan Raviv’s excellent book on the subject to see just how close Marvel came to shutting it’s doors forever) back into the leading force in comics, and the thriving entertainment concern it is today. Sure Jemas was gone after 4 years or so of service, but the trail he and Quesada blazed early on with things like “New X-Men” Dan Jorgen’s “Thor”, Bendis and Maleev’s “Daredevil” led to classic runs not seen since the editorship of Jim Shooter. Yes, there were the bad spots (U-Decide, The Sentry Hoax, et. al), but you have to consider this era a tremendous success as Marvel once again became healthy, and laid the groundwork for the juggernaut it’s become in entertainment today.