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Jason Shayer
Jason Shayer is an expert in the field of Marvel and DC Comics. He has half a dozen short story credits and is a regular contributor to Back Issue! magazine. You an find him nostalgically revisiting the 1980s in his Blogs -
Marvel 1980s and
DC 1980s
Over the last 75 years, numerous surges and retreats have affected the comic book industry, both creatively and financially. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Silver Age of comic books heralded a successful surge as DC Comics rebooted several of their Golden Age characters and Marvel Comics adopted a fresh, new character-driven approach.
Marvel Comics experimented outside the super-hero genre in the 1970s, successfully tapping into the fantasy genre with Conan the Barbarian and the horror genre with Tomb of Dracula. In the early 1970s, Marvel Comics legendary artist Jack Kirby defected to the competition, DC Comics and created the Fourth World line of books, featuring the Forever People, Mister Miracle and the New Gods.
In the late 1970s, Jim Shooter became the editor-in-chief for Marvel Comics and ushered in what I would argue was the most significant surge of creativity since the Silver Age explosion. We had Frank Miller on Daredevil, Walt Simonson on The Mighty Thor, Chris Claremont and John Byrne on the Uncanny X-Men, John Byrne on the Fantastic Four, Roger Stern and John Buscema on the Mighty Avengers, Roger Stern and John Romita Jr. on Amazing Spider-Man, and Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz on Moon Knight just to name a handful. My personal bias is showing through here, but that sheer creative energy is difficult to match.
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