What do you think?
Rate this book
Marvel Comics In The 1980s: An Issue-by-Issue Field Guide to the Pop Culture Phenomenon
TwoMorrows Publishing presents Marvel Comics in the 1980s, the third volume in Pierre Comtois' heralded series covering the pop culture phenomenon on an issue-by-issue basis! This new book covers Marvel's final historical phase
- GenresComics
224 pages, Paperback
First published December 2, 2014
3 people are currently reading
11 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 4, 2022
I've previously purchased several books from TwoMorrows. I know what to expect from this publisher and I personally value the work they put in their books and the picture archive and information they gather in each publication. That being said, I was pretty disappointed with the content of this book. The author has no qualms in expressing his conservative political views, misogyny and homophobia. And even If I can't deal with the content of the book, I was hoping for some quality in form and even that "true believers" was a total miss, with over exaggerated colloquial expressions and misplaced puns. As for being an issue by issue guide to Marvel 80s, that's pretty far from the truth. This person has a personal problem with Chris Claremont, and would use every single moment to say the worst things about his work and the x-men. The same goes for Walter Simonson, Arthur Adams, George Perez, Mike Zeck and many other creative powerhouses that make marvel such a classic cultural phenomenon in the 80s. He is utterly obsessed with John Byrne, to a point where it's almost embarrassing how he would uplift some not too bright moments of the author. And don't get me wrong, I do value how important Byrne was back then and how significant was his work in books like Fantastic Four and Alpha Flight but to mention and praise X-men the hidden years at least three times (a book that wasn't even published in the 80s) is a bit too much for my "progressive" eyes. This book, which should have been a bitter post in some blog, and not a 217 pages long series of personal biased opinions, has no narrative structure to a point where it feels that they run out of pages to give it a proper ending ( Not all entries include the year and month of each issue). It seems that every single female character is “feminist propaganda” in his eyes, that the comic code was a blessing that protected young children from degeneration and that Rom and Starbrand were the ultimate hidden jewels on the decade. It's not that I don't agree with some opinions that he clumsily expresses in his book, but those moments of sparse clarity are immediately overshadowed by a never ending fest of poor judgments and subjectivities.
December 3, 2025
Pierre Comtois’ Marvel Comics in the 1980s promises a “pop culture field guide” and instead delivers the literary equivalent of an aggrieved uncle shaking his fist at a decade he barely tolerates. The man adores Marvel’s Silver/Bronze Age so much he treats the ’80s like a personal betrayal, muttering “RIP Marvel” while flipping through issues that shaped an entire generation. This is less a field guide and more a guided tour through one man’s selective outrage.
His taste is so aggressively narrow it squeaks. If the name isn’t Frank Miller, John Byrne, or Stern/Buscema/Palmer, the man barely conceals his contempt. Walt Simonson’s Thor? Blasphemy. Strong women? Offense taken. Todd McFarlane's art on Incredible Hulk and *gasp* Amazing Spider-Man? Civilization-ending. And then there's his fetish with the Comics Code Authority. Every time an issue dares to be violent or sensual, Comtois clutches the pearls. He cites non-CCA-approved comics like they’re procedural violations at a tribunal.
But the real issue is what he ignores. Entire pillars of the decade—X-Men (non-Byrne), O'Neil/McDonnell's tenure on Iron Man, Power Man and Iron Fist, Star Wars, GI Joe, Transformers, Captain America, Excalibur—vanish into the void. The decade that reinvented story structure, character psychology, art experimentation, direct-market distribution, and cross-media synergy gets reduced to a scattershot diary, none of it with real historical depth, only super-slanted bias.
Clearly, Comtois prefers the heroes and stories of yesteryear. When good guys always won and evil wore ridiculous analogous colors. And good on him. Really. Nostalgia is a good thing and those POW-WHAM tales are fun to read. The real issue here is that Comtois is not Gen X. He did not come to age in a period where nuclear annihilation felt like it was the press of a button away. Dismissing an entire generation’s cultural climate—the Cold War, MTV, violent action cinema, the rapid evolution of art and storytelling—as inconsequential? That’s not critique. That’s avoidance.
By the time the book limps to its non-ending—Avengers Spotlight #22, a footnote of an issue—you realize the whole thing is a rant masquerading as reportage. The ’80s reshaped comics; Comtois simply resents that reshaping. Fine for a forum post, less great for a book. The result lands with a thud where a climax should be. Truly this was a huge lapse of editorial judgement from the otherwise stellar TwoMorrows.
Go on and read more of what I felt about Pierre Comtois’ Marvel Comics in the 1980s over on Read @ Joe's, True Believer. Tell 'em Forbush Man sent ya!
His taste is so aggressively narrow it squeaks. If the name isn’t Frank Miller, John Byrne, or Stern/Buscema/Palmer, the man barely conceals his contempt. Walt Simonson’s Thor? Blasphemy. Strong women? Offense taken. Todd McFarlane's art on Incredible Hulk and *gasp* Amazing Spider-Man? Civilization-ending. And then there's his fetish with the Comics Code Authority. Every time an issue dares to be violent or sensual, Comtois clutches the pearls. He cites non-CCA-approved comics like they’re procedural violations at a tribunal.
But the real issue is what he ignores. Entire pillars of the decade—X-Men (non-Byrne), O'Neil/McDonnell's tenure on Iron Man, Power Man and Iron Fist, Star Wars, GI Joe, Transformers, Captain America, Excalibur—vanish into the void. The decade that reinvented story structure, character psychology, art experimentation, direct-market distribution, and cross-media synergy gets reduced to a scattershot diary, none of it with real historical depth, only super-slanted bias.
Clearly, Comtois prefers the heroes and stories of yesteryear. When good guys always won and evil wore ridiculous analogous colors. And good on him. Really. Nostalgia is a good thing and those POW-WHAM tales are fun to read. The real issue here is that Comtois is not Gen X. He did not come to age in a period where nuclear annihilation felt like it was the press of a button away. Dismissing an entire generation’s cultural climate—the Cold War, MTV, violent action cinema, the rapid evolution of art and storytelling—as inconsequential? That’s not critique. That’s avoidance.
By the time the book limps to its non-ending—Avengers Spotlight #22, a footnote of an issue—you realize the whole thing is a rant masquerading as reportage. The ’80s reshaped comics; Comtois simply resents that reshaping. Fine for a forum post, less great for a book. The result lands with a thud where a climax should be. Truly this was a huge lapse of editorial judgement from the otherwise stellar TwoMorrows.
Go on and read more of what I felt about Pierre Comtois’ Marvel Comics in the 1980s over on Read @ Joe's, True Believer. Tell 'em Forbush Man sent ya!
March 28, 2021
I had hoped this would be a nice nostalgic trip through 80s Marvel history. The author clearly has a taste and so there's a lot of gushing about ROM and dismissing of most other stuff. Art maybe subjective but calling Brian Bolland lacking in talent is certainly a bold point of view. Most irritatingly the author is scared of women and is obviously very distrustful of women in comics - of 'feminist nightmares' as he refers to often. There is much in the world to be angry at. Renaming someone who is at an age where she has two children from Invisible Girl to Invisible Woman is not one of them.
September 21, 2015
Nostalgic trip back to the Jim Shooter era of comics, though the book is weakened by somewhat idiosyncratic choices (there's more emphasis on ROM: SPACEKNIGHT than there is on X-MEN, for instance, and there are spotlights on Don Heck and Roy Thomas who, regardless of other work they may have done, are not strongly associated with Marvel in the 1980s).
The author's periodic complaints about feminism and homosexuals are also distracting and unfortunate.
The author's periodic complaints about feminism and homosexuals are also distracting and unfortunate.
June 22, 2020
Pierre Comtois is a big fan of Marvel Comics in the 1960s when they changed the way comics were done. In the first flush of the revolution, they were led by the Big Three: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.
He’s not such a big fan of Marvel comics in the 1970s where, as far as I can tell, he thinks they entered a period of stagnation, maintaining the Marvel Universe and doing okay but not really adding anything new.
On the other hand, when some new things were added in the 1980s, he didn’t like them much. The additions were violence and a generally darker atmosphere in which the seamy side of big-city American life was shown: drug-taking, prostitution and nasty criminal violence. Comtois calls this period the Dark Age and it’s not a compliment. This book, like its predecessors, has an overall commentary in the introduction followed by reviews of individual issues interspersed with caption boxes about the various creators. It’s a good format and works fine and his reviews of the individual issues are perceptive.
He states that because there were so many Marvel comics in this period of expansion he has opted to review some minor titles of interest. These include ‘Rom: Space Knight’, which was based on a toy but qualifies for entry because the scripts and art, some by Steve Ditko, were better than you might expect. Obviously, Marvel’s big hits like ‘Amazing Spider-Man’, ‘Fantastic Four’, ‘Avengers’, ‘X-Men’ and so forth get plenty of space. The best Marvel comics of the 1980s were, in no particular order: Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s ‘X-Men’, Frank Miller’s ‘Daredevil’, John Byrne’s ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘The Avengers’ run that featured the art of John Buscema, inked by Tom Palmer. Many of us like Walt Simonson’s classic run on ‘Mighty Thor’ but Comtois does not think much of it or Elektra, for that matter. He certainly doesn’t like ‘The Punisher’, who became an example of all the bad, dark stuff, the anti-hero who’s just as dirty as the bad guys.
There is some background information on editorial changes under Jim Shooter and reviews of the ‘New Universe’ which that worthy launched later in the decade, as well as the ‘Secret Wars’ thing. Shooter made the company money and also got better deals for writers and artists while being attacked from management on high and the creative staff below him. His reign benefited everyone and they all hated him. A neat trick. In the 70s, the writers decided they didn’t need editors and took on the role themselves, which led to lots of missed deadlines. I don’t think there was ever a missed deadline and reprint fill in under Stan Lee. Shooter bought discipline and restored editors but lost some writers.
Then the editor/writers gave way to writer/artists like John Byrne and Frank Miller. Writers had decided they didn’t need editors and artists decided they didn’t need writers. This led to fewer words per issue and eventually to seventeen-page comics you could read in a minute with lots of poster style splash pages as artists indulged themselves. I agree with Comtois that this was a bad thing. The cover prices rose and the distribution became more and more specialised. Children were left behind by the prices and the adult content. It’s worth mentioning that this was happening by the end of the 1980s but things were not so for the whole decade.
All life is change, as the Buddha said. Like Comtois, I don’t like all the changes. The odd thing about this book is that while his overview is gloomy, the reviews of several titles make you want to read them. Having deserted comics in the 1980s for more adult fun, even as they went ‘adult’, I am catching up with the Marvel ‘Essential’ and DC ‘Showcase’ editions, especially the former. Apart from ‘X-Men’, most of these have not yet reached the decade reviewed here and I’m looking forward to seeing them. For those in a similar position, this is an interesting book but there are lots of spoilers.
It struck me that while the comics have deserted the kiddies, the films have captured them. The economics of $200,000,000 blockbusters means that you want to maximise your audience, so most of the Marvel super-hero movies are suitable for older children. It would be great if this led them to read the classic, equally suitable comics but I guess that’s not going to happen much. In any case, Pierre Comtois has written an interesting guide to Marvel Comics in the 1980s and although you may disagree with some of the views expressed, it’s certainly food for thought and I recommend it. Thought, I mean, and food. Especially pizza.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
He’s not such a big fan of Marvel comics in the 1970s where, as far as I can tell, he thinks they entered a period of stagnation, maintaining the Marvel Universe and doing okay but not really adding anything new.
On the other hand, when some new things were added in the 1980s, he didn’t like them much. The additions were violence and a generally darker atmosphere in which the seamy side of big-city American life was shown: drug-taking, prostitution and nasty criminal violence. Comtois calls this period the Dark Age and it’s not a compliment. This book, like its predecessors, has an overall commentary in the introduction followed by reviews of individual issues interspersed with caption boxes about the various creators. It’s a good format and works fine and his reviews of the individual issues are perceptive.
He states that because there were so many Marvel comics in this period of expansion he has opted to review some minor titles of interest. These include ‘Rom: Space Knight’, which was based on a toy but qualifies for entry because the scripts and art, some by Steve Ditko, were better than you might expect. Obviously, Marvel’s big hits like ‘Amazing Spider-Man’, ‘Fantastic Four’, ‘Avengers’, ‘X-Men’ and so forth get plenty of space. The best Marvel comics of the 1980s were, in no particular order: Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s ‘X-Men’, Frank Miller’s ‘Daredevil’, John Byrne’s ‘Fantastic Four’ and ‘The Avengers’ run that featured the art of John Buscema, inked by Tom Palmer. Many of us like Walt Simonson’s classic run on ‘Mighty Thor’ but Comtois does not think much of it or Elektra, for that matter. He certainly doesn’t like ‘The Punisher’, who became an example of all the bad, dark stuff, the anti-hero who’s just as dirty as the bad guys.
There is some background information on editorial changes under Jim Shooter and reviews of the ‘New Universe’ which that worthy launched later in the decade, as well as the ‘Secret Wars’ thing. Shooter made the company money and also got better deals for writers and artists while being attacked from management on high and the creative staff below him. His reign benefited everyone and they all hated him. A neat trick. In the 70s, the writers decided they didn’t need editors and took on the role themselves, which led to lots of missed deadlines. I don’t think there was ever a missed deadline and reprint fill in under Stan Lee. Shooter bought discipline and restored editors but lost some writers.
Then the editor/writers gave way to writer/artists like John Byrne and Frank Miller. Writers had decided they didn’t need editors and artists decided they didn’t need writers. This led to fewer words per issue and eventually to seventeen-page comics you could read in a minute with lots of poster style splash pages as artists indulged themselves. I agree with Comtois that this was a bad thing. The cover prices rose and the distribution became more and more specialised. Children were left behind by the prices and the adult content. It’s worth mentioning that this was happening by the end of the 1980s but things were not so for the whole decade.
All life is change, as the Buddha said. Like Comtois, I don’t like all the changes. The odd thing about this book is that while his overview is gloomy, the reviews of several titles make you want to read them. Having deserted comics in the 1980s for more adult fun, even as they went ‘adult’, I am catching up with the Marvel ‘Essential’ and DC ‘Showcase’ editions, especially the former. Apart from ‘X-Men’, most of these have not yet reached the decade reviewed here and I’m looking forward to seeing them. For those in a similar position, this is an interesting book but there are lots of spoilers.
It struck me that while the comics have deserted the kiddies, the films have captured them. The economics of $200,000,000 blockbusters means that you want to maximise your audience, so most of the Marvel super-hero movies are suitable for older children. It would be great if this led them to read the classic, equally suitable comics but I guess that’s not going to happen much. In any case, Pierre Comtois has written an interesting guide to Marvel Comics in the 1980s and although you may disagree with some of the views expressed, it’s certainly food for thought and I recommend it. Thought, I mean, and food. Especially pizza.
Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews