That 70's Book

This is sort of spurred by Mike's question below about my favorite issue of the Avengers.

Though I am a huge fan of older comics, devouring as much Lee/Kirby as I can get my hands on, when I talk about comics, in general, you can probably count on the fact that what I'm thinking of in my head and my heart are the years 1979-1981.

These are the years when comics really exploded on my life and twisted me forever in some really great ways.

For those not in the know, this period featured:

The Hellfire Club/Dark Phoenix saga in the X-men.

The debut of Kitty Pryde, maybe the single best comic character introduced in all of the 1980's.

David Micheline's run on Iron Man, featuring "Demon in a Bottle". But this whole run is the best Iron Man era BY FAR, where Iron Man had a real James Bond feel and James Rhodes, along with a ton of alternate armors were introduced.

David Micheline's run on the Avengers, especially the #181 issue drawn by John Byrne in which Henry Gyrich turns into the best grade-A asshole in comics since J Jonah Jameson, limiting their membership and even FORCING them to include Falcon as a "token".

The debut of the New Mutants pretty much ends this "golden time" for me, around 1983.

Maybe comics really changed, maybe I was getting a little too old (15 in 1983) to really be wowed by comics.