I began reading comics in the 1980s, and not unexpectedly find a lot of my favorite stories come from that decade: The Judas Contract, The Great Darkness Saga, that weird bit where The Defenders ended up fighting in a Doctor Seuss world. Still, I don’t know if I could call it my FAVORITE period for comics, what with the madness of the early Silver Age sixties, the relevant years of the 70s, even the comics renaissance circa the year 2000. There are a great many wonderful periods of comics to be had, likewise with television and movies. I can’t imagine giving up the sixties and losing most of the Twilight Zone, all of The Monkees and Get Smart, but it would also suck to have to give up WKRP, Twin Peaks or Saved By The Bell. (Actually, I’m kidding. I didn’t watch all of Twin Peaks.) Since the MS-QOTD often has weird rules and regulations, I figured it might be worth forcing us all to play Hobson’s Choice with time and space, leading to today’s utterly arbitrary query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) defines decade as “the period between January 1st of the year ending in one and ending December 31st of the year ending in nine”, asking: If you could ONLY read/watch/experience pop culture made during a specific decade, which decade would you choose and why?
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I guess I’d choose the 80s, chiefly for the plethora of action cartoons (even though they were really kind of bad. lol)
Personally, I love watching the bad ones and giggling like a lunatic.
My friends and I used to play a drinking game with some and we had to take a shot every time a background was reused, which for many 80’s series meant we were wasted by the end of a single episode (and yes, we were of legal drinking age in case anyone wonders).
The 80’s. Between the Star Wars sequels (and most of the original Marvel comics run), Transformers G1, Ghostbusters (movie, cartoon series, comics, etc), TMNT, Thundercats, He-Man, G.I.Joe and so on, there is plenty of pop culture goodness to keep me occupied for the rest of my days.
80’s is MY decade. Movies like Star Wars, except first one, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Batman. Same goes with TV shows, Miami Vice, Knight Rider, MacGyver were the coolest and I also like 80’s iteration of Marvels and DC’s characters the best. Its not even a contest to me.
Almost forgot, Nintendo in video games.
I figured that was implied. It isn’t an 80’s pop culture experience without an NES.
The 1960s. I’m a hippie at heart. Most of my favorite music is from that time period (or heavily influenced by it) and being restricted would force me to improve my knowledge of the stuff I don’t know as well, like film, literature, and television.
The 80’s for sure. Not only because of what the fellow commenters have said, but for everything else uniquely 80’s. Plus i’ll cheat a little and say a good portion of what I also liked about the 90’s were at least in part sprung from the 80’s.
80s totally. I like a lot of TV shows from then, movies are fantastic, comics are really good.
The 90’s for the TV animation (Batman, Superman and X-men animated series).
The 80’s for all those great movies mentioned above.
Comics – That’s a hard call. I’d go for the Silver? The era of Curt Swan, Neal Adams and Carmine Infantino?
I’m cheating, I was born in ’72 and can’t really remember much and by late 1986 I was starting to dislike everything, so I am saying around 1976/77 through 1985/86 and I’m not letting you take that away from me. Those were my formative geek years. Bronze age Marvel, Star Wars, Transformers, D & D and so much more.
That would be the decade from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. During this era, we saw the revitalization of DC and Marvel at its peak, as well as the Golden Age of Indy comics – Comico, Eclipse, Pacific, etc. We had American Flagg, I am Coyote, Captain Kwik and a Foozle, Starstruck (the list is almost endless). It was also the dawn of the Manga age, with Studio Proteus bringing us Appleseed, Ghost in the Shell, Eat Man and just about any other manga they could get the license for. By the mid-80s, it all collapsed, with most of the Indys vanishing, the majority of manga series vanishing and Marvel in bankruptcy, but what a glorious run it was – I was buying dozens of comics a week at the time and enjoying every minute of it.