13 HIGHLIGHTS: An ANNIVERSARY SPOTLIGHT as the calendar turns to 2026…
By JASON CZERNICH
1986 was probably the most important year in comics for any fan who was alive and actively reading comics at the time.
For me, it was the year I walked into my first actual comic shop—Moondance Comics at the Hampshire Mall in Hadley, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1986. Before that, I had been collecting Batman and Detective Comics for well over a year through my local corner store.
The moment I first set eyes on rows and rows of wooden shelves filled with comics, I realized I had found my new candy store. Even at that young age, I knew there was an electricity in the air shared between the creators, publishers, and the fans. It was an exciting time when comics grew, creatively speaking, substantially almost overnight.
Or, really, across a year. Here are 13 HIGHLIGHTS from the one that changed everything:
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Crisis on Infinite Earths Had Ended… and So Had the Bronze Age of Comics. In late 1985, DC’s continuity-altering Crisis on Infinite Earths had wrapped. With the sweeping changes and high-profile deaths this pivotal maxi-series by Marv Wolfman, George Perez and co. brought about, nobody was quite sure what further changes lay ahead.
Adding to the uncertainty was the fact that DC Comics titles existed in a pre-Crisis/post-Crisis limbo during the first half of 1986. How were the cosmic effects of Crisis going to reshape the DC Universe? More importantly, many consider Crisis on Infinite Earths #12 to mark the end of the Bronze Age of comics. So how did the next age begin?
Some say it began with the release of The Dark Knight Returns. Fans refer to the next era as the Dark Age or the Copper Age. The Iron Age is also a name for the period of comics from 1985 (or 1986) to 2000, a designation that has been growing in popularity in recent years. For more information on the start of the Iron Age, I recommend The Iron Age of Comics podcast, which focuses specifically on that era. (NOTE From Dan: At 13th Dimension we typically use the catch-all Modern Age, since no term has been universally adopted.)
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Mutant Massacre. Crisis and Secret Wars showed that linewide crossovers were possible. But what about crossovers that encompassed just a single franchise within a company? The X-Men’s Mutant Massacre showed it was possible—and that such stories could, much like Crisis and Secret Wars, lead to big changes on a smaller scale. The Death of Superman, Batman: Knightfall, Maximum Carnage—all stemmed from this early model.
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Maus. Not all big developments in the sequential art world spun out of its mainstream publishers. The first collected volume of Art Spiegelman’s masterpiece was not initially released to comic shops, but to mainstream bookstores instead. Over the years, I have seen this Pulitzer Prize-winning work shelved in Holocaust, Sociology, Biography, and, of course, Graphic Novel sections of bookshops. It is a high-water mark of the comic book medium — and one of its most human stories.
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Dark Horse Comics. The ’80s had no shortage of new comic-book publishing houses, but how many can you name that are still around today? Dark Horse Comics has not only survived since 1986—it has thrived. It has served as a home for acclaimed works such as Sin City, Concrete, and Hellboy, while also acting as a custodian of movie property licenses like Star Wars, Aliens, and Predator. By the early 1990s, the company was held in such high regard that DC Comics would often collaborate with them to publish numerous crossover stories.
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Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? The effects of Crisis would finally catch up with Superman mid-year. To make way for the post-Crisis version of the character, Alan Moore, Curt Swan, George Pérez, and Kurt Schaffenberger teamed up for a two-part tale that brought the Earth-One Superman’s adventures to a satisfying conclusion in the pages of Superman #423 and Action Comics #583.
Many people, myself included, consider this the greatest Superman story ever told. I often tell others that it is the last Superman story you will ever have to read.
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The Man of Steel. After Moore and company closed out Superman’s pre-Crisis history, John Byrne delivered this six-issue miniseries that rebooted the character for a new generation. It was so influential that elements of the revamp — such as Lex Luthor being the head of a multibillion-dollar corporation and Superman’s adoptive parents being alive for his superhero debut — have survived to the present day.
This miniseries, along with Byrne’s ensuing run on the Superman titles, became the yardstick against which all superhero reboots have been measured.
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George Pérez’s Wonder Woman. If Byrne’s Superman was a master class in reintroducing a popular character, element by element, then George Pérez’s late-1986 reboot of the Amazon Princess took things even further, radically changing elements such as setting, and introducing entirely new supporting characters.
To many readers, Wonder Woman’s post-Crisis debut was an even riskier experiment than Superman’s — and like that one, it paid off.
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Batman: Year One. Batman’s post-Crisis version was not a full reboot, but rather a retelling with added detail. The writing, art, and coloring were radically different from the previous two entries on this list and earned even greater critical acclaim. Frank Miller, David Mazzucchelli, Richmond Lewis, and Todd Klein didn’t just deliver one of the most lauded Batman stories of all time, they created a tale that no other Batman story has quite felt like since… much like the next entry on this list.
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The Dark Knight Returns. This was one of the two shots heard around the comic book world in 1986. Frank Miller’s deconstruction of Batman and his environs shocked and delighted readers when it launched. Its influence on mainstream comics — and Batman in particular — cannot be overstated.
My first exposure to the series came when I picked up the third chapter, Hunt the Dark Knight, at the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, Massachusetts. I had never seen a comic book where characters actually swore! I was afraid to show it to my parents then, but am proud to have discovered it the year it came out!
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Frank Miller Returned to Daredevil… and in a Big Way! Miller’s return to the character that gave him his big break produced what most consider the greatest Man Without Fear story of all time: Daredevil: Born Again, created with his eventual Batman: Year One collaborator David Mazzucchelli.
Elektra: Assassin and Daredevil: Love and War, both with Bill Sienkiewicz — an artist who brought a more expressive style to mainstream comics — were also well received and expanded upon what was possible on the comics page.
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A New Format Was Introduced. Speaking of the comics page itself, The Dark Knight Returns introduced the prestige format to comics. With its square-bound, cardboard cover, lack of ads, better paper stock, and richer coloring, my copy of Hunt the Dark Knight simply felt better to hold and look at than all other comics I had encountered up until that point.
According to then-DC Comics Production Manager Bob Rozakis, I wasn’t the only fan who noticed the improvements: “When they looked at things like Ronin and Dark Knight, I’m sure they could see there were substantial differences in how the art was done and the books were printed,” he told me in a text exchange.
Rozakis and others at DC were making conscious efforts to provide more sophisticated production values. “We were pushing the boundaries of production and printing. Computer coloring, which I was the biggest proponent of, was just around the corner.”
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Watchmen. The other shot heard around the comics world in 1986. While The Dark Knight Returns deconstructed an icon and his supporting cast, Watchmen deconstructed the superhero genre itself. What more can be said about this Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons collaboration that hasn’t already been said — more eloquently and at greater length?
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Comic Shops Were at the Height of Their Power. “The number of comic shops was growing substantially, giving us wider access to new readers.” —Bob Rozakis
1986 was a time when comics shops were still on the rise and newsstand distribution continued to shrink. Best-selling projects in new formats, such as The Dark Knight Returns, were aimed squarely at direct-market consumers. Titles were even shipped to comics shops earlier than they were to newsstands or corner stores.
Fan culture also began to recognize comics shops as gathering places, such as the Halloween party pictured above at Moondance Comics in 1986. (If you want to see more of this beloved store, you can check out a Facebook page dedicated to it.)
1986 changed the way comics were created, published, sold, and even read. There has never been another time like it and there likely never will be again.
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MORE
— 13 REASONS That 1990’s WORLD’S FINEST Is the Ultimate BATMAN/SUPERMAN Team-Up. Click here.
— 13 Reasons 1987’s MORTAL CLAY Might Actually Be ALAN MOORE’s Best BATMAN Story. Click here.
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JASON CZERNICH was born smack dab in the middle of the Bronze Age of Comics. Early memories of Power Records and other Batman merchandise, as well as watching reruns of the 1966 Batman series on TV38 in Boston, imprinted on him heavily. Today, he lives and works as a clinical social worker in central Massachusetts with his wife, child, cat, and beloved French Bulldog.
