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: — 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.) — Mutant Massacre. Crisis and Secret Wars showed that linewide crossovers were possible. But what about crossovers...