10 Best Marvel Stories of the '00
Marvel is the king of the comics sales charts, despite DC’s Absolute books giving them a run for their money, and a big reason they’ve stayed on top is the ’00s. The ’90s were an interesting time for Marvel. The publisher had some amazing sales successes with the X-Men books, but they let their writing suffer as they chased the big artists, and tried to replicate the style over substance approach of Image Comics. Marvel went bankrupt in the ’90s, and things got pretty dire. Things got better as the decade ended, but the true turning point was writer/artist/editor Joe Quesada becoming editor in chief of Marvel in the year 2000. Quesada brought in a lot of new blood, and Marvel made readers forget the failures of the ’90s. DC was more competitive than ever as well, and Marvel had to work hard to get readers to read their books.
10 Best Marvel Stories of the '00
Comics in the ’00s have a lot of problems — it was easily the edgiest decade of comics ever — but it’s hard to deny how great the comics of the ’00s were. Marvel put out some amazing comics in those ten years. Marvel was on fire, and they created modern classics. These ten Marvel stories are the best of the ’00s, giving readers some of the coolest stories in the history of the House of Ideas.
10 Best Marvel Stories of the '00
Garth Ennis’s time on Punisher in the ’00s gave readers a lot of great stories. Ennis cleared away the dross of the Punisher concept, and boiled it down to its essence. “Welcome Back, Frank” was almost in this spot, but there is a better Punisher comic out there — Punisher: Born, by Ennis and Darick Robertson. The two of them took readers back to the Vietnam War, and showed the events that destroyed the man known as Frank Castle. It definitely lives up to its name — this is the birth of the Punisher. It was part of Marvel’s MAX line, and had all of the blood and violence that a mature readers comic should have. It’s a harrowing story with gruesome art, and it remains one of the best Punisher stories ever. Ennis gets a bad rep for his use of over the top violence and language, but it fits perfectly in this story. Ennis is a huge fan of war stories of all kinds (go back and read the Preacher letter pages, where he would talk about the war novels and comics he loved the most to see it), and he gave Marvel their best war comic ever with this one. Ennis and Robertson made an excellent team throughout the ’00s (check out their MAX Nick Fury miniseries as well), and this is their greatest work.
9) New Avengers (Vol. 1) #27-31