That being said, there is certainly something about the fact that people keep referring to comics we were lucky to be young for as seminal material. I, of course, am older than the rest of you, and I even I was too young to fully appreciate Dark Knight or Watchmen, even though I was collecting when they were released.
For me, the series I collected back then struck a chord, and are going to turn out to be the focus of what I keep collecting (or keep period) as time moves on here and I (hopefully) start working on liquidating some of the glut.
I think I know the answer to this, but what did you love as a kid? Let's call it from the time you started collecting (be that 8 or 18) until the first time you moved on to other things. If you never left comics to return later, cut it off at 18 for discussion's sake. For what it's worth I left toys & comics for skateboarding of all things. Drinking beer followed shortly thereafter & pussy a short while after that.
I figured if we had a look at what we loved we could finally conclude one of two things: there is no way to get the magic back because we're too old - if we want magic we need to look at more mature series OR there is a remedy to fix mainstream comics for us, the adult reader, while leaving them accessible to the younger readers. I desperately want to think it's option B, but I'm nearly out of hope. You can't replace the magic of experiencing something for the first time.
WHAT I LOVED:
Uncanny X-Men 140-247 (or thereabouts - it fell off a bit toward the end with the team in Australia for example, but this was my main series)
Mainly-Byrne Alpha Flight 1-40 or so (though he left at 12 I think)
Simonson Thor (337-390?)
Secret Wars 1-12
Miller Daredevil 168-190 or so, and Mazzuchelli's 196 with Wolverine might be the best stand alone issue of all those - not sure if it's Miller scripted or not, but it's insane.
GI Joe 1-50 - maybe a bit higher, but I think this is where I petered off into other things.
Marvel Team Up - which my brother collected. I would have to look back but I think various writers/artists had a go on this one.
Coming back years later, I worked on building what I had from these runs into complete sets. In my experience ebay changed everything - the "need" to go downtown & check the boxes was completely decimated by it.
Since coming back I have worked on collecting certain other series from the same time frame & have learned there were some other really awesome runs going on which I have worked on, but didn't get to experience as a kid:
Amazing Spider-Man 238 - 330 or so (end MacFarlane). I still need to read these issues in the context of a series, I have sporadically read key issues throughout the run but never consecutively.
Byrne Avengers & FF - I'm not sure exactly which numbers we're talking, but more from the same general era.
Interestingly enough, the major character that doesn't appear on this list is Hulk, whom I of course grew to love later on. I wasn't a regular buyer of the series until I started back as a young adult, and I would say, through all I've collected, I enjoyed Bruce Jones' fugitive Banner run the best.
