If you weren't in middle school by 1986 or 1987, I don't care what you think about Frank Miller's four-issue series, The Dark Knight Returns. Sorry, young reader!
There was context to when the comic came out, an understanding of what was changing in media and culture and comics, and if you grew up on comics in the wake of Dark Knight Returns, it's like trying to tell people Revolver isn't a breakthrough album after all, or that Citizen Kane doesn't matter (which the internet is always more than happy to do, and seem quite foolish in the process).
I don't do this often - generally I'm a "hey, like what you like, but here's my opinion" guy. But sometimes The Kids(tm) are just wrong, and I don't think you had to be there at the time - you can just have a reasonable knowledge of recent history, comics history and have read a book somewhere along the line. And so, in this case, when I have seen 10,000 bad takes by bad take-havers, here is mine.
Mainstream superhero comics have some key years.*
