Suggestions for/Where to start with Silver/Bronze Age

had no idea Alcala was on Conan... I should really get one of those compendiums

Yeah, I was subscribing to Savage Sword back in those days -- Buscema/Alcala was an amazing pairing. I used to practice his hatching and crosshatching techniques with a ballpoint pen, page after page.

There was some really cool stuff in the Marvel B&W mags...Moench's Rampaging Hulk was very good, in a "Hulk: Year One" setting when he still had some of his brain cells and language skills.

You want to compare inkers of that time, those 70s Conan comics are the way to do it, as you have many of the better guys working with John Buscema. Since they are with the same penciler, you can really see the differences in their style. I know at least all these off the top of my head worked on issues. Oddly, I don't think Tom Palmer who did a ton of inking on Buscema on the Avengers did any Conan that I can recall (as he was in the middle of the big run with Gene Colan on Tomb of Dracula).

Ernie Chan (aka Chua)
Sal Buscema
John Buscema on his own pencils
Joe Sinnott (which didn't happen very much)
Dick Giordano
Neal Adams (& many hands)
Tony DeZuniga
Alfredo Alcala

I think that particular Buscema/Alcala story might be in Savage Sword vol.1 along with all of the early Barry Windsor-Smith stuff he did in SSofC. I'd say "Red Nails" and "The Frost Giant's Daughter" are some of my favorite comic artwork and I think would be in a list with some of the best Marvel ever put out.

I had no idea Englehart wrote the first post-Kirby reboot of Mister Miracle. how weird.

is Night Force worth reading?

I am oddly fascinated by the Baron Winters concept for some reason

haven't read Night Force since it first came out, but yeah, my memory is that it's pretty good - though i don't think it comes to any satisfying resolution

Five years on and I'm still working the angles on what I like and don't like from these eras, I still refer back to this thread every now and again but I'm very much in DC mode right now.

Made the error of visiting Forbidden Planet as I've been freelancing down the road from there and lit upon the shelves full of DC Gold/Silver/Bronze Age Omnibus volumes, boy are they handsome. so I caved and picked up the Doom Patrol and Adam Strange ones. I already have my eye on some more, yay financial ruin!

The only old school DC omnibus I've bought is the recent Swamp Thing volume, which in typical DC fashion collects almost but not quite everything pre-Moore (the early ST appearances outside of the main title would've been nice to have, but I'm mostly just irritated that they omitted the first Moore issue, which the Moore trades also did). I want to start picking up the new series of silver age LoSH hardcovers they're issuing...except that there's a gap between the last LoSH Showcase volume and the first of the new HCs which is only filled by a long out-of-print and stupid expensive Archive edition. Oh, DC.

Is there any reason why some of those DC Archive hardbacks are really expensive and some aren't?

I picked up 4 for £35 on eBay recently (Superman, Dark Knight, Batman) and I really want Challengers of the Unknown Vol.2 but it's like £80.

No idea. There's inevitably like one or two volumes of any Marvel/DC reprint series (among others...looking at you, that one ridiculously overpriced Krazy Kat collection) which go OOP and make completing the collection a pain in the ass. I'm at the point where I try to pick up new reprints (at least with, say, Masterworks and Omnibi) within six months or so of when they're published to avoid getting burned by that nonsense.

DC and Marvel are both bad where some big collection in a series will go out of print, yet this volume is not available and used market are crazy expensive. There are plenty of Omnibuses or series books like this in both their catalog and in some ways Marvel is worse about it as they don't have the back list warehousing like DC, which has kept many, many collections always in print.

Marvel has had much better luck getting the greater proportion of the old 60s-70s super hero stuff in reprint at least once, but they never stay in print. DC's reprint on books is madly inconsistent, but on some later modern series like Vertigo and others, they have been a big part of the the whole trade reprint business existing. Those series trades are why there is that kind of business now, as they kept popular series in print comic back lists going.

As a reader, the one that is out of print and insanely priced used is Essential Thor Vol. 4. That thing must have had a short first print run and it never has been reprinted, yet volumes before it and after it got a second print. The goofy thing has been going for like $80+ used for probably 5 or 6 years. Don't know if many are being sold at it, but it's one of the few Essentials that I don't have.

And worse on it is the Thor that it's kind of been reprinted around in color too. I think with the last Thor Omnibus that came out finally got it out as the Masterworks was two copies, one of which was also out of print and crazy expensive.

Keep an eye out for the Epic collections. The lack of rationale behind the order of their release is a little maddening, but they do seem committed to getting most of their main titles reprinted in full. Although that might mean waiting five years for them to get around to the volume(s) you're looking for. But I know the Black Panther Essential volume was another that became prohibitively expensive and they've already Epic-ized that material.