There's a subgenre of comics that retell the origin and early days of superheroes. They come in a variety of formats;one-shots,mini-series,continuing series,etc. They're not reboots of those characters,the way the Man Of Steel mini-series restarted Superman,but they exist concurrently with the main titles,the way Untold Tales of Spider-Man ran at the same time as the Clone Saga.
2 votes,otherwise Batman:Year One will probably run off with it.

I don't know about the best of those, but I do know that I enjoyed many of them, particularly the two Avengers series.

Would you put MARVELS into this? I think it probably fits. I also enjoyed the Marvel Saga that was telling Marvel history/timeline.

Also, the Spider-Man Blue, Daredevil Yellow, etc. series likely also fall into this group.

I'm not going to vote, since I think I only read 3 of these.

Also, for all that it's Elseworlds, I kind of think of The New Frontier as the new canon formation of the JLA. Even though I remember the first one, and those 7 elemental aliens coming to Earth. Cooke's creation was just so good, it kind of dominates now, even though JLA: Y1 was decent.

Man Without Fear and Children of the Atom.

If Marvel had allowed Steve Rude to do all the issues of Children of the Atom I probably would've voted for it. Replacing him with Paul Smith, who is a far slower artist, was moronic. It really tainted that series for me.

Yeah, and then Smith only did one issue, as I recall, so they had to bring in a third artist.

Corporate comics, whatcha gonna do?

I still think it's a pretty good series.

Yes, Smith only lasted one issue when Marvel discovered they'd replaced Rude with a sloth. Fortunately corporate comics have generally gotten away from that mindset when doing a flagship, prestigious series. Wait until it's done or at least enough issues are done that the book should be able to come out in a timely manner. Once the book is released in a trade, no one will care about when the individual issues came out, the consistency of the book is what's important. If you want a perennial seller like Watchmen or New Frontier, I think consistency through the book is important.

You're absolutely right, of course.

From what I remember reading, with this particular book, Marvel wanted to get the TPB out in time for the release of the original 2000 X-Men movie. I don't know if they did or not, but obviously it wasn't going to happen with Rude.

Obviously in retrospect it's easy to see how foolish this thinking was on multiple levels -- not least of which is that they now know that a successful movie doesn't really translate back to the comics at all. So as you say, they blew their shot to create a perennial classic. And it was all in service of a short-term gain that was hypothetical anyway, and which never would have happened even under ideal circumstances.

But I ... I mean, I still think it's a pretty good series.

Liked "Batgirl: Year One" (NOT "BatMAN: Year One") a lot.

I think "Spider-Man: Blue" deserves a mention as well.

Two more mini-series that should be included. They both went thru different story styles in their lead characters history---one issue was done in a silver age style,one in a bronze age manner,etc.

From the list provided, I went YEAR ONE and MAN WITHOUT FEAR.

Same

This caused me to check this series out, and read the first issue. I liked it.

It's good and if you like that, you'll probably like JLA: Year One as well.