It's a good question. The answer is no. That would've been the early 2000's when the Big Two (Marvel and DC) decided to pull the nearly dead body of good comics out of the financial gutter and breathe life back into quality and sales. So unless you have a time machine you will have to settle for this point in your life.
But this is a good time to jump into the big two superhero factory comic companies, and that's because of the hair width, finely tuned, sweet spot planet aligned placement the two companies are in right now. Let's start with Marvel.
With Marvel, as I've talked about two posts back, we see they're gearing up for some huge multiversal event which promises to bring out many of the most well known Big Events and somehow have that lead up into what seems to be (from the art provided by Alex Ross) multiversal fight between the current timeline and possibly their past counterparts and even other universal counterparts. And while I'm not sure, I am sure about one thing: Continuity of only the most important parts will come to light. With all of these Big Events possibly being revisited, which really only reinforce how I feel about modern Big Events and how they mean nothing, new readers will be treated to a rare conglomeration of points in important moments of a character's life. See the photo below for reference:
See the two Iron Men there? One all white, and one all retro? One of them isn't Tony Stark. Well, at least in the original Secret Wars. This would be a very interesting conflict as Jim Rhodes is actually acting as Iron Man as his Tony is lost in the pit of alcoholism and had recently relinquished his role and responsibility as Iron Man to Rhodes. Rhodes would see Stark is back in a fantastically futuristic armor and only 40 times the dick he was when Rhodes knew him. Cap is fighting his protege who has taken his place. Heck, Iron Man 2020 and Miles Morales the Ultimate Spider-Man are even in there. Thor fighting new female Thor, etc. With all these characters converging on one point, and all these Big Events being teased up to it in a single year, Marvel will have to be working in overdrive to get important character points (especially points in time) about the differences between characters. If a new reader ever needed a synopsis and comparison about a character's past, this would be it. And like I said, it seems Marvel is looking toward some sort of reboot and so maybe this would be good to get a taste of what might be coming. I'm pretty sure I see Earth X in there as well, MC2, and definitely Marvel 2099.
For DC. If Marvel ever had a reason to not reboot their universe, DC is that reason. While the House of Ideas isn't exactly ashamed to copy what DC does, it at least tries to not make it so obvious (though both do steal and both fail at subtlety). DC has this history about rebooting their universe both hard and soft. They've done it quite a few times actually. And while each time is met with groans, it seems everybody forgets and adapts to the new universe with positive reactions. Such is also the case with their Post-Flashpoint New 52 universe. Not to be confused with their New 52 post Infinite Crisis where Superboy Prime retcon punched the universe until it changed history in the fallout. This New 52 is much more severe in that it completely reset the entire universe and merged DC's other imprints (which were their own dimensions) into the fold. Superman got a new start and was no longer married, the Justice Society was now Earth 2 specific, etc. DC just basically pressed the reset button on their universe so they can tell similar stories, but in new and potentially exciting ways. While you may think, "Well Mak, shouldn't the jumping on point have been three years ago when they actually pulled this stunt?" I'd say the answer is, "No." Why? Simple. DC has had three years to put this new universe together, which means that you get to jump in AFTER the confusion of the reset. You don't have to wonder why Tim Drake wasn't the Robin, but is Red Robin, or why certain characters behave as they do now. You can read a few issues knowing they're still fairly recent, and if you like them you don't have a gigantic several hundred issue backlog to look up. You can just go and pick from the previous few dozen issues which exist in their print line. Granted the New 52 isn't a completely hard reboot, but is just mostly a hard reboot. Just shy of Crisis on Infinite Earths, which means that some of the stories prior to Flashpoint are still relevant and you can search those out as you desire. So long as they have nothing to do with Power Girl or any of the JSA. So with only a few back issues and most of the wrinkles iron out of the Post-Flashpoint universe, you can jump in and have yourself a good ol' time in the Big Two publishers. I'd talk about Image, Avatar Press, and all the rest, but I'm sure if you're new to reading you've probably watched DC and Marvel movies and want to start there.
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