I guess I just try to break it down into 1-loathe, 2-dislike, 3-mediocre to decent, 4- really enjoyed, 5- loved it.

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'The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.'- Steven Erikson

I pretty much rate a comic based on my gut feeling, but my scale goes something like this:

1 - I thoroughly disliked that issue, and it was hard to finish
2 - It was okay, I guess, but I sure wouldn't read it again. Kind of boring.
3 - A decent, average comic, taking context/era into account.
4 - A great read, I was really into this one. I'd consider reading it again down the road.
5 - Amazing! A really good comic that either really resonated with me, or I just found exceptionally entertaining.

With 107 comics rated, reading by selective comic box, and up to fall of 1964, my numbers are:

1 - 5 issues
2 - 30 issues
3 - 49 issues
4 - 17 issues
5 - 6 issues

Reading the scores that other poeple have given makes me feel a bit mean. I've only read the first 68 comics so far and my scores are:

1 - 11 issues
2 - 33 issues
3 - 21 issues
4 - 3 issues
5 - 0 issues

Pretty low scores, I'll admit. But there's no denying that the writing in much of this early Marvel stuff is pretty bad. Sometimes, though not often, the poor writing can be offset by a flash of brilliance. Having previously read FF, Avengers and Spiderman each to over #100 I know that the quality does pick up eventually, and I expect the scoring to become more balanced as I get further along in the order.

My rating criteria is something along the lines of:

1 - Pretty awful. I found myself scanning over a lot of frames rather than reading them
2 - OK, but not very entertaining
3 - Fair to good
4 - A really enjoyable issue
5 - I get to the end and go "Wow!"

I don't expect to be giving out 5s very often. Just over a year ago I started reading my way through the DCU, starting at Crisis on Infinite Earths and grading each issue out of 10. I've read approaching 1500 issues so far and only given six 10s.

Safis, glad to know I'm not the only one who gives out a few 5's

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'The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.'- Steven Erikson

My problem is that I had to retroactively rate them, because I've been reading the early marvel stuff for 3 years now. So even though I've read 1,559 stories, I've only rated 1,035. And most of those were the issues I read 1-3 years ago, so I've had to skim through them and remember what I thought.
But even still I've only given out 9 5-stars.

Interesting.

I'm way more generous with handing out five stars. I just think of them as the best class of issue - I enjoy those the most. I do not think of them as flawless, or that unique. I guess a portion of my 5-starred ones would be 4-starred ones for you all.

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Yeah, if I were to grade harsher, I would have to move a lot of things down by one star.

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'The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.'- Steven Erikson

I think the key for me is that I rate according to the general standard of the era, which is SO much easier to do when reading everything in order.

At the moment, my numbers are:
1 - 1 issue
2 - 24 issues
3 - 33 issues
4 - 14 issues
5 - 1 issue

I think that the 1s will stay reasonably low for me, because it tends to be a rating that I save for stuff that is truly appallingly bad or actually offensive in some way. I'm sure the 5s will increase, though, once I'm reading more about my favourite characters. For instance, the one five I have so far is actually for Avengers #4, which is a long way off where I'm actually at in the order I'm not even remotely objective, but at least I own it I'd like to think that eventually the 2s and 4s will even out and the 3s will be a lot higher in comparison to everything else. Right now, the 2s are pretty high because of all the Ant Man and Torch stuff I've been wading through.

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I also go with 1=Horrible, 2=Bad, 3=Good/Average, 4=Great, 5=Amazing

My breakdown thus far is:

1 Star Ratings: 55
2 Star Ratings: 127
3 Star Ratings: 233
4 Star Ratings: 46
5 Star Ratings: 6

The five stars are FF 48-50 (Galactus Trilogy; it has a few 3-4 star parts but overall I couldn't bring myself to give it less than five - it's certainly miles above anything else at the time), the Reed/Sue wedding issue (silly but tons of fun), the first appearance of the Sinister Six (ditto the silly but fun thing), and FF 51, "This Man, This Monster" which is easily the best issue in the Order as of midway through 1967.

The four stars are largely FF and ASM. The 3 stars are most everything else, with the 2s and 1s being Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales (pre SHIELD), mostly.

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wow 5 for the wedding issue? that got an 2 from me ;-P but FF 48-51 was great! they all got 4 from me though..

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Issues to read till I get to Giant-Size X-Men #1 = 300