Defining the Ages!

 

In an effort to pin down the various ages of comic books, I recently conspired with some fellow fans online. I think we did a fairly good job of delineating the events that define the various ages, what it means for the industry and comic book history as a whole. While it may seem pointless to some—and impossible to others—to try to define the ages of comics, it can be fun to examine history and the trends that each age brought to the comics medium.

If 1938 is the starting point, with the publication of Action Comics #1—the first appearance of Superman—and the first comic book, it only seems fair to ask what came before? Well, as far back as the 19^th century, adventure fiction came in the form of dime novels, stories featuring heroic protagonists—everything from private detectives and cowboys to swashbuckling pirates. After that came the pulp magazines, which gave us the superhero prototypes like The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Zorro. Superheroes like Superman are outgrowths of pulp heroes but also reactions to characters in the comic strips like The Yellow Kid (the first comic ever?), Thimble Theatre, Dick Tracy, and The Phantom (who is probably the first fully-realized superhero). The era that starts with the beginning of the comic strip and up until Superman has sometimes been labeled "The Platinum Age."

The Golden Age was an era when superheroes took on the role of moral crusaders, showcasing their spectacular powers and feats of strength in a wave of patriotic war-time fervor, a black and white worldview that defined the period. The superhero concept was successful for the first half of the 1940’s, but, after World War II, began to lose steam and die out. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were the only characters to see continuous publication while the rest of the industry relied on westerns, detectives, horror, and romance (until the horror and crime books led to the Comics Code). Between the Golden and Silver Ages, there is sometimes a distinction... a roughly ten-year period (1946 to 1955) that connects the two... This is called The Atomic Age. Then, in 1956, editor Julius Schwartz, with Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino revived The Flash in Showcase #4. This is where the Silver Age began.

The Silver Age ushered in an era of worldbuilding with the revival of superheroes. Like The Flash, many Golden Age heroes got updated for the Atomic Age: Green Lantern, Hawkman, and The Atom. Heroes also formed a new team, an update on The Justice Society of the Golden Age, with The Justice League. This is the era that most modern superhero mythology is based on. This is where the DC Universe springs from. This is when the Marvel Age was born too, with the publication of Fantastic Four #1 in 1961, itself a reaction to DC’s popular superheroes. Marvel helped to solidify the Silver Age with its more developed storytelling and even bolder science fiction concepts, pointing the way to the Bronze Age.  

Even though superhero stories became generally more sophisticated by the late 1960’s, thanks to an influx of college-aged readers, the Bronze Age is usually recognized as starting in 1973 with a monumental death. Peter Parker’s girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, perished at the hands of The Green Goblin in Amazing Spider-man #121. This momentous issue seemed to signal a new trend in superhero storytelling: amping up the drama and pathos of the characters, their lives, and their world. Real world events began to shape comics even more and the age of social relevance was born. The landmark series, Green Lantern/Green Arrow by Denny O’neil and Neal Adams is the culmination of this. By the early 1980’s superhero stories were becoming far more engaging than they’d ever been, with titles like Uncanny X-men and the seeds of the Indie comics boom being planted, pointing to an era when the envelope would be pushed to even more intense heights.

The Modern Age is often cited as beginning with the publication of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal work, Watchmen in 1986. But the Modern age can be broken down into several distinct periods. 1986 to about 1992 is sometimes called the beginning of the Iron Age. 1992 through the late 1990's is often called “The Dark Age.” The stories of this period seemed to learn the  wrong lessons from the more sophisticated work of the 1980’s. The writing wasn’t as refined but the grit and edginess was aped in a shallow way. This period reflected a desperate attempt to be as relavant as the best known works of the previous decade but ultimately was an overblown, reactionary mess. It was a bad time for the industry, but there was still a lot of fun to be had. Marvels by Alex Ross comes to mind, as do the six oversized DC superhero graphic novels by Paul Dini and Alex Ross, Superman's triangle era, Hellboy, and Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come and Flash work.

Some have said that, in the early 2000’s, the Iron Age gave way to the Mercury Age. Are we still in that age? I don’t know, but I’ve often heard it said that we can’t define our current age historically until we're long past it. Either way, several shifts define the Post-Dark Age 21^st century. Once the Marvel films started being made in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, the comics began to shift away from the grim-and-gritty era and become something new. Perhaps as a reaction to Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns stories became decompressed. Decompression became the in vogue way of writing comics. Disney bought Marvel and gave birth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the MCU) which has arguably affected comics throughout the entire industry. Some call this the “Cinematic Age.”

In 2011, DC rebooted their universe again with the New 52 line, an ill-fated project that faded into the much better Rebirth era. Marvel has done several soft reboots too, as a reaction to DC but also as a way to make their comics more accessible to a larger audience. Comics seem to have now become an unbroken continuity of decompressed stories (with some exceptions of course),  shaped partly by the mass appeal of the film and TV adaptations and partly by the evergrowing popularity of the indie books. The Indie scene has had some fantastic successes like The Walking Dead and Saga too.

 

While the separation of the Golden, Silver, and Bronze Ages are generally agreed to come down to issue numbers and specific events/stories, the Modern Age doesn’t seem to have such clear markers. Perhaps there can be no definitive way to measure the modern period because it hasn’t been as clearly specified. It just seems too broad a period to define, so far.