Comic Catagory Name Questions -Golden to Modern

[The Toyroom]

I guess you could also use Micronauts #38, Moon Knight #33, & KA-Zar #10 as cutoff points as well- those were the first Direct Only books, effectively signalling the end of newsstand distribution and comic books as the general public knew them. Around 1984.

A precursor to those was Dazzler #1....direct only I believe. Newstand started with #2.

[ctc]

>I thought when Image formed that was the beginning of The Crap/Gimmick age that we're still dealing with.

I'd KIND OF agree; but the Image era was the era of the "designer comic," where folks woul follow their favourite artist more than their favourite character. While they did have the gimmicks during that time, I think they started MUCH earlier.... like the mid 80's. ("Fall of the Mutants" seems to be the first to me, since it was a "story" that ran through several titles and was hyped to death ahead of time.) But the gimmicks really seem to have become the focus AFTER the 90's implosion.... as a marketing thing more than anything else.

>so 1958-1986 is silver age to him.

Wow. Usually the Bronze Age refers to the 70's. The era when Marvel was experimenting more, and sorta getting away from the superhero thing. (At least partly.) AND they used a lot of heavy, dark inks.

Silver Age usually starts with the Justice League story where the "new" League meets the old one.... and you find out there are multiple worlds. It's considered to be the first attempt to solidify a continuity; hence the new age for comics.

>I guess you could also use Micronauts #38, Moon Knight #33, & KA-Zar #10 as cutoff points as well- those were the first Direct Only books, effectively signalling the end of newsstand distribution and comic books as the general public knew them.

Good point. (Although the non-superhero comic fans saw the establishemnt of direct market books a few years earlier.... 1979; if you count WARP Graphics.)

Don C.

[samurainoir]

Where does the bronze age end? With Crisis in 1985? Seems like that's about right if the current age is the Dark age starting with Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns.

I think history will (or already has) designated 1986 as the start of a new era for comics. Watchmen and Dark Knight being the touchstones of this new nameless "age" for a number of reasons.

Although they are far from the first superhero comic books to be produced for an adult audience, they are the ones that capture mainstream media attention and almost universal acclaim within the industry and fan circles, not only at the time of their release, but to this day (if we believe the Watchmen movie hype).

The other important points to consider... these were blockbuster money-making hits utilizing ONLY the direct market and ending the era of corner stores and grocery checkout lines (for the cape books, since Archie still reigns there). It changed the landscape of comics as much as Wertham's crusade did in the fifties, whether this was a "good" thing or "bad" thing is another topic.

The switch from newsprint to more "permanent" paperstock and printing technology . No longer considered disposable reading material for children, with glossy paper and full bleed full color. Dark Knight was even squarebound, like a "real" book.

Most important of all... keeping the work in print. Each volume of Dark Knight had multiple printings, unheard of at that time. Alan Moore himself expected that Watchmen would fall out of print as soon as the last issue hit the stands. Not only were these issued in collected editions for the direct market, Warner Books published their own versions for the bookstore market, which is probably the real start of the modern Graphic Novel section in bookstores today (not that comics hadn't previously been seen in the bookstore market).


However, outside of capes and cowls, the other significant book published in 1986 that everyone often forgets is MAUS. The first Pulitzer Prize winning Graphic Novel and the one that everyone points to when insisting that the medium of comic books can hold as much weight and power as the best film, literature or theatre. But Maus came out of an underground comics tradition, jumped over to the Avante Garde with it's serialization in RAW (which I saw in bookstores more often than I did in comic shops) before landing in the bookstores. Not that it wasn't available to the direct market, but I believe it was an afterthought that could have easily been bypassed given the amount of mainstream attention Maus received, particularly in the "highbrow" publications (New Yorker) and community.



Regaring the Silver/Golden Age dividing line, I think most people will agree that the Silver Age began with The Flash in Showcase, which kicked off the Superhero "Renaissance".