redantsunderneath:

Platinum Age – wastebasket term for everything before the invention of the true comic book form in 1933. Lots of false starts, examples that might actually be picture books, newspaper reprints in wide variety of formats, and earlier examples of things that could be said to be “comics” and even “super heroes.”  The key is historical continuity, which these examples lack.

Pre-golden Age – 1933 Funnies on Parade invents comic book format.  The next few years show accrual of additional features including introducing and escalating new material, 10 cent cover price, multi page stories, evolving page format to be less like newspaper strips. Very similar content to newspaper strips, though more slanted towards action/adventure.

Golden Age – 1938 the superhero emerges as a historically contiguous thing with Action #1’s Superman. This starts a revolution as comics have a “killer app” of their own.  A lot happens, but it is helpful to look at this in phases.  1938-41 is the explosive/experimental phase where most of the lasting golden age superheroes were introduced, with an often pro-am feel and variation in approach, gradually becoming more professional and style synchronized.  1941-45 is the patriotic phase, as there is an overriding common enemy to focus on, and the scope gets bigger.  1945-1949 is the commercial peak-and-bust of the superhero, where post-war superhero worship is extremely high, but gives way gradually to boredom with the sunny optimism and attention focusing on more diverse genres.  Westerns, war comics, crime comics, sci-fi, “horror,” etc. existed throughout comics history, but the superheroes lose their dominance. Different endpoints can be drawn but since DC continues unabated, I tend to draw the line at the 1949 rebranding of Captain America Comics as Weird Tales as the end of the era or the start of EC’s new line the same year.

Atomic Age – it is controversial as to whether we need an age between Gold and Silver, and not having this would make some lines easier to draw.  But since comics history seems to like 10 year chunks, I tend to want a 50’s age.  Starting in 1949 we have a series of trends.  The straggling non-DC superhero concerns fold, leading to genre proliferation which is a bit pulpier than it was in the 1930s. Optimistic adventure tales become less common than morality tales, paranoia, superheated melodrama, and a kind of fatalistic life or death struggle.  EC comics, beginning its new line in 1949 is the paradigm example, but all publishers (other than squeaky clean outfits like Dell and Archie) did this. The development of the romance comic by Jack Kirby in 1947 as essentially a crime comic about lust instead of money is a sentinel event that prefigures the tone of this era.  The important sub-eras are pre and post “code.” In 1955 the comics code authority was formed as a reaction to senate hearings on comics as a cause for juvenile delinquency, creating strict and often capricious restrictions that “defanged” the output.  This led to a shift from noir and gore to a more B-movie morality tale, with a lot of monsters and flying saucers and Twilight Zone style gotcha-plotting.

Silver Age – here lies my big heresy.  The silver age is broadly agreed to begin in 1956 with the first appearance of the Silver Age Flash.  This works especially well if you like to go straight from the golden age to the silver age as the Comic code cuts in, then you get a kinder output and a new DC universe to herald the next age.  I have two issues with this: the previously mentioned “10 year” bias and the fact that I’m Marvel-o-centric.  DC was clearly developing a distinct Silver age identity which evolved through the 50’s and their silver age aesthetic surely includes the Legion of Superheroes first appearance in 1958.  But there are issues with this.  The appearance of Flash is arbitrary as a cutoff as, though so clearly visible, no one can agree as to when Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman become their Earth 1 (Silver age) versions.  Google this, it’s insane. But Superboy, who had his own comic from 1949, everyone seems to believe is an Earth 1 thing and the contingenti work to convolute history around this fact. Additionally, DC’s timeline does not really fit what is happening at any other publishers.  My heretical solution is this – DC’s superhero atomic age was a stepwise development of the Silver age starting with Superboy #1 and finishing with the first appearance of the Justice League of America in 1960.  This act prompted Martin Goodman to tell Stan Lee to create a superhero team book, the Fantastic Four, which started Marvel’s Silver age.  This seems to me an elegant solution.  Ages are arbitrary, but this fits best to me – DC is unique in publishing superheroes throughout the 1950s and so postulating a 10 year gradual fade from golden to silver age when no one else was doing anything related seems appropriate.

The Silver age - dominated by Marvel, which had an explosive decade of Lee/Kirby/Ditko fueled creativity, full of melodramatics and dynamic art.  DC had its own distinct aesthetic of superheroes acting like their audience (young children), being gullible, playing pranks, all rendered statically, which it had honed in the 50’s and which it sustained nicely. The sub-eras are Marvel based since DC was pretty consistent.  1960-63 was the developmental period with Marvel figuring out how things worked and introducing all of its really big characters.  This ends with the simultaneous publication of Avengers and X-Men number one, and Lee/Kirby finally finding their footing with the Marvel method with the introduction of Tales of Asgard. 1963-1966 was about improving quality, establishing a brand, giving some already existing characters their own books, but not that many big new characters (Daredevil is the big exception). This was a period of adjustment, and when Marvel was born as a concept.  In 1966 several things happened.  Marvel hired Roy Thomas, who would help birth the Bronze Age, as a writer, Steve Ditko leaves Marvel, and Lee and Kirby finally hit their stride and do peak work, yielding a new age of concept and character creativity.  1966-70 is characterized by the best silver age work with everyone peaking, Thomas beginning to guide books Lee never quite got, and prime periods of Johns Romita and Buscema.  This is the great era that everyone remembers.

Bronze Age – there was a whole lot of change between 1969 and 1972, with 1970 being the peak year, leaving a very different output.  Kirby’s moving from Marvel to DC basically at the decade devide is probably the best mark to give as the moment of the shift as he is so crucial in defining the Silver Age at Marvel, but this is only one of many shifts.  After Kirby leaves, Roy Thomas begins the process of taking over running Marvel ending with his formally taking over as editor in chief in 1972.  Starting in 1968, Thomas scaled up trying new things in his own domain starting with the first Bronze age progenitor book Captain Marvel, the introduction of the Vision the same year, the completely unique (look and “feel”) at the time run with Neal Adams on X-Man in 1969, and hiring Barry Windsor-Smith with whom he would introduce Conan in 1970.  With Kirby gone, Lee began to eye moving out to the bigger entertainment leagues, allowing Thomas to increasingly set the tone for the company.  Thomas’ tone was looking both forward, with more realistic and daring art and more sophisticated and relevant storytelling, backwards, by tying in Marvel’s golden age history and bringing in pulp and fandom classics (such as Conan), and sideways, by proliferating genres and Marvelizing non-superhero concepts.  This was the tone for the bronze age as a whole – relevant, diverse, muddier, less cartoony, and conceptually omnivorous. Other shifts of the time include hiring new writers that were of the younger generation (Englehart, Gerber, etc.), Neal Adams moving to DC and working with the young Denny O’Neil to create more grittier/relevant stories, and a new age of anthology titles with B-list stars acting as a platform for creative try-outs.

Divisions are arbitrary, but the decade divides somewhat in half as the intro of Wolverine, the Punisher, and Moon Knight in 1974 set the stage for 1975’s X-Men revival and Thomas, the guiding force of Marvel for the first half of the decade, stepping down as editor-and-chief the same year, leaving the Marvel offices to years of chaos. The second half decade yields to sees a proliferation of new talent on the art side gaining momentum and Jim Shooter eventually stepping in and starting to create order, resulting in 1980’s culmination of the Dark Phoenix saga, Elektra saga, introduction of the New Teen Titans, and the Legion revamp, all star-art driven affairs.

The 80’s (a.k.a. “modern age”) – Star artist fandom has taken hold as Jim Shooter institutes a greater degree of consistency and DC becomes more Marvel-like. The first half decade shows a shift as editorial battles the star artists, who want more freedom.  Many things happen around 1985 – Miller, Perez, and Byrne leave for high profile DC projects.  Jim Shooter seizes Marvel in his image with the continuing Secret Wars and firm oversight.  DC hires their first brit, Alan Moore, to write, and eventually hire a bunch more, while they open the floodgates of prestige product.  For the down half of the decade: DC’s better offerings become truly top notch, making Marvel look silly, leading Shooter to eventually be fired.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles causes a stir, creating the B&W indy boom.  The “kewl” trend, born both of a misunderstanding of what made Miller and Moore’s stuff work and the B&W boom fallout, leads in the later decade to a new crop of hot artists who are lite on fundamental’s but heavy on noodling at Marvel and hot to tell their own not-very-sophisticated “darker” tales. This is the trend of the late 80’s.

People got tired of naming ages about here.

The 90’s (“boom and bust”) – Easiest line to draw: this era begins with the handing over of new Marvel titles to the hot artists, resulting in record breaking sales.  This began with McFarline’s Spider-Man #1 in 1990, with Lee’s X-Men and Liefield’s X-Force following. Rapidly came the rise of Wizard Magazine (a cool/speculator oriented comics mag that had incredible influence), the big 7 hot artists leaving to form Image comics, Jim Shooter (who had been booted from Marvel in 1987) starting Valiant comics, and both sales and prices going through the roof. By 1995, speculator/collectibility fervor had cooled, the hot artists couldn’t get any work out, Marvel creative had bogged down, DC seemed stuck, several highly ordered flops had killed 2/3 of the comics shops, and the comic industry’s prospects looked dire.  This period was spent flailing for everybody with the first signs of hope coming from the Marvel Knights line, begun in 1998. 

The 00′s (rise of the synergy) - 1999 began with more earnest efforts, expanding MK, and Wildstorm (still a part of Image) doing some very interesting work with Ellis and Moore.  All of this came to a head in 2000 with the advent of nu Marvel under Jemas and Quesada and the sale of Wildstorm to DC. With increased experimentation and sub-branding (Ultimate Spider-Man number one essentially begins this era), the early 00’s tell a story of trying everything then locking in what works.  This ended when DC had a smash success with Identity Crisis (late 2004), causing Marvel to begin a continuity-wide stream of such events, beginning with 2005’s House of M.  Both DC and Marvel entered an extended period of crossover – they’d done so before, but now Marvel’s continuity flowed directly from event to event, with the whole universe’s status quo determined by the ending of the last one, while DC nakedly chased another Crisis.  They maintained this the whole late decade until 2010’s Siege and Brightest Day sort of just stopped trying.

The now – Flashpoint (2011) and the New 52 sent DC in a new direction: corporate mandated yet less interdependent.  Marvel kept crossover-in’, but their hearts didn’t seem to be in it and the focus on a new female-skewing web and movie/TV based audience kicked in.  This parallels the rise of Image and a more diverse line-up of subject matter.  This year’s Secret Wars seems to hold the possibility of a breakpoint, somehow, and several top writers have fled for Image.  This half decade was a dark time for DC.