Last
week, I wrote about the possibility of Marvel’s Heroic Age and DC’s
Brightest Day ushering in a new age of comics. Along the way, I
discussed the previous ages of comics, the eras by which many categorize its history. I received some excellent feedback and I’d like to respond in this follow-up column.
First of all, let me say thanks for the compliment, Jeff of Earth-J; the thoughtful reply, Luke Blanchard; and the exceptional reference, Turning Point.
Luke Blanchard wrote, “I'm always uncomfortable with attempts to continue "age" periodisation down to the present.”
You're not the only one, Luke. Besides Turning Point (who posted in response to the initial column), there's also Maggie Thompson, the editor of Comics Buyer's Guide. When they had their Bronze Age issue, she commented that she didn't believe in the existence of a Bronze Age. As far as she was concerned, there's the Golden Age, the Silver Age and everything after (that’s a paraphrase, not a direct quote).
However, I think there are a couple of problems with that stance.
The first problem is that the ship has already sailed. Bronze Age has entered common usage. I mentioned eBay in the first article; I recently
typed “Bronze Age comics” into eBay and it came back with 2,253
results. That’s more results than “Golden Age comics” and within a
1000 results of “Silver Age comics.” I tried Google and got over
800,000 results including a very lengthy description on Wikipedia and several blogs that specifically focus on Bronze Age comics.
Retail sites use the term as well. Capital Comics and House of Comics
have entire Bronze Age sections (in addition to Golden and Silver Age
sections). The term exists and it’s here to stay.
The second problem is what to use instead. No offense intended, Luke, but I think your post illustrates this. You rejected a historical categorization of comic books based on capital- “A” Ages but you then proceeded to discuss the history of comics based on a different set of ages. It’s just that you used decades rather than the metallic nomenclature of Golden, Silver and Bronze Age. Are decades the best way to categorize and understand the history of comics? Maybe they are. We certainly use decades for other facets of pop culture, especially music. But maybe they aren’t. A comic book in 1983 has a lot more in common with a comic in 1977 than it does with one in 1989. The beginning and end-points of some movements coincide with the beginning or end of a decade, but not always.
On the other hand, I think there are advantages to using Age categorizations to comics. The main one is that it does a better job of reflecting the periodic nature of comics and conveying the movements within that history. The history of comics isn’t a steady march over time, as a decade-by-decade survey might suggest, but a story of rises and falls.
Some
of the best evidence for the existence of a Bronze Age comes from
people who don’t use the term, including those who were involved or who
were there. Mike Richardson, publisher of Dark Horse Comics, doesn’t
subscribe to the notion of a Bronze Age. But in his book, Comics between the Panels, he writes about a “creative revival” in the late ‘70s with Claremont and Byrne on Uncanny X-Men, Frank Miller on Daredevil and Walt Simonson. Jon Cooke, the editor of Comic Book Artist,
refers to Marvel’s “Second Wave” in the ‘70s including the origin of
the new X-Men, Jim Starlin’s cosmic books and Mike Ploog on Ghost
Rider. Actually, many issues of Comic Book Artist are celebrations of the Bronze Age, despite the fact that Cooke doesn’t use the term himself.
I wish I had the reference handy, but one of the creators of the time (I think it was Walt Simonson) even called the late ‘70s and early ‘80s “Marvel’s Silver Age” (Marvel’s real Golden Age being the Lee/Kirby/Ditko years upon which most of the company was built). In addition to the previously mentioned creators, there was also Shooter and Perez on Avengers and Roger Stern’s Spider-Man.
Then, there’s the 1981 article
from Amazing Heroes that Turning Point posted for us. The “Third Wave”
that Michael Catron writes about is what we now call the Bronze Age.
He got a few things wrong. He anticipated the possibility that DC’s
Third Wave would inspire their main competition at Marvel to follow
suit, as had happened in the early Silver Age when Marvel responded to
the success of JLA with Fantastic Four. But he didn’t notice that the
tables had turned and that DC’s Third Wave was coming in response to Marvel’s Second Wave (as coined by Jon Cooke). Specifically, the New Teen Titans were a response to the Uncanny X-Men. However, he also got a few things right. He noticed that the advent of new publishers
like Eclipse and Pacific were indicators that a Third Wave was already
underway. Indeed, Pacific and Eclipse (as well as other companies like First and
Comico) played a similar role in the Bronze Age that secondary
superhero publishers Archie, Charlton and Tower played in the Silver
Age. They were part of the creative resurgence that contributed new titles and new characters.
Richardson’s Revival, Cooke’s Second Wave, Simonson’s “Marvel’s Silver Age” and Catron’s Third Wave are all terms for the same time period. It’s the Bronze Age. You don’t have to embrace the term in order to notice that there was a creative, cultural, and consumer ascendance. The Bronze Age is a handy term for describing it.
I think Giant Size X-Men largely has to stand as the beginning of the Bronze Age. Green lantern/Green Arrow was interesting, but you can't kick off a now age if your title can't even last. If Action Comics ushered in the superhero, and Showcase the new kind of hero, X-Men defined the model of superheroes for decades hence.
If you look at most of the new team books created, they more or less follow the X-Men template. Outsiders, (often mutants, if legally allowed) of some kind of exotic background, and intended to fill some kind of niche. Hell, even the toy-based books would follow this formula.
Hell, if you look at just about every enduring character in marvel's inventory, from the late 1970's to somewhere in the nineties, they're a mutant, or has a very close relationship to them. (Major exceptions are Venom and Elektra)
Posted by: R.A. Bartlett | July 27, 2010 at 01:30 AM