[JVJ]

Agreed on not applying preferences as absolutes, Jim.  I'm learning a LOT from this discussion and I'm glad you started it!

I hadn't realized the paper had gotten better even by the 60's and 70's, I thought the basic stock was the same up through the 80's and the change in shade was mostly due to age on the older books.

To go off on a tangent, why do you consider 1949 the end of the Golden Age?  It's not a number I've often heard used, most people seem to pick either 1945 (end of WWII) or 1954 (pre-cca).  For myself, I tend to think of it as around the later date with a couple grace years for publishers and titles that went down quickly after the code started but at least tried.  (EC being the classic example there; other than Mag Magazine EC=GA to me.) 

I have a VERY different view of comics history, Eric, than most other people. Blame it on my long association with Hames Ware and, to an extent, Jerry Bails, or blame it on having actually SEEN so many comics over the years, but I see comics history in terms of MONTHS, not AGES. When Hames and I are conjuring up lists of possible candidates for an art credit, I can almost "see" in my mind which artists were working where that month in that year. So, the JVJ version of "ages" (as actually espoused in print in Promethean Enterprises #2 in 1969) is that while comics started in 1934, it wasn't until 1938 that they hit their stride with Superman (and others) and entered what is considered "The Golden Age."

These heroes and comics didn't STOP when the war ended in 1945. Their momentum kept them and the industry going for a couple of years, but by the end of 1948, the heroics of the Golden Age had been replaced almost completely by Crime, Romance, Westerns and Horror. That's when the Golden Age ended - when heroic characters were kicked out of the comics almost entirely (except for DC) and the stories were no longer about classic and classy characters but about the common man or woman or criminal or ghoul.

What followed from 1949 to 1956 (in the JVJ "ages") I called the "Dark Ages" back in 1969. There was no strong focus for the industry and genres and approaches were tried, discarded and retried again and again. "Ages" don't start with one comic in my opinion, those key comics (like Action 1) happen because of the "Age."

Several things occurred in 1957, the most pertinent of which was the Atlas Implosion, to set the stage for what we call "the Silver Age." One of the reasons that Brave and the Bold found an audience is that nearly 1/2 of all the comics that were on the stands in 1954 had vanished by mid 1957. With the Comics Code, the Fawcett/DC verdict, and the Implosion, there was a vacuum of content and pent-up demand for something new. That "something new" was obviously something old. But what occurred between 1949 and 1956, while of GREAT interest to me and to you, was pretty much a minor blip in the history of comic books. It's only 7 years (think 7 years of modern comics history - what's happened since 2001?), so again we have to be wary of seeing our preferences as absolutes.

I gotta stop all this THINKING and get back to WORKING, folks. You are challenging me in new and interesting ways - or old ways that I hadn't dwelt on for 40 years - but other mistresses demand my attention.

[John C]

I've been looking at Comic Book Ages, myself, on an on-and-off basis.  What's interesting is that I don't see an explicity "Dark Age" like you do, but rather every age having its own version.

(I'll warn you now--this is long and probably rambling.  My apologies, and I won't hold it against anybody for completely ignoring this message...)

I'll grant that years are inexact because they "sweep" through the industry at different rates, but something I've noticed is that, every so often, the "morality" of comics changes, there's a reboot of several key characters (Superman, Captain America, and Blue Beetle are the examples I see the most), and the aforementioned "darkness" midway through.

So my Golden Age runs from 1938 to 1954, when the Comics Code is established (with a mandatory moral code); in 1948, the Wertham has his symposium that results in book burnings and the creation of the ACMP.  Superheroes don't go away, but they do need "patriarchs" (Superman or Batman, for example) to stay on the racks.

I see the Silver Age starting in 1953 (yes, I know), because Timely revives its big three superheroes and Superman sees the first of a long string of Krypton-oriented stories.  The following year, the Blue Beetle returns, "Seduction of the Innocent" goes to press, and we get the Comics Code.  Within another few years, we get the Martian Manhunter, the new Flash, the ANC collapse, and the campy sci-fi Batman.  It's hard to spot the "dark" part of the Silver Age, but I might pin it on the rise of fandom, which pushes the books down a more directly commercial path (and sets up for the writers who are more fan than professional, later on down the line).  Mileage may vary, though, and I realize that sounds insulting to a lot of people.

The lines I see are blurrier for the Bronze Age, because it could start as early as 1966, with major revamps to the Martian Manhunter, Blue Beetle (Ted Kord in 1967), and Wonder Woman.  However, most of those were minor and for failing titles.  In 1970, though, we see the Falcon joining Captain America, which started the arc redefining the character, and the non-Code Approved Green Lantern and Spider-Man issues (forcing a change to the Comics Code).  1971 brings us the Superman revamp, where his day job is finally updated, the silliest flotsam is abandoned, and Clark begins exploring his "place" in the DCU.  And the DC Implosion puts the dark part of the age into place when financial concerns toppled a good chunk of the industry.

My Iron Age absolutely has to start in 1985-6.  "Watchmen" and "The Dark Knight Returns" set the grim and gritty forces (our new moral cycle) in motion.  "Who's Who" and Marvel's Handbooks make cataloguing a big deal even as the status quo is shattered.  Captain America changes substantially in "Secret Wars."  Superman gets an overhaul in "The Man of Steel."  Blue Beetle even starts over as a result of "Crisis."  Right on schedule, we get our collector bubble around 1991 and the horrifying garbage churned out by Image Comics (which itself changed the Comics Code, but nobody pays attention to it, by this time), leading to a lot of depressing and directionless garbage.

And I'd say that our current age started in 1999-2000.  Geoff Johns turned the JSA into a "family" book, where your team and allies are more important than saving the world.  That's carried over into every other book from all the companies, it seems.  Marvel's Ultimate line showed up at the same time they abandoned the Comics Code entirely.  There's no explicit change in Superman, but there was supposed to be (Waid, Morrison, and others put in a proposal, rejected because they were "too popular"), and a lot of those ideas showed up in Superman/Batman, Smallville, and Birthright in the following years.  We get two new takes on Captain America.  We have to wait a couple more years to get the new Blue Beetle, but there he is.

By my count, we're seeing the Age's decline now.  The Siegels won their Superboy and Superman cases.  Marvel killed off Captain America.  Batman may or may not get killed.  Countdown was utter nonsense and Secret Invasion doesn't sound much better.  Final Crisis advertises other books, rather than telling a story.  There's actually a pretty expansive list of missteps as paper costs are on the rise and nobody understands digital distribution.

In the meantime, I'm going to sit back and wait for 2014 or so.  Steve Rogers is expected back as Captain America in 2012, I believe.  Shuster's nephew will have his copyright case the following year, which should force significant changes to Superman.  I assume someone'll revamp Blue Beetle at that point, too.

What's interesting is that my next cycle comes around when the Detective Comics copyrights will start expiring, meaning that we may see the first massive explosion of new characters to replace increasingly public domain Golden Agers.  Or the companies may all go bankrupt trying to pretend that the Internet doesn't exist...

Hey, I told you it was long and rambling--I even left stuff out!

[JVJ]

Now I ask you guys, WHAT DOES ALL THIS have to do with cleaning up a scan?
Man, do we ever know how to get off topic. One little aside about when the Golden Age ended and look where we end up! I won't pursue your "ages" ramble, jcolag, and I only mentioned "The Dark Ages" because that's how I referred to it in my 1969 article. I certainly would not apply that lable today, but those WERE simpler and less enlightened times.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[rez]

Hey, I told you it was long and rambling--I even left stuff out!

Ya, but it was a good ramble.

[John C]

Jim, there are three things I'm really, really good at.  The first is leaving stuff the heck alone for long periods of time (which makes roasting today's turkey my job!).  The second is gathering just enough information to be dangerous.  The third is going WAY the heck off-topic once someone else goes on an interesting tangent...

On the bright side, I figure the "Page Down" key is a lot easier to get at than a delete button.  And the moderators have been pretty good with hacking out off-topic discussions for another thread, where it's too distracting.

Needless to say, though, I did find your quick discussion very interesting, and wasn't trying to argue the point, by any means.

[JVJ]

I hope you were able to detect the notes of bemused admiration in my post, jcolag,
I have achieved complete mastery of the "page down" key (and actually used it once you got into the "Iron Age" parts), so I hope you didn't take any criticism from my comments. I can go as far "off-topic" just as fast as you, but have to restrain myself from taking the time to play. It's far too easy and too much fun, but sanity rears its ugly head and says "go back to work and stop indulging yourself."

I do find this topic (How much cleanup?) to be of considerable interest, though, and "what age started when?" is not something that I have devoted many brain cells to in the last 35 years. As I said, I have a different view of comics "history" than most and I'm willing to accept that I am a minority of one (well, maybe two, when Hames agrees with me). So if you want to discuss comics history, I'll be happy to participate in that thread, when time allows.

And can we use this one to talk about OtherEric's first Target scans?  I liked them, Eric, except where they showed what a piece of junk my copy is. Three important aspect of [Levels][Auto] that you should know:

1. The first is that you can apply it as an "Adjustment Layer" - just click the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of the layers palette and choose [Levels] and then [Auto] as before.

2. The "Adjustment Layer" appears above your Background Layer in the palette AND you can adjust the "Opacity" of the adjustment by changing the opacity of that layer.

3. With an Adjustment Layer, you can go back into the file tomorrow and change the Levels that you set with [Auto] or even remove the adjustment layer completely and start over.

I think I'll copy the above to "OtherEric's Scans", too.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[OtherEric]

There, I split it off.  About time I figured out how to do that...

[JVJ]

There seems to be a "sense" in comics fandom that a specific issue of one book signified a sea change in the industry. All I can say is that it is MUCH more complicated than that and no one is ever going to understand all the forces that were in play. We say "Mad #1 was a key book," but it arrived without making a ripple in the industry and wasn't even a commercial success until issue 6 or 7. In retrospect, we can see that Mad #1 was important, but it was really the successful issues (7-23) that were influential and we've pre-dated that value back to the first issue.

The notion of "ages" seems to be tied to "trends" in comics, and I can't see any connections at all between the naive heroics of 1940 and the horror, crime and romance of 1950. To my mind they are totally different "ages" - the latter much more "mature" (if you will) than the former. Viewed objectively, they are analogous to the pre- and post-Dark Knight eras. After all, the crime and horror books were more "adult" and much "darker" than what had sustained the industry before, through, and just past the war. As jcolag put it, "The morality of comics changes." I put that change around 1948/49, and most people in early fandom did, too.

I have observed that the "Golden Age" began to be applied to 1950s comics only after the early Overstreet Price Guides made it possible for anyone to be a comics dealer. These early dealers weren't "historians" nor were they especially concerned with how they labeled things. It became easier for anything prior to the comics code to be labeled "Golden Age." It became a marketing term, not an historical one.

So perhaps we should discuss terms first. What determines or defines an "Age" in comics? There should be SOME criteria that can be applied objectively but what should it be based on?

Has anyone ever noticed that between about 1955 and 1968, VERY few new artists actually began to work in comic books? I can think of Jim Steranko and Neal Adams. The "Silver Age" was very stagnating when it came to new talent.

[kidterror]

This is may turn into a semantics debate. But here we go.

So first it's going to depend on how you define comics.

I'll go with the sequential art definition.

The Stone Age: Egyptian and Pre-Columbian paintings and European tapestries: 14th century B.C.

The Wood Age: The invention of print, wordless novels from woodcuts: 15th century.

The Platinum Age: Rodolphe Topffer's first comics in the modern sense, panel borders and the return of words. 1831.

The Golden Age: The first appearance of The Clock in 1936 paving the way for Supes

The Atomic Age: ~1949 as most superheroes are phased out of comics eventually leaving only DC's Big 3

The Silver Age: 1956 the introduction of the 2nd Flash

The Bronze Age: 1970 the first issue of Conan, followed shortly by the Fourth World

The Iron Age: 1984 Saga of the Swamp Thing #21

The Chromium age: 1991 New Mutants #100

The Modern Age: 1996 Kingdom Come

Some might say my Platinum, Golden and Iron dates are a little early, and my bronze is a little late but I'm really looking at the earliest examples that started trends and set tones for the metallic eras. The pre-metallic eras are more based on available technology.

[narfstar]

I think the ages vary by book or company or character. This is especially true with series that were ongoing during the transitional time. The tone of the book would change to suit the age. Not all books changed at the same time, thus the age is not a one book/title deal.

[JVJ]

I agree with you both, kid and narf,
If you combine your responses, you'll arrive at my general position. Your early "ages" are rather imprecise as to their ranges, and I believe the same "imprecision" is valid later on - and narf's response emphasizes that. The Golden Age is not the first appearance of the Clock or Superman or whomever, it's the late thirties when the medium was "mature" enough to support a wide variety of new and experimental characters. And it didn't end when the first romance comic or the first horror comic appeared. Superman and comic strip reprints coexisted in the late 30's, so did romance, horror and superheroes in the late 40s.

As narf observes, with various companies the content of their books changed gradually and at different times. Harvey abandoned their super characters at a different point than Prize or Quality did. Sensation became Sensation Mystery at a different date than Marvel Comics became Marvel Tales. It's a floating, amorphous transformation of the medium that is occurring and trying to pin such change down to a single issue DOES become a matter of personal semantics.

So, the Golden Age ending in 1949 is accurate, kid, but it also ended, or was ending, in 1947 and 1948.

Likewise, the beginning of the Silver Age being pinned to Showcase 4 in 1956 pretty much ignores the contents of Showcase 3 and 5. Issue 4 was an experiment and the medium didn't react or adapt for a year or so. So many factors were involved other than Showcase that, while it is an easy (and NOT incorrect) indicator, it isn't the whole story by a long shot.

As for later "ages", the only one I can even comment on is the "bronze age" and I can't fault Conan #1, but my heart puts it back a year or so when comic books opened up the doors to the first wave of new, fan-generated artists.

Beyond that, it IS all semantics to me.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[kidterror]

I probably should have mentioned that I don't think a previous age ends, when the first hint of a new age hits. I'm just pinpointing specific events that started the age. There are some indicators of the bronze age as early as 1963, and many platinum age characters were extremely popular well into and after the golden age, without major changes. I don't really see them as clearly defined, but these are the markers I use as sort of heralds of an age.

[JVJ]

I got that from your original post, kid,
and I agree with you. And, with every "simplification" come folks who accept it as gospel, because it IS easy to understand and repeat (sort of why "sound bites" make up the news). As you say, it's more amorphous than precise and I'd like people to grasp that it's not a Marvel/DC tug-of-war as to whether one company or the other was most influential. It's the INDUSTRY that makes an age, not one issue or one character or one title. It's analogous to a flock of birds turning in a new direction. If only one of them did it, or only a minority of them, you wouldn't end up with a new "age". WHY they turn and who "decided" to turn doesn't much matter to them. They seem to know that if they want to remain a flock, they all have to turn.

We point to Showcase #4 as a turning point, but that was Sept/Oct. 1956 and Flash didn't get even two consecutive issues of Showcase until mid-1958, so neither DC nor the industry saw Showcase #4 as much of turn signal. But over those two years, LOTS of other things happened that nudged comics towards a super-hero revival. Take a look at the 16 titles that Stan Lee and Martin Goodman chose to survive the Atlas Implosion of 1957 and you won't see much "impact" from Showcase #4:

BATTLE, GUNSMOKE WESTERN, HOMER THE HAPPY GHOST, KID COLT-OUTLAW, LOVE ROMANCES, MARINES IN BATTLE, MILLIE THE MODEL, MISS AMERICA, MY OWN ROMANCE, NAVY COMBAT, PATSY & HEDY, PATSY WALKER, STRANGE TALES, TWO-GUN KID, WORLD OF FANTASY, WYATT EARP

4 teen titles
4 western titles
3 war titles
2 weird titles
2 romance titles
1 kids' title

I'm not a big DC historian, so I can't tell you what percentage of their line-up was represented by super-heroics in 1957, but I'll bet it was fairly small (numbers, anyone?)

So, you're absolutely right to indicate Showcase #4 as a beginning, but it doesn't signify a sweeping change in the content of the industry (not that you said or implied that it DID). We could also point to Dell beginning to adapt movies into comic book form or the first appearance of Herbie or The Challengers of the Unknown, who were every bit as "super" as Flash and were actually NEW. In reality, no one knows why the "flock" of comic companies moved into a different trajectory, but the movement was slow and ponderous, not the darting turn of a flock of birds. After all, it wasn't until The Double Life of Private Strong in 1959 that a company OTHER than DC made a foray into superheroes. If it takes THREE YEARS to get someone else to join you, it's hard to describe the "Age" as having begun.

[kidterror]

I completely agree, just because the Flash pops up, it's not a clear beginning of an age like say 1970 is a clear example of the beginning of a new decade. There are usually influences that extend in both directions in time from the standard Superman/Flash/Conan markers for around half a decade, the age doesn't congeal until sometime after the markers I use. The borders are always going to be fuzzy, but it's nice to have a loose time frame for the stuff that falls in between. Iron Fist ran until 87 if I remember correctly and he's very bronze age, but that's after Moore, Miller & Crisis. Probably the best way to avoid people clinging to specific issues is to label an age with a circa 19XX to circa 19XX and use your best personal appraisal and don't name just one issue as a clear starting point but give a few examples of the changes that were occurring. And, I of course mean the universal "you."

[JVJ]

Maybe we should be more willing to use the word "extends".
The Golden Age EXTENDS back to Detective Picture Stories in 1936 and EXTENDS up to (pick one?) All-American 102 (1948), All-Star 51 (1951), Marvel Mystery #92 (1949)
The Atomic Age EXTENDS back to (say) Young Romance #1 in 1947 and up to the Atlas Implosion in 1957.
The Silver Age EXTENDS back to Showcase #4 in 1956 and EXTENDS up to 1970.

After that, I refuse to play.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[cimmerian32]

I've always been comfortable with defining the Golden Age as the war years...  1938-1945...  but the start of the Atom Age?  A bit more nebulous...  do you start it with Eerie Comics #1 (1947)?  At least the end of the Atom Age is clearly defined...  1955, and the start of the CCA.  Silver Age?  Nebulous again...  Detective Comics #225?  Showcase #4?  Brave & the Bold #28?  Fantastic Four #1?

The Bronze Age I consider to be more influenced by art than any company specific book.  Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, Robert Crumb, these are the guys that define the Bronze Age for me.  Copper Age I would probably give to ASM #129, with the Punisher's popularity bringing in a "darker", less morally centered type of heroic writing.  No idea what comes after the Copper Age (Chromium?)...

[John C]

After kicking open that can of worms, I suppose I should participate in the discussion...

I have to admit that I tend to feel dismissive of most typical frameworks, because they don't "speak" to me.  I think of Ages as a model, not a set of labels, mostly because I can't imagine how arbitrary labels help anybody but speculators.  And I don't like speculators.

So, I tend to equate "different companies line up differently" as "there ain't no Ages."  That's a valid hypothesis, of course, but neither seems to help make predictions.

Likewise, yes, I think we all pretend there are razor-sharp divisions because it makes it easier to gesticulate and discuss, but really, an Age is about dominance, not presence.  The things that make up the Silver Age existed long before Superman and will outlive him.  But they're only really significant in a range somewhere around 1954-1970.  That's why everybody bickers over Captain Comet, Martian Manhunter, or the second Flash as the first Silver Age hero--in my mind, they're all missing the point, because they're part of the movement.  You have to expect some precursors and some late bloomers in any evolution.

I don't really expect anybody else to agree with me, but I run along very broad-stroked lines.  My Golden Age runs from 1938, because that's when the details of what a "comic book" is (to most people) were brought into effect.  It runs until the Silver Age, kicked off by the greatest sea change in the industry to date, which is the CCA (1954), rather than any character's appearance; the allowable topics changed overnight, and this happened to coincide with several important revivals.  1970 brings the Bronze Age, because the Comics Code changed, again in the midst of industry shifts.

I admittedly cheat for the 1985ish Iron Age, because there's no Code change, but there's an industrial upheaval between Crisis, Marvel's diversification, the encyclopedia fetish, and so forth.  And the Code DID change along the way.  And then 2000ish starts the abandonment of the Code, along with some quieter industry changes (Marvel Ultimates, for example) that have been expanding.

That gives us some ability, I think, to talk about the dominant force.  The Bronze Age's shift to allow mention, of but not glorification, corruption, drugs, and sex made "relevance" a key storytelling device.  Were there drug stories before Spidey?  Have they appeared after the Age passed?  Obviously.  But they were common and important during the seventies and early eighties.  That, at least, is how I account for the "blurred edges" and "extending" Ages.

Ahem.  I...uhm...forget where I was going with this.

Oh, but something does occur to me:  There might be a similar situation between my model and the distinction between astronomical and meteorological seasons.  That is, would it be most effective if the "peak" or "key issue" to be the beginning of the Age (which is how I've been assuming I'd do it) or the middle?  Personally, I don't know, but it's an interesting discussion nonetheless, I think.

Also the "dark ages" (whether solitary or one for each Age as I suggest)...I consider downswings as part of a larger age, but can see why an "upswing, downswing" model (doubling the Ages, essentially, with more varying lengths) could be useful for certain kinds of scholarship.