The thing, unlike most of you I'm not looking at comics from an American perspective so I don't tend to see developments at Marvel or DC as necessarily being the defining points-and anyway, I don't think Crisis has any real significance to anyone outside of hardcore DC superhero fans. From my POV, 1980 makes more sense because it was in the early eighties that I saw the move towards the kind of storytelling that later seems to have become defined by Watchmen and DKR actually starting to happen. Over here, books like 2000 AD, The Daredevils and Warrior were pioneering a more complex and obviously adult orientated form of storytelling in about 1981-83 (much of it by Moore and his contemporaries), so to me, 1985 is at least a couple of years too late. Even if we're only talking about American comics, I'd consider Moore's debut on Saga of the Swamp Thing in January '84 or Miller's run on Daredevil beginning in January '81 to be more significant than either man's later work in terms of their importance to the development of comics.

I'd pitch mid-80s as the end of the Bronze age, due mainly to Crisis and Secret Wars - they were the start of the line-wide crossover events that have characterised / plagued the big two ever since.

But that's still basically defining 'ages' purely by what was happening with two specific publishers. There were a lot more publishers than that around in the 80s. 

The ages really only apply to super-hero comics anyways. Take one step away form super-hero comics and you lose all the defining characteristics people try to classify the age with. Trying to define comics as a whole by age base don what is happening in super-hero comics form the big 2 alone is akin to using one of the four blind men's description of the elephant as the entirety of what an elephant is. People classify this new age as reboots, renumbering and line wide crossovers-how many times has Sage rebooted or renumbered? Walking Dead? Asterix? etc. If you want to make a classification system for the ages of super-hero comics, it all works really well, and there were certain defining characteristics of comics in the 30s and 40s beyond just super-hero books that makes Golden Age a more universal categorizing label, but once you move beyond that those common defining characteristics disappear form comics as a whole and people take their cues form what the big 2 super-hero books were doing rather than the industry as a whole. There are over a thousand titles offered each month in previews plus all the books produced that Diamond doesn't carry, Marvel & DC only account for roughly 300 of those titles (more of the market share for certain, but not the scope of what the industry is doing as a whole). 30% is not the whole and while it is certainly an influential part of the whole, it is not the sole defining factor, so any cues that are derived solely form what big 2 super-hero comics are doing will ultimately fail to define comics as a whole for any given period.

There are 2 options, narrow what you are trying to define to the field you are drawing your data from, or expand the data you are using to define the field i.e. categorize the ages of super-hero comics only, or use only cues that apply to all of comics, not just big 2 super-hero comics to define what an Age is. Every "age" from the Silver Age onwards fails at that and only takes it's cues form Marvel & DC. The only age that might even be appropriate for is the Bronze, since there were far fewer other publishers of significance then, but even still you had Western, Archie, Warren, Charlton, Pacific, the undergrounds, all of the European publishers, etc. who were doing nothing of the sort you would think they were if you used the defining characteristics of the Bronze Age as your guide.

If your definitions do not encompass the entirety of the thing you are describing, they cannot serve their intended function. I don't have a problem with trying to define eras, I have a problem with a faulty methodology that is used that ignores large chunks of what it is trying to define.

So if you are looking at the terms to define a new age-what are the common points for comics as a whole that define comics including the big 2 super-hero books, but is not limited to just what they are doing? And then ask is that different enough from what comics as a whole were doing pre-2011 (if that is your breaking point)-and not just different in what Marvel & DC are doing-to warrant the start of a new of of comics? Or narrow your focus and ignore non-super-hero comics and define what are the ages of super-hero comics and is what is being done now different enough form what Marvel and DC were doing to warrant a new age but understand you are not defining comics as a whole when you do so.

-M

For me, most of the defining traits of the Copper Age do not hinge on the Big Two, which is one reason why I don't consider the Bronze Age to last until Crisis/Secret Wars. Two major things were happening around 1980: the birth of the Direct Market and the corresponding rise in Independent publishers, like First, Eclipse, Pacific, and dozens more. Those trends started in the late 70's, but really blew up around 80/81. While the content of the Big Two might not have changed a lot, the industry itself changed drastically. I can't really consider stuff like American Flagg, Grim Jack, or Nexus to be Bronze Age books.

I think that Lupoff was alluding not to the Olympic medals, as Uslan says, but to the classical belief in the Ages of Man, which held that the Golden Age was the time that man was closest in his nature to the gods and became associated with a long-ago time when things were nigh perfect. e.g. "The Golden Age of Baseball;" "The Golden Age of Television." 

Each successive age was associated with a less valuable metal, thus the Silver Age of Comics.

Double-post. Sorry.