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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2014 9:34:30 GMT -5
As others have stated above the term The Golden Age was in use during the 60's. I don't know when the Silver Age started to be used. I just know when I was working in a comic store in the mid 80's it was already being used. The Bronze Age started being used about the time Image started.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 26, 2014 19:25:54 GMT -5
Was digging through some stuff. The takeover of Tomahawk by Kanigher and Thorne with issue 119 definitely a change in direction for that title.
Also note that the last issue before publication had a print run of 280,000 with a 50% sell-thru. They'd kill for numbers like that now.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2014 23:13:00 GMT -5
Was digging through some stuff. The takeover of Tomahawk by Kanigher and Thorne with issue 119 definitely a change in direction for that title. Also note that the last issue before publication had a print run of 280,000 with a 50% sell-thru. They'd kill for numbers like that now. And that's not even one of their cape titles. |
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Post by ghastly55 on Sept 27, 2014 11:01:53 GMT -5
I've said this before and I'll say it again. There is no single date when all comics magically converted from silver to bronze, it is a sliding scale running between 1968 and 1975 based on title, company, and your own personal judgement.
1970 is as useful and generally-accepted date as any, because of the following:
- Kirby jumps ship.
- Amazing Adventures/Astonishing Tales start
- Weisinger retires
- X-Men goes reprint
- Conan begins
- Steranko's last internal Marvel work
The argument for 1968 is the Marvel title expansion, which pretty quickly led to a degradation in story quality. That IND distribution restriction had some good points.
The argument for 1975 is the ANAD X-Men, which some believe represents the true beginning of the bronze age.
Points in between include the death of Gwen Stacy (sorry, was that a spoiler???), the non-CCA Spidery drug issues, the introduction of vampires and werewolves in mainstream Marvel comics, the debut of Swamp Thing, the price fluctuation of 15-25-20 cents, and the related experimentation with alternate sizes.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2014 11:07:09 GMT -5
To me, the bronze age starts with 15c covers and ends in the early 80s, maybe around the time of 50c covers.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Sept 27, 2014 11:35:20 GMT -5
To me, the bronze age starts with 15c covers and ends in the early 80s, maybe around the time of 50c covers. While the start of the Bronze Age is hotly debated, I think it's pretty much universally agreed upon that Crisis on Infinite Earths ended it. edit: by the way, that's got to be the most impressive avatar I've ever seen. I could watch that thing for hours. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Sept 27, 2014 11:54:59 GMT -5
To me, the bronze age starts with 15c covers and ends in the early 80s, maybe around the time of 50c covers. While the start of the Bronze Age is hotly debated, I think it's pretty much universally agreed upon that Crisis on Infinite Earths ended it. edit: by the way, that's got to be the most impressive avatar I've ever seen. I could watch that thing for hours. Crisis, Watchmen and DKR make the transition point really easy. |
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Post by Cei-U! on Sept 27, 2014 11:56:53 GMT -5
You could make an argument that the Silver Age starts with the imposition of the Comics Code in late '54 and ends with the liberalization of the Code in early '71.
Cei-U!
I summon the CCA Stamp of Approval!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2014 12:24:49 GMT -5
I think it's started in 1970 and ended around 1984. Here's an excellent link explaining the different ages of Comic Book History ... Comic Book Ages |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 27, 2014 12:29:48 GMT -5
While the start of the Bronze Age is hotly debated, I think it's pretty much universally agreed upon that Crisis on Infinite Earths ended it. edit: by the way, that's got to be the most impressive avatar I've ever seen. I could watch that thing for hours. Crisis, Watchmen and DKR make the transition point really easy. The end of the bronze age was also marked by the rise of the comic shop as the main (and soon practically sole) place one could buy comics. That reality had a massive impact on the whole field. |
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Post by shaxper on Sept 27, 2014 12:33:23 GMT -5
Here's an excellent link explaining the different ages of Comic Book History ... Comic Book AgesInteresting. He lists ages I've never even heard of before, yet also believes the Modern Age has now lasted 22 years. |
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Post by ghastly55 on Sept 27, 2014 13:08:39 GMT -5
Interesting. I began buying my comics almost exclusively in comic shops as early as 1978, in Toronto. Around the same time, I took jobs which had me traveling throughout Ontario and the northeastern US regularly, and I always made it a point to locate and stop at comic shops wherever I found them. The last time I can remember buying a comic (floppy) at a shop not devoted to comics or books was when I was grabbing every copy I could find of Howard The Duck #1, because all the comic shops had "sold out" (read: sold all their copies to speculators). But I guess the comic shop did not become both pervasive and exclusive until 1990 or so. It depends on your age, I suppose. I turned 20 in the mid-1970s, so although I was introduced to comics at newsstands and convenience stores in the late 50s/early 60s, by 1975 I was actively seeking out stores that knew what they were carrying as opposed to tossing stuff on the shelf and seeing what didn't stick. |
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Post by shaxper on Sept 27, 2014 13:36:37 GMT -5
But I guess the comic shop did not become both pervasive and exclusive until 1990 or so. It depends on your age, I suppose. I turned 20 in the mid-1970s, so although I was introduced to comics at newsstands and convenience stores in the late 50s/early 60s, by 1975 I was actively seeking out stores that knew what they were carrying as opposed to tossing stuff on the shelf and seeing what didn't stick. The first LCS opened near me around 1988/1989. |
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Post by ghastly55 on Sept 27, 2014 13:49:40 GMT -5
That would have been about the time that comics uber-fans that didn't want to get a real job figured they would start stores hoping to grab The Next Miller Daredevil or Next Byrne X-Men and get rich.
The first relatively-excluviely-comics shop I recall going to was a place called Queens Comics, on Queen Street East in Toronto's Kew Beach area. It was run by a couple I came to know fairly well, and they made a fairly good living from the place. I think it opened some time in 1978 or thereabouts, and ended up forcing a neighboring used book store that had a small back-issue comics shelf to relocate further along Queen.
They were forced to move in 1987 when a popular but small burger joint bought out their lease and expanded to accommodate some ridiculous line-ups -- there were people lining up 15 deep onto the street to get these burgers. They moved to a slightly smaller store on another commercial thoroughfare nearby (KIngston Road) and omitted the used record section that they also maintained.
About two years later (1989) they sold the business to a younger guy who looked like what civilians imagine all of us comic book folks look like. He was a decent guy who thought he could make a living, but unfortunately he got sucked into the first-edition mania of the day, carrying far too many copies of McFarlane's Spider-Man #1 and similar stunt marketing. He had to declare bankruptcy and close down the store some time in around 1992, I think. I'm sure it had nothing to do with my own disentanglement from the hobby a year earlier ....
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Post by shaxper on Sept 27, 2014 14:02:14 GMT -5
I was living on Long Island, NY, and the first LCS that opened near me was actually a college drop out (nice, intelligent guy, though) renting the front third of the local video rental. It was a small set-up with maybe twenty long boxes of back issues, but they were the first back issues I'd ever seen so, until this very moment, that collection had never seemed anything less than impressive and boundless to me. Eventually, he sold the business to another guy, who was far more of your typical Comic Book Guy (ala The Simpsons). That guy got in RIGHT before the big collector boom hit, and while he must have profited off of this, he rode the ride too long and got out too late, likely losing all that he'd made. Last I saw him, he'd moved into a lousier video rental shop that was in the middle of nowhere and was trying to transition into Magic: The Gathering cards instead.
Meanwhile, several other comic shops sprang up, and one really understood the market and did incredibly well in the mid-1990s. Last time I went back to New York (six years ago), they were the only shop that was still there, though under different ownership.
I now live in the Cleveland area, and all the great LCCes here only went under in the last ten years. I was here to watch all of them vanish. Whereas there were once 10 LCSes within a thirty minute drive from my house, there are now 4.
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