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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2014 14:15:49 GMT -5
My first encounter with the terms Golden age and Silver Age were when I stumbled over my first copy of an Overstreet price guide-literally, was walking down the corridor of my high school hours after school let out waiting for the late bus to arrive so I could get home and tripped over a copy in a pile of paper trash on the floor. This was circa '83 (maybe '84) and it had a CC Beck Captain Marvel cover. I devoured all the info about comics in that book, including the GA/SA designations and the dividing lines proposed, which key books were the first for each etc. There was no mention of Bronze Age, and when I finally made into my first comic shop later that year, a lot of 70s books that weren't part of the big ongoing series (such as Avengers, FF, Spidey) were relegated to the basement because no one was looking for them. A few years later, when the Legends mini came out, and Amazing Heroes 100, introducing me to Kirby's Fourth World, I asked him about those issues and he sent my down to the basement to look for them (and I found a bunch, all of which I got for $1.50 or less per issue back then in VF/NM-regrettably sold them when I downsized to move years later). No one thought of them as Bronze Age, and Hal Kinney, the proprietor had been involved in fandom since it was sci-fi fandom and comics were being integrated into that circle, had organized many of the first cons in CT, and was friends with half the freelancers and DC staff who worked in NYC and lived in CT doing the Big Apple commute, and in all my time interacting with him and collecting 70s books, I don't think I ever heard him utter the words Bronze Age. In fact I distinctly remember a conversation where a group of old school collectors were talking and saying there shouldn't ever be an age after the Silver as those books would never gain any kind of real value so shouldn't have any kind of name that indicates there is (boy were they wrong). I stopped going to that shop regularly in '91 after I graduated from college and moved away, and didn't encounter the term Bronze Age for 70s books until some time after that.
So I am a little more curious when the terms were adopted than I am over the endless debates over when they start/stop.
-M
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2014 22:11:20 GMT -5
Does anyone here have the Overstreet Price Guides from the late 80's to the late 90's? It would be in one of those guides where the term Bronze Age is first used.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Sept 28, 2014 2:56:37 GMT -5
As fun as the Golden/Silver/Bronze age debates are, I think it would work best if we just went by decades. The 40's were basically the Golden Age, half of the 50's were the EC/Atomic era, while the 60's were mainly the Silver Age. It all lines up well with the key moments and would save a lot of headaches. Besides, it's a bit of a misnomer to call the Golden Age the Golden Age when the Silver Age was vastly superior conceptual and artistically.
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Post by Prince Hal on Sept 28, 2014 10:15:03 GMT -5
Besides, it's a bit of a misnomer to call the Golden Age the Golden Age when the Silver Age was vastly superior conceptual and artistically. Well now, this might stir things up a bit... |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Sept 28, 2014 18:25:07 GMT -5
Besides, it's a bit of a misnomer to call the Golden Age the Golden Age when the Silver Age was vastly superior conceptual and artistically. Well now, this might stir things up a bit... This DOESN'T apply to comic strips. It would only take comics 40 years to approach the level of illustration of stuff like Prince Valiant (I'm been reading the collection) |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2014 18:32:52 GMT -5
Besides, it's a bit of a misnomer to call the Golden Age the Golden Age when the Silver Age was vastly superior conceptual and artistically. Actually, Golden Age Archie was much superior artistically to anything from the Silver Age, or after it for that matter. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,864
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Post by shaxper on Sept 28, 2014 18:46:10 GMT -5
As fun as the Golden/Silver/Bronze age debates are, I think it would work best if we just went by decades. The 40's were basically the Golden Age, half of the 50's were the EC/Atomic era, while the 60's were mainly the Silver Age. It all lines up well with the key moments and would save a lot of headaches. Besides, it's a bit of a misnomer to call the Golden Age the Golden Age when the Silver Age was vastly superior conceptual and artistically. Eh, even going by decades is problematic. A 1942 superhero comic is going to feel VERY different from a post-war superhero comic from 1948. Early 1980s vs. late 1980s is (in some cases, literally) a different universe. Early 1990s vs. late 1990s -- one is the comic book boom, and the other is the comic book bust. VERY different marketing and writing. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2014 19:02:37 GMT -5
Besides, it's a bit of a misnomer to call the Golden Age the Golden Age when the Silver Age was vastly superior conceptual and artistically. Actually, Golden Age Archie was much superior artistically to anything from the Silver Age, or after it for that matter. They looked very nice, but Afterlife With Archie will give it a run for it's money. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2014 19:39:28 GMT -5
As fun as the Golden/Silver/Bronze age debates are, I think it would work best if we just went by decades. The 40's were basically the Golden Age, half of the 50's were the EC/Atomic era, while the 60's were mainly the Silver Age. It all lines up well with the key moments and would save a lot of headaches. Besides, it's a bit of a misnomer to call the Golden Age the Golden Age when the Silver Age was vastly superior conceptual and artistically. Eh, even going by decades is problematic. A 1942 superhero comic is going to feel VERY different from a post-war superhero comic from 1948. Early 1980s vs. late 1980s is (in some cases, literally) a different universe. Early 1990s vs. late 1990s -- one is the comic book boom, and the other is the comic book bust. VERY different marketing and writing. You made some interesting points - I do agree with you that a 1942 Superhero Comic is far more different than one in the late 40's and I can clearly see that in the eighties that we had two different eras. I can see that too in more ways than one. |
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Post by Ish Kabbible on Sept 28, 2014 20:09:10 GMT -5
A world of difference between early 1950s pre-code and late 50s post-code. And about 25 publishers out of business and 100s of artists moving on to other careers
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Post by ghastly55 on Sept 28, 2014 20:27:59 GMT -5
A world of difference between early 1950s pre-code and late 50s post-code. And about 25 publishers out of business and 100s of artists moving on to other careers My theory is that, like music, decades for comics should be divided at the 5 year and not the 0 year. 1935 - Major Malcolm creates the first comic book that was not made of primarily reprinted newspaper strips. 1945 - With the war's end the medium goes from primarily action heroes to a medium in search of genres to exploit. 1955 - Mad becomes a magazine and EC stops publishing color comics 1965 - Lee and Goodman remove the last vestiges of the old proto-Marvek monster books and DC begins to take notice of and emulate Marvel without understanding it. 1975 - Kirby comes home to Marvel and finds that the House Of Ideas is out of them. 1985 - DC definitively surpasses Marvel in creativity. 1995 - Marvel prepares to crash and burn on the reef of variant covers. 2005 - Everything is an Event. Stuff that happens outside of the annual company crossover events no longer matters. Anyone wanna guess what 2015 might bring?? |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,864
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Post by shaxper on Sept 28, 2014 20:30:20 GMT -5
A world of difference between early 1950s pre-code and late 50s post-code. And about 25 publishers out of business and 100s of artists moving on to other careers My theory is that, like music, decades for comics should be divided at the 5 year and not the 0 year. 1935 - Major Malcolm creates the first comic book that was not made of primarily reprinted newspaper strips. 1945 - With the war's end the medium goes from primarily action heroes to a medium in search of genres to exploit. 1955 - Mad becomes a magazine and EC stops publishing color comics 1965 - Lee and Goodman remove the last vestiges of the old proto-Marvek monster books and DC begins to take notice of and emulate Marvel without understanding it. 1975 - Kirby comes home to Marvel and finds that the House Of Ideas is out of them. 1985 - DC definitively surpasses Marvel in creativity. 1995 - Marvel prepares to crash and burn on the reef of variant covers. 2005 - Everything is an Event. Stuff that happens outside of the annual company crossover events no longer matters. Anyone wanna guess what 2015 might bring?? For Marvel, 1963 and 1974 were much more important years than 1965 and 1975. For DC, 1956 matters a lot more than 1955. |
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Post by ghastly55 on Sept 28, 2014 20:32:55 GMT -5
What was the important Marvel event in 1974?? Sgt. Fury going full reprint?? ;-)
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,864
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Post by shaxper on Sept 28, 2014 20:51:21 GMT -5
What was the important Marvel event in 1974?? Sgt. Fury going full reprint?? ;-) Significant expansion into non-Superhero genres, particularly with the advent of the Curtis magazine line. |
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Post by ghastly55 on Sept 28, 2014 20:58:55 GMT -5
Hmmm, I always remembered the black & whites as getting off the ground in '72, after the early '71 Savage Tales false start.
Just looked at my Tomb Of Dracula Omnibus and issue 1 was dated early 1973, with the last issue (#13) being in mid-75. The other three horror titles started a few months later and ended a month or two earlier, each lasting 11 issues.
For me, the big event I remembered in '74 were all those quarterly Giant-Size titles through which Marvel tried to raise prices without raising the 25-cent cover price
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