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Post by sabongero on Jul 22, 2020 16:17:00 GMT -5
In history, The "Dark Ages" is a historical "period-ization" traditionally referring to the Middle Ages (c. 5th–15th century) that asserts that a demographic, cultural, and economic deterioration occurred in Western Europe following the decline of the Roman Empire.
In comic book history, we are now in the modern age. In your opinion what are the years that comprised the "Dark Ages" of comic books and please feel free to express your opinion why? Thanks.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2020 16:28:30 GMT -5
1994-1998.
Okay, I’m generalising, but I was enjoying little of my regular favourites then. The Dominus storyline aside, nothing in Superman’s books was grabbing me. Ditto Batman (until NO MAN’S LAND). THE CLONE SAGA was, well, the less said about that, the better. All my favourite heroes were in storylines that didn’t appeal to me. Most of them, anyway.
Sure, there were some gems, e.g. Peter David’s Hulk run, ending in 1998. I’m one of two people on Earth who enjoyed THE AGE OF APOCALYPSE. But there were a lot of things that didn’t appeal to me, plus characters like the Punisher and Wolverine were so ubiquitous. As each month passed, you needed more and more bottomless wallets to enjoy it all. More and more crossovers, more and more multi-arc issues. Along with the speculator mentality, I just felt a malaise, and it depressed me.
Again, there were good things. I was engrossed in THE AGE OF APOCALYPSE. Peter David’s Hulk didn’t let me down. There were some excellent books out there. But, also, there was nothing really happening for the UK comic industry. 2000 AD and the JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE were still going, but EAGLE ended in 1994. Marvel UK seemed to have fewer titles. All that I mentioned above led me to feel a bit despondent about the industry. And magazines like HERO ILLUSTRATED would report on things like low sales. Prior to WIZARD and HERO ILLUSTRATED, I didn’t really know the “man behind the curtain”. When you’re reading about low sales on your favourite books, it just adds to the depression.
So, I’m not saying the bleakness began on January 1st, 1994. Nor am I saying it ended on December 31st, 1998. Those are rather rough dates. But as 1999 dawned, I felt a little hopeful. Not sure why, maybe some of it was relief that the likes of THE CLONE SAGA were behind us. NO MAN’S LAND intrigued me. I started to get interested in what I was hearing about storylines in books like AVENGERS and WOLVERINE.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 22, 2020 16:32:17 GMT -5
The 1950s witch hunts would certainly qualify, as it drove publishers out of business and resulted in a stifling of creativity for some years. It certainly held back the maturation of the art form.
I would also suggest the first half of the 90s representing a Dark Half-Age. The emphasis on speculators and gimmicks, combined with consolidation of the distributors did much to severely damage the market. The latter half of the 90s saw a bit of rebuilding, though the overall health of the market at the end of the decade was well below how it started.
The 1970s, from a circulation standpoint, was a Dark Age, as newsstands severely declined, in the recession, to the point comics were close to death, as few wanted to carry them, which helped attract the idea of the Direct Market. That was the end of comics as a mass medium.
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Post by brutalis on Jul 22, 2020 16:38:01 GMT -5
Right now 2020.
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Post by rberman on Jul 22, 2020 16:48:44 GMT -5
As with "Silver Age" and "Bronze Age" a term like "Dark Age" seems best limited to Marvel/DC. Their Dark Age may have been a fertile period for indies.
1988 seems a reasonable starting point. Creators were chasing the success of The Dark Knight and Watchmen but were more likely to get the dark tone than the quality storytelling. Even quality stories like The Killing Joke (1988) and Arkham Asylum (1989) went quite dark. DC writers were bucking against Crisis' fallout. Marvel's New Universe had bombed. Jim Shooter's departure from Marvel threw them into editorial chaos, exacerbated by the company becoming a financial leaf in the wind on Wall Street. Rob Liefeld started at DC in 1988 and then Marvel in 1989. McFarlane started his Spider-Man work in 1988. These mark the beginning of the Image Comics story which eventually bore good fruit but for the first several years was emblematic of the worst of the industry. Wizard Magazine began feeding the speculative bubble in 1991.
The turnaround was uneven since poor material continued throughout the 90s. But it was leavened by material like Marvels (1994), Astro City (1995) and Kingdom Come (1996) that self-consciously set a classier, classic tone. In 1996 Alan Moore was given control of Rob Liefeld's Supreme character and changed him from an ugly Superman caricature into an homage to Silver Age Superman. By 1999, Moore had revived the "America's Best Comics" brand with a focus on Golden Age-style stories.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 22, 2020 16:54:51 GMT -5
It's hard to say how badly I want to get pedantic about the use of "Dark Ages" in a historical context.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jul 22, 2020 17:14:43 GMT -5
I guess the late 1950s or say 1957-1961, post-Atlas heroes, post-E.C., were fairly dire; the "code" (with the stamp style seal) being applied it's most rigidly, but there were still some cool things even in that period, Kirby had some of his better comics even before Fantastic Four #1, Ditko doing some very weird horror things, a new Flash, Green Lantern, JLA, The Fly...
From 1987-1997 was literally a dark time for superhero comics, dark this and dark that, leading into gigantic muscles, necks, thighs, guns, boobs, teeth, body counts... the extreme age? Still, there were always a fair number of good non-superhero comics. Maybe we haven't really seen a real dark ages, or maybe it's right now... but I didn't want to go in many comic shops or be seen with most comics very much starting in 1987 and that was depressing!
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Post by tarkintino on Jul 22, 2020 17:29:51 GMT -5
I guess the late 1950s or say 1957-1961, post-Atlas heroes, post-E.C., were fairly dire; the "code" (with the stamp style seal) being applied it's most rigidly, but there were still some cool things even in that period, Kirby had some of his better comics even before Fantastic Four #1, Ditko doing some very weird horror things, a new Flash, Green Lantern, JLA, The Fly... From 1987-1997 was literally a dark time for superhero comics, dark this and dark that, leading into gigantic muscles, necks, thighs, guns, boobs, teeth, body counts... the extreme age? Still, there were always a fair number of good non-superhero comics. Maybe we haven't really seen a real dark ages, or maybe it's right now... but I didn't want to go in many comic shops or be seen with most comics very much starting in 1987 and that was depressing! Well said, but I would disagree about one point: the creative explosion that almost singlehandedly changed comics forever--the dawn of the Silver Age at DC--occurred in 1956, so in an alleged "dark" period was one of the brightest, most influential events in the medium's history.
About the 1990s, I've posted my views on that terrible Decade of Dumb and eXcess (yes, I went there) elsewhere, but I also say that it had some major creative events that were genuine classics such as Marvels and Kingdom Come, with both easily standing the test of time.
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Post by beccabear67 on Jul 22, 2020 17:42:42 GMT -5
The first few new Flash comics of the later '50s were not really all that well done, kind of like looking only at Fantastic Four #1 & 2, but it's the new costume and character update that counts the most I suppose... the '50s Atlas Cap, Torch & Subby were meant to be the same characters as the '40s, the Atlas Bill Everett Sub-Mariners were some of his best, but they didn't get to stick around.
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Post by Cei-U! on Jul 22, 2020 18:44:04 GMT -5
There's no such thing. There have been wonderful comics published in every era, but in some you have to look outside the super-hero ghetto to find them.
Cei-U! I summon one comics historian's opinion!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2020 19:36:34 GMT -5
When I was still in single-digits I avoided books done by Rob No Feet Liefeld and didn't care for McFarlane Spidey.
So shunning books like those made it a dark period for me but at least I had loads of back-issues to read.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 22, 2020 20:02:23 GMT -5
I would definitely go with eras characterized by bad distribution, difficult access to paper or to printing presses, or by collapsing markets. I suppose the days Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, with its assorted comic-book burnings and condemnation of so many great EC books, could be seen as a dark age.
Creatively, there were always excellent comics being published, even when the top sellers were utter dreck. In the '90s, to name but one example, I was dismayed by how utterly awful things like the Spider-clone Saga, the Crossing or Onslaught sounded... but those were also the years of Berlin, Finder and Sandman Mystery Theatre.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2020 22:30:29 GMT -5
There's no such thing. There have been wonderful comics published in every era, but in some you have to look outside the super-hero ghetto to find them. Cei-U! I summon one comics historian's opinion! Pretty much this. Sturgeon's Law applies to all areas, but when all you look at are super-hero comics and in a particular era they fall into the 90% of it is crap part of that equation it seems dark for that set of fans. It's a sort of parallel to the period in history some folks refer to as the dark ages, because while western Europe was undergoing the tribulations that gave that era it's sobriquet, culture and learning was flourishing in other areas of the world, but people's perspective was too narrowly focused on western Europe to see it. Just as a lot of "comic" fans are too narrowly focused on super-hero comics to see the flourishing of excellence in comics elsewhere. -M
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Post by Bronze age andy on Jul 23, 2020 1:12:20 GMT -5
I've jumped in and out fandom so often I couldn't really tell what were dark ages and what were my personal blind spots. Looking back at the industry from 1994 to 97, It doesn't seem to be as much a dark age as a convoluted mess. I've tried digging in to several different styles and find them all lacking for one reason or another. Poor writing on some, poor art on others,many times both. There were loads of bad editorial choices or none at all and more inflated and bruised egos than you could shake a stick at. That said...I do love Madman
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Post by sabongero on Jul 24, 2020 20:50:23 GMT -5
When I was still in single-digits I avoided books done by Rob No Feet Liefeld and didn't care for McFarlane Spidey.
So shunning books like those made it a dark period for me but at least I had loads of back-issues to read.
I read in the internet sometime when he was still alive, the late Michael Turner, was said to "not draw feet" for some reason as well. I thought Mr. Liefeld was more a "gear-pouches" type of illustrator instead of a "not draw feet"-type of illustrator.
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