Iron Age Philosophies

[Katherine]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

It makes about as much sense as the Wizard using his abilities for crime instead of making a few billion off his antigravity patents;)

 

Exactly, I think that's is thrust of the argument. Iron Age settings are less forgiving on those types of things than more four color settings. In IA game, you should come with a reason for why the The Wizard isn't just selling his gadgets or maybe he is and is an antagonist for some other reason.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

Okay, one last point when I realized I had focused too much on the X-Men and the Authority and not enough on good old fashioned characters like Batman and Daredevil, as well as the Punisher, who was probably the epitome of the low end Iron Age as Cable was of the high end.

 

23. Vigilantism

I think I'll contradict a previous point. Crime fighting can be Iron Age, the Punisher being the archetypical example of that. But when Iron Age superheroes fight crime, they are pure vigilantes clearly defying due process, acting as judge, jury and executioner. The police are almost inevitably after them for the fact that they are clearly taking the law into their own hands, instead of actually providing superpowered backup for the police, helping the police subdue criminals they would otherwise be unable to track down. Vigilantes tend to be more street level superheroes, fighting the manifestations of organized crime. The supervillains involved tend to be employed by organized crime or like the Kingpin, run the show but make their money from conventional criminal activies. A lot of the previous stuff is high end Iron Age, but low end Iron Age is really vigilantes and organized crime.

 

On the Pulp Era:

In some ways, the Iron Age is thematically a throwback to the era of the Pulps. A lot of pulp heroes definitely did not have codes versus killing. Likewise in pulp era and during the early Golden Age, there wasn't a great amount of faith in government institutions either. During Prohibition there were a lot of corrupt officials taking bribes from the Mob, and during the Great Depression a lot of people lost faith in institutions as well. The PI who was a lone knight fighting for justice in a world of corrupt institutions, often dealing with police officers and city officials on the take indicates that cyncism is not a modern phenomena. Superman spent a lot of his early days dealing with mobsters and corrupt officials.

 

To some extent I think Batman was one of the easiest of the superheroes to recast as an Iron Age vigilante figure (in Dark Knight Returns) was because he was the closest of the Golden Age heroes to the original pulps. In the earliest days of superheroes, the line between superhero figures and pulp figures was essentially non-existant. There wasn't a huge difference between Batman and the Spider, for example, and the Spider was a very bloody vigilante indeed. Very few people remember how much of a thug that Superman used to be, as much as Batman was, but where Superman shed that in the later Golden Age and Silver Age, Batman never quite let go of his pulp origins.

 

Batman while ostensibly into justice, always had the undercurrent of vengence underlying his war against crime. That was a very common theme in the pulps and it's one that tends to fit in well with the Iron Age. Batman was far more of the vigilante.than Superman was, and has always been such. It took very little to remake Batman into an Iron Age character in alternate continuitities, even if he tended to hang onto the Code Versus Killing that was grafted onto him in the later Golden Age and became part of the mythos in the Silver Age.

 

Even Daredevil, who was a Silver Age creation, was always a street level superhero (more so than Spiderman, who swung over it), especially during Miller's revival of the character (Miller had a natural tendency to reinvent characters in Iron Age versions). It would not have been at all difficult to have Daredevil exist during the Golden Age, a blind vigilante with inhumanly enhanced senses. As one of the more pulpy superheroes, recasting him into the Iron Age wasn't all that difficult. And Miller did break Daredevil's Bronze Age secret identity and dual life when he let the Kingpin find out Daredevil's secret ID and then proceeded to break the man.

[Rene]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

Nice summations again, Mutant for Hire! Can't forget the guys like Punisher, Batman, and the Crow.

 

I would also complement something you said. There is another kind of really common Iron Age villain. If some Iron Age heroes are morally grey and flawed, some Iron Age villains, unlike Magneto or the Kingpin (or even the new Luthor) are the very epithome of depraved twisted sick evil. They make even the most flawed of heroes a square-chinned paragon by comparision.

 

Usually extremely powerful, immune to injury, and personaly intimidating, this type of villain indulges in "that which should NOT have been done" kind of destructive orgies.

 

Some perfect examples would be Kid Miracleman, Wild Card's The Astronomer and Blaise, the Joker, Seth from the Authority, and the psycho that is just starting to appear in Supreme Power. Planetary's The Four are kind of a mix between this kind of villain and the "political masterminds" you've mentioned.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

I hinted at it in the Code Versus Killing point, but yes, there are casual killers and mass murders among the villains. I missed a category of villains, who crop up both on the low end and on the high end (main difference is how many people they can kill at a time due to power level). That was not something you found in the Silver Age. Even the early Golden Age was a little careful not to leave a high body count (except among minions of the villain).

 

Yes, even in the morally gray world of the Iron Age, there are a few villains who are pure black and are obviously evil and need to be put down. In this way Iron Age stories can have their cake and eat it too. They can have these protagonists (one hesitates to call some of them heroes) who go in with guns blazing and beat up people but one is in the sound happy knowledge that the other side deserves it thoroughly.

[ChuckB]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

Many iron-age books deal with social issues and how superhumans can affect them.

 

Also, the G-8 countries have access to extremely advanced and bizarre technology and are comfortable with it.

 

Supers tend to be jaded and don't always take prisoners.

[psm]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

Thanks to everybody for their input. It's funny I never realized how many seeds for Iron Age stories were planted by the advent of Marvel.

 

Also seeing everyone's elses views helped me to really make me form my own personal views. I still think that alot of the themes that perpetuate Iron Age stories are not really indicitave of the genre but simply continued because another Iron Age story had them. I'm also amazed that more stories in the genre don't focus on legality and the legal system. I think more superheroes in the modern world would wear masks to hide themselves from lawyers instead of supervillians.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

24. Lack of Concern for the Law

This is implicitly referenced in a few other points, but the fact is that Iron Age heroes rarely get concerned with the law. The low end heroes are vigilantes who consider the justice system to be a failure or not enough. The midrange heroes have a sponsoring agency covering for them (and sometimes teams of lawyers are referenced to, even if they never appear). The high end heroes are too powerful to need to pay attention to the law.

 

On Stan Lee:

A lot of the seeds of the Iron Age were laid by Stan Lee. The Hulk was the other title that really broke a lot of Silver Age genre conventions. The Hulk didn't fight crime. He was the result of a government experiment and tended to be unfairly hounded by the government. The Hulk wasn't even really a superhero, except more or less by accident. To my mind, the X-Men and the Hulk were the real seeds of the Iron Age.

 

Of course that doesn't mean that Stan was responsible. The Silver Age was descending into the Bronze Age and inevitably to the Iron Age under its own power. Stan was more indicative of the times rather than a driving force of it.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

A note of correction.

 

In most points Mutant For Hire is correct in pointing out how many early Marvel innovations reached culmination in, or foreshadowed, the Iron Age. However, he consistently attributes these to Stan Lee.

 

Point in fact, while Lee certainly played his part, the innovations that happened at Marvel had at least as much to do with Jack Kirby as they did Stan Lee. Stan and Jack worked together, with Stan doing the scripting, but an awful lot of the ideas - including the entire concept of the X-Men - were Jack's alone.

 

Steve Ditko also played a very important role, though not as large a one overall as did Jack Kirby.

 

This is not to take away anything Lee did. His distinctive scripting style was a major factor in early Marvel's success... but many of the innovative ideas started with others, and most often with Kirby.

[psm]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

On Stan Lee:

A lot of the seeds of the Iron Age were laid by Stan Lee. The Hulk was the other title that really broke a lot of Silver Age genre conventions. The Hulk didn't fight crime. He was the result of a government experiment and tended to be unfairly hounded by the government. The Hulk wasn't even really a superhero, except more or less by accident. To my mind, the X-Men and the Hulk were the real seeds of the Iron Age.

 

Of course that doesn't mean that Stan was responsible. The Silver Age was descending into the Bronze Age and inevitably to the Iron Age under its own power. Stan was more indicative of the times rather than a driving force of it.

 

I think you should also include Jack Kirby too. He had a lot of ideas that helped to influence Marvel comics at that time too. You should also mention FF too when it comes to the Iron Age.

1. They wore 'uniforms' instead of costumes. Originally, they didn't even have uniforms.

2. They were more explorers than superheroes.

3. No secret identities.

4. The Thing although heroic was considered a monster. Plus, he was the poster child for angst ridden stories.

[psm]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

A note of correction.

 

In most points Mutant For Hire is correct in pointing out how many early Marvel innovations reached culmination in, or foreshadowed, the Iron Age. However, he consistently attributes these to Stan Lee.

 

Point in fact, while Lee certainly played his part, the innovations that happened at Marvel had at least as much to do with Jack Kirby as they did Stan Lee. Stan and Jack worked together, with Stan doing the scripting, but an awful lot of the ideas - including the entire concept of the X-Men - were Jack's alone.

 

Damn, you beat me to it:(

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

I stand corrected. I even knew that myself but as there is a natural human tendency to blame everything on one man and Stan always had the greater habit of self-promotion, I tend to forget about Kirby and Ditko, though I'm not sure if Ditko was really associated with any of the Iron Age concepts that arose at Marvel. Not every Marvel title paved the way for the Iron Age. The Fantastic Four were more an homage to the Challengers of the Unknown, as previously observed.

[Rene]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

The Thing was the most Iron Age-y of the FF, I remember one story (about FF #30) where he had to be restrained from beating the hell out of a fallen Dr. Doom. He surely had a temper in the early days. Not to mention the Sub-Mariner, perhaps comics's first major "grey" hero, that was revitalized in the FF title.

 

And Spider-Man. I think that maybe Spider-Man was more important even than the X-Men and the Hulk in paving the way for the new kind of hero. Thugh he was undoubtly moral and heroic, he opened the door for real for the "less than perfect" heroes. He was, in all ways, the opposite of the DC Silver Age hero who always had his act together and lived a perfect life.

[Chuckg]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

Bronze Age for Spidey, yup.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

I think you should also include Jack Kirby too. He had a lot of ideas that helped to influence Marvel comics at that time too. You should also mention FF too when it comes to the Iron Age.

1. They wore 'uniforms' instead of costumes. Originally, they didn't even have uniforms.

2. They were more explorers than superheroes.

3. No secret identities.

 

Actually, these factors predate the Marvel Age. In their earliest incarnation, Jack created the FF as a remake of his earlier DC creation, the Challengers of the Unknown, with super-powers. Stan had wanted a JLA-style hero team, and he eventually got that in the Avengers, but right from the start, Kirby and Ditko handed him "anything but the same old thing" characters.

[psm]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

Actually' date=' these factors predate the Marvel Age. In their earliest incarnation, Jack created the FF as a remake of his earlier DC creation, the Challengers of the Unknown, with super-powers. Stan had wanted a JLA-style hero team, and he eventually got that in the Avengers, but right from the start, Kirby and Ditko handed him "anything but the same old thing" characters.[/quote']

 

Admittedly, but since the Challengers of the Unknown didn't have any super powers they really can't be considered part of the superhero genre. Unless, you consider the Challengers close enough to still exist in the same sub genre. Personally, I have never felt that COU, Blackhawks, Conan, or Sgt. Rock were close enough to really fit in that category but like I said that's just my opinion.

 

I forgot to mention that Marvel included a lot more political/social issues in their comics than DC ever did. The FF going in space to beat the Russians. Ironman and Hulk were both involved in the ever escalating weapons programs of the Cold War.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Iron Age Philosophies

 

I think Steranko's work on Nick Fury also contributed toward the dawning of the Bronze age of comics. Complex, adult themes and bold, experimental artwork.