transmetahuman Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 My apologies for bringing up yet another thread on the various ages of comics. I was chatting online with a friend the other day; I was trying to explain, briefly, what I meant by "iron age" and "bronze age". He's a nerd, but apparently not enough of one to know comics lit theory or whatever that is. Another "used to read comics" guy. What I came up with was: golden age: nazis, commies and asians aren't really human; buy war bonds! silver age: jet-powered apes casually move planets around with wonder woman's golden lasso bronze age: the x-men & justice league stuff you're watching on tv iron age: neurotic, would-be-godling heros with drug addictions impose new world orders My own prejud... er, tastes are obviously showing here, I know. It was off-the-cuff and tongue-in-cheek. But I have a feeling I'm going to want to use the "Ages" terminology to explain things to potential players who might not know what it means. I'm not really sure that I know what they mean myself - pretty much everything I know about them comes fom this board. What one-line descriptions would you use to describe each Age? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites One line descriptions? Whew.. mmm... okay, I think that there are two golden age styles (comic code enforced and filtered retroactively, and the more pulpish and often ruthless), and two Silver (DC and Marvel) so... off the top of my head: Golden Age (before Comics Code enforced): "It's a long way down, Herr Kruegor. Tell me where the Uber-bomb is, and MAYBE I'll pull you up." (Often followed by a plummetting scream) Golden Age (as retroactively sanitized): "Come on, Patriot Guard! Let's knock these Nazi Neerdowells to their jack booted knees!" Silver Age (DC Style): "Great Godfrey! The Andromedeans are launching the moons of Jupiter at us. I've got to catch them all before they crush the city!" Silver Age (Marvel Style): "Great, the girl of my dreams won't give me the time of day as a maskless milksop, and now she blames Mantis Man for her father's death not knowing the truth... either way, I just can't win." Bronze Age: "Listen, I know what you're going through, I know it hurts to go without the serum that gives you power, but you have to fight it. You CAN beat an addiction... trust me, I know from experience." Iron Age: "What makes you think you get to SEE jail, you #$#$ #$#$%er! Hell, I'd do you in even if I wasn't being paid!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nexus Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites Dang, Hermit, you're a tough act to follow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Hermit again. Dead on, Hermit-Sama. From my own POV: Golden Age: Let's kill Nazis and play in the park! Silver Age: Clown White has turned the city into a Circus of Evil! Bronze Age: Got fired, girlfriend left me, the Baselines hate me, I'm deeply misunderstood, and my powers are killing me; thank G_d all the women on my team are really hot and almost naked. Iron Age: Torture and rape and sorrow and murder. Diamond Age / Steel Age: Torture and rape and sorrow and murder, with meta-commentary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites thank G_d all the women on my team are really hot and almost naked. I'm going to HAVE to have a character use this line one day. Thank you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites One line descriptions? Whew.. mmm... okay' date=' I think that there are two golden age styles (comic code enforced and filtered retroactively, and the more pulpish and often ruthless), and two Silver (DC and Marvel) so... off the top of my head:"[/quote'] I'll strong second this comment on the Golden Age style. Superman may have become the paragon of honesty, virtue, justice, and so on, but let's not forget his punching a wife-beater into (through?) a wall as well as threatening to drop a man from great heights in order to make him talk. As for Batman, at one time he'd sworn to never carry a gun (since a gun killed his parents), yet in at least one story, I know he shoots and kills a criminal. In fact, I believe he carried a gun as part of his standard equipment very early on. As for Wonder Woman, I do believe she ended up captured and tied up quite a bit.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mutant for Hire Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites Actually, the thing is that there was a lot of good and bad in each of the ages, including the much maligned Iron Age. Golden Age (best): Fighting the Nazis and corrupt officials for the good of the common man. Golden Age (worst): Beating the criminals up or threatening to kill them until they coughed up information or agreed to change their ways. Silver Age (best): Travel to strange worlds, other times, encountering fantastic creatures and seeing fantastic transformations, with a very strict moral code about what would happen. Silver Age (worst): Stories that were just plain ridiculous and didn't make any sense, as well as pretending ugly subjects didn't exist. Bronze Age (best): Exploring some serious concepts such as drug abuse, racism and other topics that were unexplored during the Silver Age Bronze Age (worst): Characters having excessive amounts of angst and abuse heaped on them. Iron Age (best): Exploration of the concept of what would really happen if people with superhuman powers actually existed. Iron Age (worst): Men with big guns and women in fetish clothing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susano Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites Iron Age (worst): Men with big guns and women in fetish clothing. Iron Age (even worse!): Men in fetish clothing and women with big guns.... (err... the latter may be a plus....) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites For me, the best and worst of each age: Golden Age Best: Love of country and love of justice, and the two are not seen as conflicting. Golden Age Worst: Casual bigotry and the jingoism that often tarnishes the name of true patriotism. Silver Age Best: A true sense of wonder, idealism and heroism. Silver Age Worst: The over-sanitizing effects of the Comics Code. Bronze Age Best: The revival of Adult targetted story telling in the comics. Bronze Age Worst: Heroes with Silver Age Comics Code morality facing foes with no moral compunctions at all. Iron Age Best: Serious Science and Speculative Fiction return to the comics. Iron Age Worst: No lines at all between heroes and villains, winking gleeful contempt for the audience. Diamond/Steel Age Best: Astro City, Tom Strong, America's Best Comics Diamond/Steel Age Worst: Identity Crisis, Avengers Disassembled Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peregrine Posted March 2, 2006 Report Share Posted March 2, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Hermit again. Dead on, Hermit-Sama. From my own POV: Golden Age: Let's kill Nazis and play in the park! Silver Age: Clown White has turned the city into a Circus of Evil! Bronze Age: Got fired, girlfriend left me, the Baselines hate me, I'm deeply misunderstood, and my powers are killing me; thank G_d all the women on my team are really hot and almost naked. Iron Age: Torture and rape and sorrow and murder. Diamond Age / Steel Age: Torture and rape and sorrow and murder, with meta-commentary. What about the current age, the Dark Age? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted March 3, 2006 Report Share Posted March 3, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites What about the current age' date=' the Dark Age?[/quote'] I consider the Diamond/Steel Age to be the current "Age", but then my geek speak may be rusty. I'll stick with the Best/Worst examples I gave above. At best, we get Golden/Silver Age wonder and energy written with an adult audience in mind, with meta-commentary. At worst, we get angst and murder and torture and sorrow and amorality, with meta-commentary. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted March 3, 2006 Report Share Posted March 3, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites What about the current age' date=' the Dark Age?[/quote'] I'd go with the current age being 'steel' or 'diamond' as well. I prefer the former because it denotes a mix of other metals, and that's what we've definitely got going now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
assault Posted March 3, 2006 Report Share Posted March 3, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites If I was going to use the term "Dark Age", I would use if for the period in the 50s between the Golden and Silver Ages, when very little superhero stuff was being published apart from Superman (and Superboy), Batman, Wonder Woman, and the occasional backup feature. Marvel and the other (US) comic companies were mostly out of the Superhero genre. (There were sporadic exceptions). I actually like reading the stuff that came out then, though. It's interesting from a gaming perspective too. DC developed a something of a habit later in the decade of reusing plots. As a result, many well known characters have obscure precursors, which provides a useful reservoir of characters to "borrow". For example, Mon-El and Star Boy from the Legion of Superheroes had precursor characters. With very little effort such precursors can be used as a basis for an LSH homage group. You wouldn't even need to change their names, since almost nobody has ever heard of them. Seriously. How many people are familiar with Halk Kar and Mars Boy? Here are some pictures: http://members.shaw.ca/legion_of_super-heroes/alternate_legions/#Halk%20Kar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Limmer Posted March 3, 2006 Report Share Posted March 3, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites What about the current age' date=' the Dark Age?[/quote'] I consider the Diamond/Steel Age to be the current "Age"' date=' but then my geek speak may be rusty.[/quote'] I'd go with the current age being 'steel' or 'diamond' as well. I prefer the former because it denotes a mix of other metals' date=' and that's what we've definitely got going now.[/quote']Does no one recognize Biblical allusions any more? First comes the golden age, then the silver age, then the bronze age, then the iron age, then the iron-mixed-with-clay age. Then the Messiah comes, knocks down the whole system, and replaces it with something bigger, better, and longer-lasting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted March 3, 2006 Report Share Posted March 3, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites So that would make Kurt Busiek John the Baptist? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doug Limmer Posted March 3, 2006 Report Share Posted March 3, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites So that would make Kurt Busiek John the Baptist?I was thinking more along the lines of Judas Maccabeus, but then I think that we're still in an extension of the Bronze Age (the way the Seleucids were an extension of Alexander the Great's empire). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Johnston Posted March 6, 2006 Report Share Posted March 6, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites More of a Greek allusion really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man The progression in the Book of Daniel may have been influenced by contact with the Greeks, but it was Greeks like Hesiod who talked about the "golden and silver ages" of the past. Really the modern age shouldn't be named until it is over since only then can we view it in perspective. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kristopher Posted March 6, 2006 Report Share Posted March 6, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites More of a Greek allusion really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_Man The progression in the Book of Daniel may have been influenced by contact with the Greeks, but it was Greeks like Hesiod who talked about the "golden and silver ages" of the past. Really the modern age shouldn't be named until it is over since only then can we view it in perspective. Yeah, but the "modern age" never ends. We're always in the modern age... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marketeer Posted March 6, 2006 Report Share Posted March 6, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites Diamond/Steel Age Best: Astro City, Tom Strong, America's Best Comics Diamond/Steel Age Worst: Identity Crisis, Avengers Disassembled I'd add J. Michael Stracynski's run of Spider-Man on the Diamond/Steel Best as well. The pacing and storytelling is well done, and the internal logic holds up even in combat sequences. JMS does justice to the fact that Spider-Man isn't just one of the most flexible and adaptable heroes out there, but one of the most experienced; Peter Parker reacts to his world, and has an impact upon lives, in believable ways Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrosshairCollie Posted March 7, 2006 Report Share Posted March 7, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites Does the Iron Age really need any soundbites beyond the sound of gunfire? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hermit Posted March 7, 2006 Report Share Posted March 7, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites Does the Iron Age really need any soundbites beyond the sound of gunfire? Cursing Orgasmic cries of joy... both often DURING the gunfire Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threnody Posted March 7, 2006 Report Share Posted March 7, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites Cursing Orgasmic cries of joy... both often DURING the gunfire Whoa there! I'm not sure I want to think about that. :eek: :eek: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Threnody Posted March 7, 2006 Report Share Posted March 7, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites What about the Stone Age, the Copper Age, the Machine Age,... Whoopsy! Sorry, think I was channeling an anthropologist there for a sec. :snicker: :snicker: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CrosshairCollie Posted March 7, 2006 Report Share Posted March 7, 2006 Re: Comics "Ages" sound bites For the record, my vote for the name of the after-the-Iron-Age is Rust Age. I mean, really ... that's what happens when Iron degrades, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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