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Name that age: Some titles I actually read


Boll Weevil

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Hi there. I have read many many threads describing iron, silver etc ages and I would like to request a weigh-in on some specific titles please. What is your best guess as the "age" of the following and their placement therein:

 

Astonishing X-Men (Whedon)

X-men movies. Feel free to label individually if you feel it is necessary.

The Ultimates (Millar).

Spiderman movies.

Fantastic Four movies. No FF2 spoilers here please.

Ultimate X-Men (Millar). Actually, this series is not my favorite but I am following the story from the beginning so I will include in this list.

 

Although I have moments of cringe-itude with the latter, I am really enjoying each of these series. My perfect game to play in or GM would feel like any of these. If you were running a game of any of the above, how would you pitch it on the Campaign Notes section of Hero Central?

 

Thanks in advance. Your opinions mean a lot to me.

BW

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Re: Name that age: Some titles I actually read

 

AXM-W= Bronze/Iron. In many ways, the X-Men were the first mainstream American Iron Age title.

 

X-Men Movies= Bronze/Iron, more towards the Bronze side in many ways (number of innocents killed kept down but not to zero, no questions asked about the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding the X-Men must need, heroes aren't casual killers, etc).

 

Ultimates - Iron Age through and through.

 

Spiderman Movies - Almost pure Bronze, maybe enough whimsy to mark a hint of Silver, with a few nods to updating the tech and terminology.

 

Fantastic Four Movies - Bronze with a hint of Silver.

 

Ultimate X-Men - Iron, Rusty Iron in Millar's run. Characters are grotesquely tortured, the distinctions between heroes, villains, and victims are blurred almost beyond recognition.

 

Personally I prefer using system closer to the one suggested by Ken Hite in Wild Talents. Go from Optimistic to Pessimistic, Familiar to Strange, and Gritty Physics to Whimsical Physics. There have been "gritty" superhero stories as long as there have been superheroes, and even the grittiest Superhero universe sometimes offers light comic relief. The Ages tend to suggest hard divisions that just aren't there.

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Re: Name that age: Some titles I actually read

 

Oddhat, I knew you wouldn't disappoint me. Thanks. Anyone else care to weigh in? Even if you agree with Oddhat's metallurgical assay, I am still interested to hear how you would pitch the above stories on Hero Central is you were the GM.

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Re: Name that age: Some titles I actually read

 

Astonishing X-Men (Whedon): Bronze/Iron.

X-men movies. Bronze.

The Ultimates (Millar). : Iron Age. It could almost be in the dictionary as a perfect example of Iron Age.

Spiderman movies. Bronze.

Fantastic Four movies. Neosilver/Gilded Iron.

Ultimate X-Men (Millar). - Iron Age Again.

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Re: Name that age: Some titles I actually read

 

Astonishing X-Men (Whedon)

X-men movies. Feel free to label individually if you feel it is necessary.

The Ultimates (Millar).

Spiderman movies.

Fantastic Four movies. No FF2 spoilers here please.

Ultimate X-Men (Millar). Actually, this series is not my favorite but I am following the story from the beginning so I will include in this list.

 

BW

 

Astonishing X-Men: Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age. Whedon is such a good writer I forget that I hate these two eras of comics.

 

X-Men Movies: Iron Age. Sure nothing is said about the amount of money or realism of some things, but Wolverine alone puts the dead body tally way over the top. In X One, during the train station fight, not a single X-man tries to get innocents out of the way. In X Two Wolverine kills dozens of Striker's men (in homage to his killing all of the Hellfire Club agents no doubt). And I try to forget X Three was made. (A whole other thread on the poop that was X Three).

 

The Ultimates: Iron Age

 

Spiderman Movies: Late Silver Age/Early Bronze. For some reason the Marvel movies have done a great job of capturing the most popular era of the character they use. (X Three still sucked!)

 

Fantastic Four Movies: See Spiderman Above

 

Ultimate X-Men: No clue haven't even open a X-Comic in a few years.

 

 

148 more posts to go....

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Re: Name that age: Some titles I actually read

 

The Ultimate books of course are self-consciously Iron Agey. That one's just too easy.

 

Spider-Man on the other hand....

 

The Silver Age is primarily defined by the influence of the Comics Code. Nothing happens in Spider-Man (the movie) that the Comics Code would have a problem with that I can think of. What's more just about everything that happens in that movie is something that _actually_ happened in the Silver Age...since after all it's an adaptation of an actual Silver Age story. However there are changes. The upside-down kiss in the rain, the fact that this Peter while still a whiz kid isn't capable of producing useful original inventions at the drop of a hat, and the shift from a purely random radiation accident giving him his power to more updated buzzwords involving genesplicing... I think you call it Silver or Bronze with equal justification.

 

The Fantastic Four movies on the other hand are definitely Bronze. Not mean enough to be Iron but the changes in Doom all reflect Iron Age sensibilities. The villain is no longer a foreign despot but a domestic businessman and his new origin is in fact from the Iron Age Ultimate FF. The second film goes further into Iron.

 

And yes, the X-Men movies are probably Iron. The government is an enemy, there's a high incidental death toll that increases with each movie, the villains aren't that much worse than the heroes.

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Re: Name that age: Some titles I actually read

 

Spider man movies have to be considered bronze just because of the death of villains' date=' definatly a defining element of the Silver was that villains went to jail not the morgue[/quote']

 

I don't agree. DC villains went to jail. Marvel villains often "could never have survived that", and returned some months laer, often sporting a tale of what went on since their apparent 'death', uincluding how their miraculous survival took place.

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Re: Name that age: Some titles I actually read

 

I don't agree. DC villains went to jail. Marvel villains often "could never have survived that"' date=' and returned some months laer, often sporting a tale of what went on since their apparent 'death', uincluding how their miraculous survival took place.[/quote']

 

Yes, you're right, but so is he. Deaths that left a body behind were not a feature of the Silver Age. So yeah, the Spiderman movies are basically Bronzish.

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Re: Name that age: Some titles I actually read

 

Yes' date=' you're right, but so is he. Deaths that left a body behind were not a feature of the Silver Age. So yeah, the Spiderman movies are basically Bronzish.[/quote']

 

Not really germane to the issue, but Golden Age villains also commonly died at the end of the issue (not directly killed by the hero in most cases), which tended to be the fate of pulp villains that preceded them. The original Joker story as written would have killed him, but he was saved by an astute editor who recognized the need for recurring villains in a monthly serialized medium.

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  • 5 years later...

Re: Name that age: Some titles I actually read

 

Hi there. I have read many many threads describing iron, silver etc ages and I would like to request a weigh-in on some specific titles please. What is your best guess as the "age" of the following and their placement therein:

 

Astonishing X-Men (Whedon)

 

The Crap Age.

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