What is the best comic book "age"?

[Christopher R Taylor]

The "ages" and time ranges of comics are pretty vague and there's a lot of debate when they started and ended, so I'm going to give very rough ranges and estimates.  A few are easy to peg down: Superman's first comic book apparance, for example.  Others are more debatable such as the end of the Silver Age with the "Speedy on Heroin" issue of green Lantern/Green Arrow in 1970 or 1985 with Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns.  But here are some vague categories and the ages as I see them (Cinematic starting with the release of Iron Man)

 

For me its Bronze, closely followed by Golden.

 

 

*EDIT: changed "cinematic age" to start in 2000 with the "Ultimate" marvel line of comics.

[massey]

Bronze, then Silver, then Golden, then Iron, then Cinematic.

 

 

I put the cinematic era last, because I think all we're seeing are re-hashes of older stories that they are trying to make more modern.  Stories drag out forever.  You've got the self-awareness and cynicism of the Iron Age, but it is infecting older stories that I liked the first time around.

[Beast]

for me it is the gm and players making the setting work

[Lucius]

 

Depends on the comic book in question. Some really are okay for a seven year old, maybe with help with the big words, and some should probably be "adults only." And everything in between.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

I don't know if I consider the palindromedary safe for children either for that matter.

[aylwin13]

I definitely prefer Bronze, with a very light sprinkling of silver on it.

[TheQuestionMan]

Modern Age of Comic Books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Age_of_Comic_Books

[steriaca]

I grew up in the Bronze Age to Iron Age, so I would mark it Bronze, Silver, Golden, "Atomic", then Modern.

[Storn]

Yeah, I think there are some awesome comics now.  The variety is amazing.  The amount is overwhelming, I don't read monthly titles anymore, preferring to pick up the odd graphic novel as a kindle or from the library.  ...

 

But when I was the MOST excited about comics, it was the bronze age... including two of my favorite runs... Master of Kung Fu and Conan.   I didn't read Conan until Dark Horse recently compiled the original run, but they are really strong.  Put in Paul Smith's X-men run and I had to vote Bronze Age.  

[Doc Democracy]

You know. I think I really enjoyed the late bronze and early part of the Iron Age. It was prime time for the Legion, for Teen Titans and a number of other titles.

 

I loved what people were doing to freshen up and change stuff, I loved the re-exploration of the Golden Age and especially All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc. Crisis was a defining moment but it was the beginning of the end for me and comics. It really was a culmination of the continuity that has stifled stuff. What drew you into an ongoing title began to be exploited to make you need to branch out into other titles and it all went downhill. The more they tried to make me expand, the more I cut titles until I was reading almost nothing but limited series.

 

I have gone with Iron Age as it was great when it began but I bailed out of monthly purchasing before it had ended...

 

 

Doc

[massey]

To follow up on my earlier post, I grew up on cartoons that were based on Bronze Age comics.  Superfriends, Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends, and later the X-Men cartoons.  I didn't really start reading comics until I was a teenager, and by then we were in the Iron Age.  Still, even then I was drawn to the books that followed the Bronze Age traditions.  Avengers and Justice League basically stayed Bronze until the early 2000s.  I found myself dropping titles that got too Iron.

 

In later Iron books, they got way too political for me.  I felt like I was being lectured by poorly educated authors, who would create a strawman and then knock it down.  Books like The Authority were really bad about that.  You also get the problem that when you constantly deconstruct something, eventually you have nothing remaining.  Pick apart the genre too much, and you don't have a genre anymore.  The characters stop being superheroes and start being jerks with powers.  The Iron Age works best in a limited story.  The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, Miracleman, Kingdom Come.  These were all great stories, but I don't want to read a continuing series about any of those characters.

 

As my disposable income increased, I went and bought a lot of back issues of Silver and early Bronze stuff.  Some of it was from before I was born, all of it was from before I was reading comics.  Late 70s and early 80s has my favorite stuff.  It's the right blend of everything.

 

In the last few years, when I discovered you could download older comics, I went on a binge and grabbed a ton of Golden Age and Silver Age stuff.  I tend to like Silver Age better, but the Golden stuff has its charm.  They were still fleshing out the idea of what a superhero was.  I like the Golden Age more as a concept than as something to actually read regularly.  The art is generally not that great,and the writing has a pulp feel to it that hasn't aged well.

 

Still, the Golden Age was creating something new, and as a result I like it far better than the current age of comics.  Today it feels like they're just endlessly recycling old ideas, except now with more cynicism.  And everyone talks like they're in a Joss Whedon show.  And everything has to be just like it is in the movie version.  Yuck.

[Christopher R Taylor]

There was a time from roughly 85-90 in transition where the bronze age was still going but iron age was starting that I liked a lot.  Image started up in 1992 and that's really when things started to go downhill for me.  But even before that, guys like Liefeld were writing and drawing for Marvel and it was pretty sad stuff with huge guns and tiny feet.

[bigdamnhero]

I assume we're talking specifically about superhero comics?

 

Golden Age never really caught my attention, and most of the Silver Age stuff was too damn silly for me even as a kid.

 

I grew up reading Bronze Age comics, so that's kindof always been my baseline for what superheroes should be. Of course, I was reading them as a kid; going back and re-reading them now as an adult? Well, some of them hold up better than others. And a lot of the Middle Aged White Dudes trying to "write street" is pretty painful in hindsight. But overall, Bronze is where my heart is, and also the flavor I prefer for Champions gaming.

 

Iron Age had some really brilliant ideas, but I agree with others that it mostly worked best as limited/elseworlds stories and got really old really quickly. Once every comics started trying to be Watchmen/Dark Knight, I gave up comics for ~20 years.

 

I almost voted for Cinematic Age, because there are so many really good comics being written right now. I would definitely say the best comics today are far better written than in any other era. But quality also varies wildly, so I'm not sue I can say that on average superhero comics are better today they were. So I went with my inner 12 year old and voted for Bronze.

 

Now if we're not just talking about superhero comics, then there's no question that contemporary comics are doing other genres far, far better than ever before. (With the arguable exception of horror, but that's a separate discussion and horror isn't really my thing anyway.) The explosion of creativity in the Indie comics world over the last decade or so has been amazing to watch. Even if they don't sell a tenth as many issues as whatever the f**k Wolverine is doing this month...

[bigdamnhero]

Modern Age of Comic Books

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Age_of_Comic_Books

"I don't want to go off on a rant, but..."

 

To me, that page really feels like it was written by someone who stopped reading comics in the 90s; much of the discussion goes through the mid-90s and then jumps straight to "and in 2011 DC launched the New 52..." I think it's ludicrous to lump 30+ years of comics together like that - today's comics are at least as different from early-90s comics as most Bronze Age was from Silver Age stuff. We're definitely in a different Age now IMO.

 

As for when this new age started, that's harder to pin down. To me it feels like the shift began in 2000 with the Ultimate Universe. Personally I never cared for most of the Ultimates stuff, but it was a very deliberate attempt to take all the stuff that had been thoroughly deconstructed in the Iron Age and put them back together again in new ways; the results weren't necessarily to my taste - still more Iron than I'd like - but I understood what they were trying to do. Equally important, I feel like it allowed writers in the 616 universe to swing further away from Iron Age tropes to distinguish that universe more from the Ultimates verse. And of course there's no questioning how much the Ultimate universe influenced today's movies.

 

Alternately, other people point to 2006's Civil War as kindof the nadir of modern comics, and look at everything since then as a consequence of or attempt to repair the damage done by that series. So that was kindof a turning point.

 

Over at DC, I feel like 2005's Infinite Crisis was an attempt to change the direction of their continuity, tho again with mixed results. And of course 2005 was also the year we got All-Star Superman and its very deliberate call-back to the Silver Age.

 

The early 2000s also saw the rise of the Trade Paperback market, which brought a lot of new (or returning) readers and meant you could once again buy comics at "regular" stores without having to go to a specialty store. It also significantly changed the way a lot of writers structure their story arcs.

 

So personally I look at the 2000-2006 as a transition period; hard to draw a firm line at any one thing, but a process started in 2000 and by 2006/2007 we were definitely in a different age.

 

As for what to call this new age, I'm not really a fan of the term Cinematic Age. Obviously the movies have had/are having an influence on comics themselves, but I'd rather look at them as separate entities. (Especially given the wildly different tones of the Marvel & DC films.) And no offense to Christopher Taylor or anyone else, but I mostly seem to hear the term used by people who don't actually read comics much/at all anymore, so their perceptions are based mainly on the movies and the occasional online fanboy rant. (Again, not saying that's the case with everyone here.)

 

I kindof like the term Diamond Age myself. Some have suggested Kaleidoscope Age because there's so much variety. Like Iron Age stuff? Yeah, there's some of that. But there's also Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, which reads like Silver Age Batman. Or Ms. Marvel, which reads like Bronze Age Spider-Man. One of the things that makes contemporary comics so hard to pin down is that there's more variety than ever before, so Kaleidoscope is apt. But I don't really see that name ever catching on.

 

[\rant]

[Christopher R Taylor]

Silver Age had some great western and war comics, neither of which really are out there today in much of a presence.  There was a huge explosion of amazing independent stuff in the mid to late 80s as well, with some terrific storytelling and ideas, but they died out when the Image age with high end coloring etc came around.  People stopped buying black and white comics, wanted shiny fancy art.

 

 

As for when this new age started, that's harder to pin down. To me it feels like the shift began in 2000 with the Ultimate Universe.

 

I agree, in fact I'm tempted to rewrite my ages to reflect that.  The movie Marvel stuff is the "Ultimate" universe stuff; the current age of comics really did sort of start with those storylines.  I agree with your thoughts on the wiki "modern age;" its too broad a category and doesn't recognize the changes between the 90s and current comics.

[bigdamnhero]

Good point re western & war comics. And of course romance. (Cue the "It's Patsy!" theme.)

[Lawnmower Boy]

I was going to vote for the Bronze Age, seen through shimmering waves of childhood nostalgia. But there's just so much good stuff out there now! I only read a tiny fraction of it, but it's obviously far better than anything going on in the days of the Old Firm. 

[Fry Daddy]

The Bronze Age is my favorite, followed by Silver and Golden. Most of the Iron Age stuff was just BAD, and the modern/cinematic age is so commercialized now with how stories are structured for graphic novels, over the top political correctness, and endless "events" and reboots I just can't warm up to it. I do enjoy me some Invincible, though, since it has a great late silver/bronze age feel to it.

[phydaux]

DC had a better Silver Age

 

Marvel had a better Bronze Age

 

Indy Pubs had a better Iron Age

 

Today DC has better animation and Marvel has better movies.  But some of DCs animation is MUCH better than Marvel's movies (Superman TAS, Batman TAS, Batman Beyond, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Young Justice).

[steriaca]

DC had a better Silver Age

 

Marvel had a better Bronze Age

 

Indy Pubs had a better Iron Age

 

Today DC has better animation and Marvel has better movies. But some of DCs animation is MUCH better than Marvel's movies (Superman TAS, Batman TAS, Batman Beyond, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Young Justice).

Then there is Teen Titans Go! Less said about that one, the better...

[Amorkca]

Then there is Teen Titans Go! Less said about that one, the better...

 

Watched one episode, not sure how I made it through the whole episode...

[steriaca]

Watched one episode, not sure how I made it through the whole episode...

Thankfully, the series is not aimed at us. I do pitty the kids when they grow up and discover there Titans were a shadow of the true Teen Titans, and that Cartoon Network thought so little of them that they couldn't handle the true Teen Titans.

[winterhawk]

DC had a better Silver Age

 

Marvel had a better Bronze Age

 

Indy Pubs had a better Iron Age

 

Today DC has better animation and Marvel has better movies.  But some of DCs animation is MUCH better than Marvel's movies (Superman TAS, Batman TAS, Batman Beyond, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Young Justice).

Well said...I finally watched Dawn of Justice on cable and afterward, to cleanse my palate of that awful film, I watched the World's Finest crossover eps of B:TAS and S:TAS.

 

The Bronze Age was my formative years, so I have fond memories of the great Avengers and JLA teams with the huge rosters, Marvel Team-UP/Two in One that introduced some wild third tier characters (Jack-of-Hearts, American Eagle, etc.), Power Man and Iron Fist, Miller's run on Daredevil, Batman and the Outsiders, All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc.

[Christopher R Taylor]

DC's animated movies are superb, just incredible stuff.  Marvel really is not keeping up in that arena.

[John Desmarais]

The best age? Probably 12.

 

Oh, that type of age. My favorite stories tend to be in the fuzzy area near the end of the Silver Age and the start of the Bronze Age (about the time I was 12).

 

My favorite timeframe for stories to set in though is the Golden Age as re-envisioned by Roy Thomas.

[phydaux]

Then there is Teen Titans Go! Less said about that one, the better...

 

Yeah but the original Teen Titans was much better.