|
Post by Icctrombone on May 5, 2022 12:42:13 GMT -5
1970
|
|
|
Post by kirby101 on May 5, 2022 13:04:31 GMT -5
I always go with Conan #1, but there is no generally agreed upon book, like Action #1 or Showcase #4 for the Golden and Silver. 75 is significant for Giant Size X-Men #1 because the X-Men was THE book of the Bronze Age. I don't know why you would think Iron Fist is significant? Uncanny was important because of the Byrne/Claremont tandem, more than anything else, and they began in Iron Fist. If Kirby was the driving force behind the Silver Age, Byrne did the same for the Bronze Age.
I don't think there was anything special in pre-Byrne X-Men. Was Phoenix an interesting character from the beginning? I haven't even read Cockrum's era.
Yes, among fans the rebirth of X-Men was special staring with GSXM #1. Cockrum/Claremont created Phoenix. And while Byrne was an important creator, he was not THE creator, as Kirby was. There was Starlin, Wrightson, ONeil, Wein, Simonson, Moench....and many more.
A simple collaboration doesn't seem to be that big a deal. Marvel's Silver Age starts with FF #1, not when Stan and Jack or Stan and Steve first did a story.
|
|
|
Post by tarkintino on May 5, 2022 14:40:43 GMT -5
I always go with Conan #1, but there is no generally agreed upon book, like Action #1 or Showcase #4 for the Golden and Silver. 75 is significant for Giant Size X-Men #1 because the X-Men was THE book of the Bronze Age. I don't know why you would think Iron Fist is significant? Uncanny was important because of the Byrne/Claremont tandem, more than anything else, and they began in Iron Fist. If Kirby was the driving force behind the Silver Age, Byrne did the same for the Bronze Age.
I don't think there was anything special in pre-Byrne X-Men. Was Phoenix an interesting character from the beginning? I haven't even read Cockrum's era.
The Bronze Age was already rolling / redefining the art and perception of comics long before Byrne. He just happened to get in on what was a changing tide in the industry.
|
|
|
Post by codystarbuck on May 5, 2022 14:58:50 GMT -5
For me: 1938-1949 is the Golden Age. 1950-1960 is a transition period. 1961-1969 is the Silver Age. 1970-1984 is the Bronze Age. 1985-1991 is another transition era. 1992-1999 is the "Image" era. And 2000 on is the modern era. That more or less matches my own mental classification for those periods. I tend to end the Bronze Age around 1980/81 and refer to the 90s as the Chromium Era, because of all the gimmicks. The 00s also felt like a transitional period, until the companies are taking their lead from the movies. I tend to think the same way when people talk about music, in terms of the decade. The early 70s were largely a continuation of what was going on in the late 60s, until it evolves into its own thing and then you start to transition into what people call 80s music, but what they really mean is the mid-80s, MTV promoted phase, rather than the early 80s, where you have Disco/Pop, Rock, New Wave/Post Punk all kind of moving independently and then mixing, until you get a more unique form. That's probably why I have a bigger affinity to music from the 80s than any other decade, because so much of that transition was new and interesting to me and I followed those threads through the 80s and into the early 90s. By the end of the 90s, I am pretty much done with mainstream popular music, apart from a few select artists and started going backwards to explore the stuff I didn't experience firsthand, like Glam Rock, because I was too young or it wasn't featured on tv or local radio much (like in Central Illinois). Same with Rockabilly. The Stray Cats were my window into it, though I was already acquainted, somewhat with it, via Elvis and Carl Perkins appearing on SCTV (and some of the early Happy Days seasons). That led me back to Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, the Collins Kids, Wanda Jackson, more Carl Perkins, more Jerry Lee Lewis, etc. That got me more into earlier 50s Rock N Roll, the rawer stuff, rather than what Dick Clark promoted and was acceptable to the mass audience.
|
|
|
Post by Ozymandias on May 5, 2022 16:08:43 GMT -5
None of the above. In my opinion, the Bronze Age began in January 1971 with the Comics Code Authority's revision of their regulations concerning, among other things, the depiction of drug use, the portrayal of policemen, government officials, etc, and the use of vampires, werewolves, zombies, and similar long-forbidden horror tropes. It was an admission that maybe they'd got it wrong back in '54 and comics weren't just for kids. Cei-U! I summon the lightning!* * Gotta maintain the trademark, doncha know Amazing Spider-Man #96 was shipped on January 12.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 5, 2022 16:14:30 GMT -5
1970 for me....
|
|
|
Post by commond on May 5, 2022 16:28:24 GMT -5
I prefer to view comics in terms of decades. The Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze Age are useful terms, but it doesn't make any sense to me when people say the Modern Age runs from 1984-present, and there haven't been any universally accepted terms for the other periods in comics history. However, to keep this on topic: When does the Bronze Age end? Why do people consider 1980-83 to be part of the Bronze Age?
|
|
|
Post by Ozymandias on May 5, 2022 16:42:44 GMT -5
With Warrior #1 (March 1982), there's no Bronze Age anymore. That's as clear in my mind as Action Comics #1 starting it all.
|
|
|
Post by MWGallaher on May 5, 2022 19:35:46 GMT -5
I won't declare a line of demarcation, but I do like to ponder when specific ongoing titles shifted from a Silver Age tone to a Bronze Age one. WONDER WOMAN is a puzzler: the Diana Prince era seems firmly in the Silver Age, time-wise, but has a more Bronze Age character, but then reverted to an indisputably Silver Age tone right when the Bronze Age was well under way in many other comics. So does WW's Bronze Age start at, say, the trials to rejoin the JLA? That feels right to me; it's a relatively late transition, but other DC comics kept their Silver Age sensibilities for even longer.
|
|
|
Post by kirby101 on May 5, 2022 20:18:58 GMT -5
A start doesn't mean everything changes overnight. Marvel's Silver Age didn’t star until 4 years after Showcase. Many DC books and some Marvel didn’t change until well into the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age brought a new sensibility that took time to take hold.
|
|
Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,051
|
Post by Confessor on May 5, 2022 20:48:03 GMT -5
My heart wants to say it was the Death of Gwen Stacy, but my head knows there was a detectable shift in tone towards a more mature and gritty style of storytelling a few years before that. However, like most changes in fields of art, pinning down a specific date or specific moment when things changed is kinda difficult. It's probably first noticeable across multiple comics by 1970, but the updating of the comics code in 1971 was also a pivotal moment. So, I'm not going to vote because there is no one choice that accurately represents my thoughts on the subject.
|
|
|
Post by Ricky Jackson on May 5, 2022 23:42:05 GMT -5
I prefer to view comics in terms of decades. The Golden Age, Silver Age and Bronze Age are useful terms, but it doesn't make any sense to me when people say the Modern Age runs from 1984-present, and there haven't been any universally accepted terms for the other periods in comics history. However, to keep this on topic: When does the Bronze Age end? Why do people consider 1980-83 to be part of the Bronze Age? 1980-83 was more or less when I started reading comics, and looking back now with all I know that came later, I definitely feel like most of what Marvel and DC was putting out then was a continuation of the Bronze Age/70s rather than something totally new and different. Sure, you had something like Miller's Daredevil that set the tone for what was to come, but books like Spider Man, Hulk, Superman, Batman, Avengers, Flash, etc, etc were still art and writing wise pretty much Bronze Age in flavor. By 1984-85 you had Moore's Swamp Thing, Simonson's Thor, Crisis, things getting increasingly darker, and a lot of the innocence was gone
|
|
|
Post by commond on May 6, 2022 8:09:16 GMT -5
The reason I asked is because a lot of the comics I associate with the Bronze Age were cancelled by then, or the creators had moved on to other projects.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on May 6, 2022 10:22:05 GMT -5
1970 for me as well, but I do feel like it's a bit squishier than the start of other eras so I appreciate the question.
Golden Age for me (with focus on the superhero boom of that time) dries up towards the end of the 40's / start of the 50's. The aforementioned transition period to the Silver Age is about '51 to '56 for me (I personally like the label "Atomic Age", I use that in my collection software).
The start of the Silver Age in 1956 is not just because of Barry Allen though that is an important milestone, but also the censorship events leading to the CCA and demise of most of EC, or changes to the Bat titles like with the addition of Batwoman (also in '56).
End of the Bronze Age is pretty clear as well with Crisis, Dark Knight, etc. But 1970 as a start was not quite as bright a line as some of these other ones in my mind, you sort of need a couple of years prior and and after and I view 1970 more as a reasonable midpoint and a clean divide of the decades.
|
|
|
Post by kirby101 on May 6, 2022 10:47:11 GMT -5
With Warrior #1 (March 1982), there's no Bronze Age anymore. That's as clear in my mind as Action Comics #1 starting it all. Why? What about a British anthology mag, that had little presence in the US ended the Bronze Age? What comics changed because this was published? Seems like a strange and arbitrary point.
|
|