The What Age?
I've heard a lot of chatter recently about "Silver Age" versus "Modern Age." Despite the fact that I don't think it's quite that simple to divide comics into such clear cut categories, it seems inevitable. So I'll ask: are we still in the "Modern Age"?
Comics in just the past three or four years (my entire time reading comics, I'll admit) seem radically diffrent from those done from the end of Crisis, through the 90's, and up to the turn of the century. Have we reached another dividing line? Obviously it's not as clear cut as "The First Appearance of Barry Allen" or whatever people use to mark the beginning of the Silver Age. But if we are in a new age of comics, what event/character/issue/series would you say marks its advent?
posted by Diamondrock @ 6:00 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
I'd go earlier than the turn of the century if I were looking for a major change in the character of mainstream comics. Nostalgia, non-continuity books, idiosyncratic takes on characters by "celebrity" creators and an emphasis on the TPB format define today's comics for me. I don't know if one could pinpoint a specific book or event to symbolize that... Kingdom Come, maybe?
There is no "Modern Age". "Modern Age" is merely a phrase people used to describe all comics that follow the comics that interested them.
Golden Age
Silver Age
Bronze Age
Dark Age ("Obsidian Age", perhaps? HEH!)
We are currently in or are entering a Bright Age. Let's call it the Platinum Age.
And, yes, the system can be more "finely tuned" than that; but if you do, then you aren't really talking about "ages" any more, are you?
Rather than try to use a universal marker to delineate among ages, it's generally easier to pick a character or series and identify ITS ages.
For example, take the JLA.
Golden Age: No JLA. JSA.
Silver Age: JLA. Mountain hideout. Happy Harbor. Biggies only
Bronze Age: No Snapper Carr. Satellite. Secondary heroes included.
Obsidian Age: Variant Leagues (Detroit, JLI, Morrison League). No Hal, no Barry. Crabbiness.
Platinum Age: ???? We'll see.
That chronology example is awesome, Scipio! It's much more fun to think of it in terms of characters (or legacy roles like Flash/Green Lantern) than by the usual way.
But going by general, I'd still say we're in the modern age as we're still primarily in the continuity established by the Crisis in 1985. Golden Age and Silver Age were seperate by their alternate worlds/timelines, but we're still building off that. It does build a problem if they do ever reboot again, because what *would* they call the next one? Post-Modern? (Post-Modernism's dated now anyway. :-))
Thanks for replying, Scipio. You put it all out there better than I ever could.
Well, it couldn't be any harder than trying to giving names to recent paths in art history. Around the turn of the century the naming scheme went nutso, so there are fractions and fractions of movements becuase everyone wanted to innovate on other work and be unique. It splinters like the trunk of a tree to the leaves.
If this post-crisis, neomodern age of comics gets a good name I hope it at least sounds decent...Platinum Age sounds nice, but wouldn't that in theory stack on to what had already occured (ie. what is/was modern age) and Modern age now apply to whats out now? Just a thought...
The modern age in my experience has been used by people as basically the "Everything they don't like" catagory.
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