Today, we're taking a look at some comic book history
and diving into the different age of comic books,
plus I'm wearing a vest again,
so you're gonna wanna stick around for that.
(heavy rock music)
Welcome to Comic Misconceptions.
Yes, Comic Misconceptions.
After last week's one-shot video,
you guys said that the name should stay
even though we don't technically talk
about misconceptions, so plenty of love from you guys
in the comments as well, and I can't say thank you enough.
Anyway, guys, I'm Scott Niswander,
and this is the show takes you into detail
about the things you think you know about comics
and we're talking about the different ages
of comic books today.
Right out of the gate, guys, I wanna let you know
that I am in no way a comic book historian.
I've just done a ton of research over the last week
and found that most of this stuff is based off of opinions.
It's not even just when the certain ages start and end,
but also how many there are, so I'm gonna tell you
everything I've learned and allow you
to make your own opinions in the end.
And I had to cut a lot of stuff out of this episode
because of time constraints.
It's already gonna be really long.
And also, both Marvel and DC have done name changes
over the years, but just for the sake of simplicity,
I will just simply be referring to them as Marvel and DC.
So let's start off in a time
before comic books even existed.
In the early 20th century, comics themselves were a staple
in most newspapers, but they were just little one-
or two-panel short jokes.
It wasn't until a couple decades later
that comics themselves would be put into a book format.
While there were other attempts at creating comic books,
it's agreed that the first successful one
was Funnies on Parade in 1933.
Now comic books like these were just reprints
of newspaper comic strips and sold for $.10 each.
Now that's important for later, so remember that.
It wasn't long until comic book publishers ran out
of material to reprint, so they had to come up
with their own original content.
One publisher, DC Comics, took a chance
on a frequently rejected idea from the minds
of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman.
And it was with this, ladies and gentlemen,
Action Comics number one in 1938, that the golden age
of comic books took off.
You can also watch my video about the real origin
of Superman, before his Action Comic days,
right here, where he was a villainous psychopath
bent on world domination.
It's fascinating.
The golden age of comic books can be summed up as simple,
straight-forward and often patriotic.
Superheros like Batman and Superman saved the day,
no questions asked.
The art was simple and cartoony.
People believed that children were the only ones reading
these things, so superheros often got kid sidekicks
to give the readers someone to related to,
and also the hero someone to talk to.
Now simple these stories may be,
but don't confuse simple with childish,
Superheros weren't exactly moral people, right?
Superman was crazy and tough.
A guy would shoot him and instead of just
letting the bullet bounce off, he took the guy's gun,
shot him back, only to catch the bullet at the last second,
just to give the guy a good scare.
And you know Batman's vow to not use guns or kill people?
Well, he didn't have that in the golden age.
He used guns quite frequently,
and had a thing for snapping people's necks.
World War II came around
and Marvel Comics put out a patriotic superhero
that grabbed people's attention from the first cover.
Captain America and many other superheros went off
to fight the Nazis and Japanese soldiers
who were often portrayed as disfigured abominations
instead of, you know, people.
Unfortunately, after the war ended,
nobody really wanted superheros anymore.
They were tired of all the fighting, so superheros largely
dropped off, where westerns, humor, horror
and more stuff kind of took over the comic book genre.
There's also the scare in the 1950s where people believed
that comic books were just toxic for children's morals,
so this led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority.
You can kind of consider them like the MPAA for comic books,
censoring anything that they find not suitable for children.
Also, the Comics Code Authority
is an episode entirely on its own.
But, with that, the golden age faded out.
But in 1956, Showcase Number Four hit stands.
DC wanted to bring back superheros
like never before, reinventing some
of their golden age heroes starting with The Flash.
This is what I see as the start of the silver age,
although I know that it could be debated, other things,
like the first issue of Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen,
which as one article I read described as the silver age
in a nutshell, which yeah, it is.
Other golden age heroes were dusted off and brought
into the new age of science like Green Lantern,
now getting his powers from aliens
and advanced technology instead of magic like before.
These new variations of golden age heroes
also created DC's Multiverse.
Science is really the key factor of the silver age,
but how each publisher used science
really helped define their characters.
So DC tapped into the potential of science.
Science can do anything and that's good.
This is the time of the space race,
and science is creating all sorts of new possibilities.
But over at Marvel, science wasn't always a good thing.
It was represented almost in a negative light.
Science had limitless potential, and that's scary.
For the first time, we get this flood
of reluctant and accidental heroes.
Bruce Banner is tormented by the monster he becomes
thanks to gamma rays.
The X-Men are hated and cast out as freaks
because of a mutation in their genes.
The Fantastic Four constantly argue with each other.
Peter Parker used his powers at first just to make money.
He didn't even wanna fight crime.
These were real people with real issues, no pun intended.
Spiderman really broke ground on the teenage masked hero
where in the gold age, Captain Marvel showed us that,
yeah, kids can be heroes, so long as they turn
into big, buff adults, but Spiderman showed us
that anyone can be a hero, just as you are,
give or take a radioactive spider.
The silver age is really
where you're gonna find your goofy stories
because the Comics Code Authority made mature stories
basically an impossibility, so you had stuff
like when Superman hit Lois Lane with a fat ray.
More shameless plugs.
Also, by now, you can tell
that I'm still getting over a cold.
Now the end of the silver age,
again, is very widely debated,
so when I asked you guys last week
what it was that transitioned the silver age
into the bronze age, I hadn't done
as much research as I have now,
so we're gonna bypass this week's trivia challenge
and I'm just gonna tell you guys what I have learned.
Comic book historian Craig Shutt says in his book,
Baby Boomer Comics, that there are many reasons
why people think that the silver age ended,
but a lot of them aren't really right.
For example, the Death of Gwen Stacy is,
I always considered, the end of the silver age.
He says it happened way too late in 1973
and the silver age had already ended to him by then,
in fact, comic books had already been changing
into more mature themes and stories by 1971.
He also says that the rise in comic book prices
from $.12 to $.15 in 1969 is also not the reason
the silver age ended as some people might argue.
He says because comic books went from $.10 to $.12
in 1962 and nobody made a fuss about that,
so why should it end the silver age?
Shutt says, and I would agree, that the silver age ended
as a combination of Mort Weisinger leaving Superman
and Jack Kirby leaving Marvel to go work for DC
within a month of each other in 1971.
He said that there's nothing in comic books
that could create more sadness and a greater sense
of loss than Jack Kirby leaving Marvel to do something else.
If only there were something in recent history
that we could relate this to, a great man spending years
of his life working on a project for Marvel,
only to leave and cast a great sadness throughout the land.
The bronze age was the first attempt to do away
with the silliness of the silver age.
They brought darker, morally ambiguous characters
and stories to the genre.
They were striving for cultural relevance,
bringing characters and stories and problems
that culture was dealing with, things like alcoholism
and racism and drug abuse.
Heroes started questioning their motivations,
much like Americans started questioning their government.
Captain America even changed his alias to Nomad
after losing faith in the country's administration.
Superheroines were becoming more independent,
often changing their names like Invisible Girl
to Invisible Woman, and the X-Men became increasingly
more popular as people were striving for equal rights.
Minority superheros started making more appearances
although they were typically stereotyped
and with the Comics Code Authority,
losing to horror titles became more popular,
like Swamp Thing or Ghost Rider.
Stories would even begin to have more continuity.
In the golden and silver ages, a story would typically wrap
up very nice and neat at the end of an issue,
or the end of an arc.
There might be a couple call backs or two later,
but nothing really big, the hero would
just kinda move on with their life.
In the bronze age, however, things would happen
that would rattle the hero for many, many more issues
to come, things like the death of Gwen Stacy
rattled Spiderman probably even still to this day.
The art style focused on being much more realistic
and the first graphic novels hit the stands
as well as comic book adaptations of popular media
such as movies also made appearances.
It was also around this time when westerns
and romance comic books kind of fell off
and was much more focused about the superhero.
DC had the promise of publishing 50 brand new titles,
but man did that plan backfire.
It almost ruined the company for good.
It said that the bronze age ended when DC finished
their Crisis on Infinite Earth story arc in 1986
which helped revitalize the company
from its previous failure.
Of course, this is just one opinion.
Some say the bronze age never even ended at all,
and we're still in it.
Others say that there's no one definitive point
when it stopped, but it's just every single title
and publisher had their own different
stopping points years separate from each other
that then pushed them into the modern age.
This is a little bit sloppy for me, but it does seem
to be the appropriate answer in my opinion.
But if you thought determining the start
and end dates of those past ages were hard, let's talk
about the iron age or the dark age or the modern age.
To some people, these are one and the same.
To others, they're all completely separate, different eras.
Even still, some say that the modern and the dark age
are the same, and the iron age is its own thing,
or the iron and the dark and the modern.
It's all confusing and I'm gonna try my best
to make it as clear as possible for you.
So for the sake of simplicity, I'm gonna take the idea
of the iron age as its own complete separate era
and throw that out the window.
This age is defined as retcons and reboots
to help fix some continuity errors
that comics had after all of these decades,
but if that's what it's defined by, then I still feel
like we're in that era, so I don't want it
to have its own separate piece of time, I see it almost
like a pipeline that runs under the modern era
and anytime you wanna flush anything down,
like bad continuity errors, we send it right down there.
That's what the iron age is to me.
I'm also gonna squeeze the modern age
and the dark age together a little bit,
just to make it a little bit more clear.
It's said that the modern age really started off at the end
of Crisis on Infinite Earth during the British invasion
of comic books when DC really gave a lot
of their lesser-known characters over to writers
who were largely from the U.K.
These titles included the likes
of Grant Morrison's Animal Man run,
Neil Gaiman's Sandman run and Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run.
But Alan Moore really ushered in the modern age
of comics with his comic book from 1986, Watchmen.
This grim tale along with Frank Miller's Dark Knight
Returns book, published that same year, showed us
that comic books are definitely not for children anymore.
These are dark, complicated books, filled
with psychological complexity.
Anti-heroes became more popular,
and darker stories became more common place.
The death of Superman, Bane breaking Batman's back,
Green Lantern becoming corrupt and overly complex stories
like Spiderman's clone saga.
These were all trying to imitate the success
of Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns,
and trying to give fans what they thought they wanted.
Comic book crossovers became much more frequent,
and even kind of irritating to the comic book fan
who would have to go out and buy a comic book title
that they don't normally read or even like just to follow
a story from a different book that they do like.
This is still something that I have a hard time with.
Independent publishing companies
like Dark Horse opened up free
from the Comics Code Authority able
to do whatever they wanted.
And this is an entire episode all by itself,
but comic collecting almost killed
the entire industry in 1996.
Comic book movies in this age really took off,
as we all know, bringing comic books much more
into the public eye than had ever been before.
I know I really dove into comic books
because of the X-Men and Spiderman movies,
and I wouldn't be surprised if you guys also dove
into comic books because of a comic book movie,
or at least had your interest piqued.
And of course it's argued that the dark age ended
and the modern age is its own separate thing,
but the way that I see it is the dark age hit really hard
and fast out of the gate from the bronze age,
but then kinda slowed to a comfortable pace
into the modern age that we're in right now.
So I wanna know what you guys think.
Which age do you think is better,
the golden age, with its focus on patriotism
and good triumphing over evil,
the silver age, with its focus on science and goofy stories,
the bronze age, with its attempts at cultural relevance,
or the modern age, with it dark and complex stories.
Let me know in the comments.
And I've been doing so much research over the past week
that I would not be surprised at all if I missed something,
so if I did, please yell at me in the comments below.
But now, let's move on to the weekly trivia challenge.
(pages flip)
(lively music)
So we spend a lot of time here getting nice and factual,
but let's unwind with a fun silver age tale.
Father's Day is coming up for those of us
in America rather soonish, but I wanted
to tackle a fun time-traveling story
that is 100% next level bonkers.
In an issue of Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane,
Lois travels back in time to save Krypton
from exploding, but gets sidetracked
when she falls for a handsome Kryptonian man.
This week's trivia challenge is who did Lois Lane fall
in love with while traveling back in time
to save Krypton from being destroyed?
If you know the answer, or just wanna take your best shot
at it, you can do so in the comments below, and
if you're right, I could feature you on the show next week
so get started on this weekly trivia challenge.
(lively music)
(pages flip)
So in the last episode of X-Men being a rip-off
of Doom Patrol, SkullKid20999 said
that really all characters are rip-offs of each other
but it's the situations that you put them through
that give them their individual character.
This reminds me of something that Joe Simon,
the creator of Captain America said,
"If it's a good idea, and if it's funny or thrilling
or whatever it is, it's okay to do it at least eight times."
And Legofilms9894 asked if I could do an entire episode
about the original draft for Fantastic Four
because I had mentioned it was a darker, different tale
than we're used to, and I think, yeah, absolutely,
I feel like I mention Fantastic Four quite often
but I've never actually done an entire episode
on them, while Superman has gotten
at least three episodes to himself, plus he snuck
in here and there in other episodes.
Yeah, Fantastic Four, long overdue.
As always, guys, I put the sources and links
to everything in the description below
if you wanna check where I got my facts from,
you can do so down there, and if you wanna listen
to our podcast, we did one about review
of X-Men Days of Future Past, you can listen
to it on iTunes, Stitcher, or right here on YouTube,
and if this is your first time hangin' out with us,
I'd love for you guys to subscribe.
Hit that big sexy subscribe button down below
for more nerdy comic bookie-type content here
at Nerdsync Productions, and as always, I'm Scott,
and I'll see you next time for more things
that you thought you knew about comics.
See ya.
This is gonna be like the dumbest thing I've ever said
on this show, but if you don't know who the X-Men are,
then allow me to give you the Twitter rendition,
140 characters or less.
The X-Men are a group of mutants, or people born
with super powers, who are often rejected
by the general public as dangerous freaks,
and I'm generalizing a lot here.
I think it's just important to get a grasp
of who the X-Men are before we start making comparisons.
Now it's been said that X-Men is a straight rip-off
of another comic that pre-dates it,
and I asked you guys last week if you knew
what that comic book was.