Are we in the Post-Modern Age of Comics yet?

[ShadowTuga]

I was watching the Image documentary recently released on youtube (something something damage, easy to find - GREAT stuff for comic books' history fans) and i came out of it really, definitely convinced that THIS era we are living in right now is ruled by a COMPLETELY different mindset from the 90s and all that crap that goes for Modern Comics on ebay. The Youngbloods, X-Forces, etc, etc, etc. The pre Bubble burst comics. So, why call this era of great writers and out-of-the-box huge hits like Saga, Modern? Unless you call the 86-late 90s period as the Dark Age. I can go with that, given the comparatively few GREAT comics that came out of that HUGE amount of books.
Sure, DKR, Year One, Watchmen, V, Killing Joke, Born Again and some 10, 15 more that are timeless and when comics got seriously art, among the Big 2, in places.

But how many X-Men books sucked and how many 1000 X-rip offs SUCKED even more? Spawn, million books seller, the most thin book I ever read, looks great and all that, but I can't read that juvenile crap. W.I.L.D. Cats I loved the art, can't remember *SQUEE* of what the story was about for the first year or so (I readed it way later, at 21, mindset completely different from teen me). Inane, pointless, sexxxxxsells, gimmicks, more gimmicks, Boobs and pouches, stupid stories and even stupider dialogue. This is Modern Age too.

I, for a while now, actually thought of Grant Morrison's AS Superman as the first Post-Modern Big 2 superhero book. Its a return to a brighter era of the medium, but it reads as a 21st century work. Same for the exquisite New Frontier by the great Darwyn Cooke. These books are superhero books through and through, but with NONE of the nonsense that you can find in most stuff that is still today being published that is influenced by the 90s dark and gritty atmosphere. In that regard, Superheroes are getting a bit behind in terms of getting out of the formulaic same old same old of the last 30 years. Better quality paper, less condescending thought-bubbles explaining the plot, etc, a general more modern and "adult" look, but at its core, most of DC and Marvel's output is still on the same mindset of crossovers, reboots, events, then more of the same, brand new #1s every 6 months - sh*t, Marvel - that almost killed the "commercial" comics' industry 20+ years ago.

In the - still very rare - best case scenario, comes a person who makes a certain character book be a bit different and feel weirdly "indie" for a while (Ta-Nehisi Coates' Panther or Tom King's current Bat-book, prime examples, IMHO).
These are the exception, and that's why they are critic darlings. But in these 2 companies, there's way more of the same that has fed the genre for decades now, but, with, you know better paper and fancy coloring.

Image though, is slowly (depends on your take on it) becoming seriously freaking huge, not just the obvious great sales of today, but longterm impact- 60s Marvel impact, maybe.
E.g. I realised tonight that my wifey (she's not a comics person, period) is reading a book from these guys (Monstress- she's loving it) ) and so am I, guy who thinks that East of West is one of the best comics of this decade (so far ). A superhero-comics-raised guy and non-comic book adult gal reading stuff from the SAME company, both currently being printed.

Sure, Vertigo brought the first non-capes to the spotlight and its influence was huge, but they were still DC. The platform for writing adult, thoughtful comics was there, but maybe the financial incentives were not tasty enough. I have no idea.

But Image of the 10s... if I was a creator, they would be the Man I would want to work for. Playing with the DC and Marvel toys might be fun for the writers and artists, but I gotta believe the artsy types are more interested in writing their own comics and capitalise on their own creations. I believe the times they are a changin, honest.

Image is doing something special, they really are. These indie books will probably be the oxygen of the industry, long term, more than certain- save for Spidey, Bats, Avengers, and all the big sellers-loyal fandom characters.
But how long will adult readers (20s-50s) be interested in the same thing from the last 30 years? There's that myth that comic book collectors usually drop the hobby around the 7 year mark, because of fatigue over the same-old-same-old doesn't change at all industry they know the most. But with actual Quality and different books coming from a publisher thriving in creators' freedom... people will always want good stories, and our Supers must adapt or risk being outdated, this time for real. Sales are not what they were, Spidey and X-Men will never sell x million copies ever again, but the variant craze seems oblivious to that. TWD does not need 30 different covers and 10 reboots in 10 years to sell like a mudafugga, given current sales numbers.

All in all, I think readers being more demanding and creators having such freedom will turn the biz on its back yet again.

Only downside, is of course, timing of releases. Hickman, move that a**!!!!

[ShadowTuga]

[Zhuge1]

So this is an interesting question that prompted me to do a bit of reading. According to Wikipedia (which of course could be somewhat inaccurate), the Golden Age of comics is from the late 30's to the early 50's and it's characterized by the introduction of costumed superheroes. The Silver Age then picks up in the early to mid-50's and continues to 1970 and is characterized by the introduction of the CCA due to fears that comic books were responsible for the increase in juvenile delinquency. The modern age ran from ~1970 to 1985 and is characterized by the re-introduction of "dark" plotlines including murder, drug use, racism, etc. Then, the "modern" age started in theory in 1985 and continues til now.

What's interesting is that about every 15-20 years or so since the 30's, a new "age" has formed, yet there hasn't been a demarcation in over 30 years at this point.

I think the answer to your question is most probably yes. The modern age supposedly is characterized by a rise in independent publishers and additional storylines that were more "adult" storylines (wikipedia references the rise in popularity of the works by First Comics and DC's subsequent decision to bring some of those creators in to create defining works for them).

What's the dividing line, though? If the creation of the CCA resulted in the creation of the Silver Age, perhaps the beginning of its downfall in 2001 when Marvel abandoned it marks a new age? Soon after, Marvel had the Max imprint which included Alias. Of course, as you point out, DC introduced Vertigo in the early 90's and it seems like many of those titles paved the way for a lot of the currently popular stuff like Saga, The Walking Dead, and Southern *SQUEE*.

Similarly, comics reading has also changed a lot in the last decade. Comic consumers of the 1980's and 1990's were primarily collectors, without a lot of reading outside of that. As was the case since the 30's, other people were exposed to characters from comic books via movies and television shows, but I'm not sure how many were actively reading them. Nowadays, though, with the popularity of collected editions, graphic novels (which were never serialized), and trade paperbacks, there seem to be more people (outside of single issue collectors) who are actively reading comics materials. My local library quickly purchases new TPB releases of Saga, TWD, Ms. Marvel, and Black Panther as soon as they come out and there's usually a wait list to get access to them. My mother (in her 60's) is a big fan of Saga from picking it up at a library and has went back to read iZombie because of the television show -- she never read comics and had zero interest in them when I collected them in the 90's.

Maybe the question really is how long have we been in a "post-modern" age?

[nycjadie]

I view the modern era as more overlapping movements and phenomenon.

New Wave
Indie Publishers
Porn
90s Glut
Creator Owned
Zines
Micro Publishers
Online Publishers
Diminished Publication Numbers by the big 2 (i.e. the 2000's saw drastic reduction)
Direct Market
Phase out of Newsstand sales
etc.

[greg]

WARNING: Sarcasm implied and intended. This is a topic that I've "debated" online since at least the early 2000s... nothing is being written as a personal attack on those posting in this thread.

The Golden Age of comics (superheroes) was 1938 to about 1955 (or so).
The Silver Age of comics can be started at the re-invention of the Flash (Showcase #4, 1956) or at the introduction of the Marvel Universe (Fantastic Four #1, 1961).

The use of the term "Bronze Age" for comics is weird, since the actual Bronze Age is a prehistoric time, hardly a time period that would come after the "Golden Age" of anything.
We probably use the term "Bronze Age" as the 3rd age since Bronze is the 3rd place medal in the Olympics, but continuing any metals/medals past Bronze would be dumb, even in the Olympics.

I have seen and heard, but we're not stuck with, "Copper Age" as it is loosely-defined by various dates, and I'm really not too fond of "Bronze Age" either, since it doesn't make sense in any way except the Olympics... and comics aren't the Olympics, and everything in the "Bronze Age" doesn't deserve to be considered "3rd place" behind Silver and Gold.

I think we've got to get back to common sense, and though I doubt anyone will ever stop using "Golden Age" or "Silver Age" (or even "Bronze Age") for comics, the common sense question that automatically goes with each "Age" is... what dates are we talking about? Years. We're talking about years.

We've got a great starting point for Golden Age with Action Comics #1 (1938) and a good (rough) timeframe for the start of the Silver Age with the re-invention of Flash in 1956 or the start of Marvel in 1961 (re-invention of Marvel, actually, because Human Torch and Sub-Mariner actually date from 1939).

Comics from the 1940s (the whole decade) are definitely in the Golden Age and comics from the 1960s (the whole decade) are in the Silver Age...
After that... forget the ages. It's dates. It's decades.

Comics from the 1970s might be "Bronze" but they're also... Comics from the 1970s. 1970s comics.
Comics from the 1980s? 1980s comics.
So on.

When I talk about the comic books that I collect, I don't say anything about "Modern Age" or "Copper Age" or "Post-Bronze"... I just say "Comics from the 1990s". It answers the question immediately, at every level of understanding, whether talking to other comic collectors or talking to someone's grandma asking about my "funny books".

Comics from the 1990s are different than comics from the 1980s. Comics from the 2000s are different than comics from the 1990s. We don't need to debate specific starting points for "Ages", since the medals/metals are a dumb idea that ends at Bronze anyway. We don't need to thematically try to date things either, like a starting date for Vertigo titles (officially in 1993) since the Vertigo "theme" started in the 1980s before it was called Vertigo. If you like the Vertigo "theme", then you collect "1980s and 1990s serious comics, like the Vertigo titles" and that's the answer for anyone asking. Or you could say you collect the comics of a particular publisher or a particular writer. You still mention what years are included.

Comics from the 1990s would start at comics that are dated January 1990, obviously. It's a 1990s comic whether it's The Crow or Alf. There's not a thematic age that we could suggest that would work for both The Crow and Alf comics, and those were being sold at the same time. Let's give up the medals/metals/themes/ages and be literal. 1990s comics are 1990s comics.

Comics from the 2000s reflect the "Ultimate" titles for the most part, and the rebooting that went along with those titles, and you could argue that "Heroes Reborn" tested that "theme" in 1996 and reboots in 1998, but what would we call that? "Reboot Age"? "Post-Collapse Age"? "Ultimate Age"? "Recycled Aluminum Age"? How about "2000s comics"? That literally works. "Comics from the 2000s".

Comics from the 2010s... that's where we are now. We'll soon be in 2020s comics.

... or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we should keep up the "Ages" and the metals or the themes or the Post-Post-Modern labels that are sure to follow Post-Modern.

The next time I go car shopping, I'll ask for a Post-Modern Chromium Age-Inspired sedan. Even if that made any sort of sense, I'd still have to tell the car dealer what year I meant.

[Chiclo]

Have I said the thing about the four ages from Greek... mythology? philosophy? being Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron? I assume that is where we get the age structure - the Golden Age of something is different from but not necessarily better than the Silver Age, which is different but not necessarily better than the Bronze Age, which is different but not necessarily better than the Iron Age. Hellenistic philosophy is often divvied up into four - the four humours of the body, the four seasons, the four corners of the Earth, the four elements but NOT Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda. That is something else, with three purer aspects being contrasted against a blended whole, kind of like the Big Bang Theory guys. Or Spock and McCoy contrasting against Kirk.

There are parallels to other mythologies. The Bhagavad Gita is supposed to have occurred at the end of the Third Age leading into the current Fourth Age. Jainism has some odd variations, with humans being shorter and having shorter lifespans as the ages are more or less corrupted. I doubt the Babylon 5 Third Age of Mankind would be a good analogy, though.

[slym2none]

Personally, I am more with Greg on this. This age is the modern age of comics. Not the "Modern Age", please note - no capital letters, no importance. The current age will always be the modern age of comics. I contend that as Greg notes, we just call them comics from the decade they were produced. It really is simpler. Greg said it all before and said it better so I will stop now.





-slym

[Cyberstrike]

Comics from the 1990s are different than comics from the 1980s. Comics from the 2000s are different than comics from the 1990s. We don't need to debate specific starting points for "Ages", since the medals/metals are a dumb idea that ends at Bronze anyway. We don't need to thematically try to date things either, like a starting date for Vertigo titles (officially in 1993) since the Vertigo "theme" started in the 1980s before it was called Vertigo. If you like the Vertigo "theme", then you collect "1980s and 1990s serious comics, like the Vertigo titles" and that's the answer for anyone asking. Or you could say you collect the comics of a particular publisher or a particular writer. You still mention what years are included.

Comics from the 1990s would start at comics that are dated January 1990, obviously. It's a 1990s comic whether it's The Crow or Alf. There's not a thematic age that we could suggest that would work for both The Crow and Alf comics, and those were being sold at the same time. Let's give up the medals/metals/themes/ages and be literal. 1990s comics are 1990s comics.

The term I have often heard to comics from 1986-1999 (or whenever Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns were first published) is the Dark Age because of a lot attempts by DC and Marvel to make all their respective comic book universes "dark and grim and gritty" and when then "new" companies like Image, Dark Horse, Valiant, Defiant, Broadway, Malibu, and others were often accused of doing taking it too the extreme, regardless if they did or did not, (and in some cases they most certainly did and in others not at all). It was when the first Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man films that seem to be when the Dark Age is considered to have ended and the modern age began.

[Sven the Returned]

I understand Marvel and DC has some great characters but till they dominate like they do comics are a pre-modern marketplace in my eyes.

[lorddunlow]

I understand Marvel and DC has some great characters but till they dominate like they do comics are a pre-modern marketplace in my eyes.

I have no idea what this means...

Sent from my HTC U Ultra using Tapatalk

[Burrito Boy]

Don't ever say anything bad about boobs and pouches.

[Sven the Returned]

I understand Marvel and DC has some great characters but till they dominate like they do comics are a pre-modern marketplace in my eyes.

I have no idea what this means...

Sent from my HTC U Ultra using Tapatalk

It's one of the least dynamic markets i ever laid eyes on.

[ShadowTuga]

Don't ever say anything bad about boobs and pouches.

I just hate the use and abuse of it in the 90s comics' scene.
Love me some female fun parts and the convenience of pocket-like compartments in one's outfit can't be underated...

[Burrito Boy]

Don't ever say anything bad about boobs and pouches.

I just hate the use and abuse of it in the 90s comics' scene.
Love me some female fun parts and the convenience of pocket-like compartments in one's outfit can't be underated...

[Shadowman99]

Don't ever say anything bad about boobs and pouches.

I just hate the use and abuse of it in the 90s comics' scene.
Love me some female fun parts and the convenience of pocket-like compartments in one's outfit can't be underated...

Burrito Boy! Haven't seen you around for ages man! You doing alright?

I don't really have any thoughts on this thread. I pretty much just read and follow Valiant, and the occasional 'other', so I don't know what's going on out there in 'comic world'.

Having said that, I've never really been into superhero stories, so I've always been more likely to buy Indie anyway. Maybe that's a sign of the times in some way?

[IMJ]

I think that the recent comic ages have been named too close to the period themselves and mistakenly using the rare metal naming conventions. We are too close to some of these eras to look at them with clarity for the zeitgeist and name them accurately anyway - except for the 90s boom, which in many ways probably should be clustered in with the 80's, given the buying patterns of the "Me" Generation.

Also, that !mage documentary on YouTube was really good, yeah. I watched all 5 parts and I usually don't spend that much time on YouTube, but that documentary was professional release quality.

[possumgrease]

I didn't see this thread originally, but I've enjoyed the discussion.

I think I agree that's easier to discuss the styles by decades instead of ages although I love names like Chromium Age or Plastic Age (CGC era). My preference for using decades may be because I've been reading the American Comic Book Chronicles put out by Two Morrows Publishing which groups it this way (looking forward to reading the 90's one coming out soon). That being said, it does seem like comics have been mostly the same since the early 2000's. Maybe I'm just thinking about titles like Walking Dead/Invincible (2003), but I'm not sure I could pick out the decade as easily as I could with a prior decade's comic.

[tarheelmarine]

I didn't see this thread originally, but I've enjoyed the discussion.

I think I agree that's easier to discuss the styles by decades instead of ages although I love names like Chromium Age or Plastic Age (CGC era). My preference for using decades may be because I've been reading the American Comic Book Chronicles put out by Two Morrows Publishing which groups it this way (looking forward to reading the 90's one coming out soon). That being said, it does seem like comics have been mostly the same since the early 2000's. Maybe I'm just thinking about titles like Walking Dead/Invincible (2003), but I'm not sure I could pick out the decade as easily as I could with a prior decade's comic.

Thanks for sharing about this book. I'm adding the 90s one to my Christmas list.

[markie7235]

Personally I call everything 1990's onwards as the Investor's Age. Not that people didn't collect comics prior to the 90's, but the 90's seem to be when all of a sudden there was massive investment in comics like they were a stock that could be sold in a couple years for big profit....This lead to mass over-production (Valiant fans know this story all too well), and the comic crash of the 90's...

The funny thing is though print runs are now lower, nothing has really changed. And comic companies know it, because that's why almost every book has to have all these variant covers as a way to sell more copies and help create a second hand market. They are not ignorant of it, and you can argue are consciously encouraging it since it helps sell more comics up front for them. And without making judgment on it or us, we still gobble it up with the hope we acquired something cool and rare that will have value in a few years.

I'm just as guilty as the next person, but I still wonder constantly, do we hit a point where suddenly people have enough of variants and suddenly the interest goes away making these books worthless again. Don't know, and I tend to only buy the ones that introduce key characters or are stunning display covers.

I'm even comfortable including everything through the 80's in the Silver Age, though I know that could be highly debated.

I guess the real question is, does the "Age" really matter? Most times I heard people talking "Ages", it's a way to talk about rarity and condition variances, like "this is in great shape for a Golden Age book", implying that poorer condition is expected and it's still a hidden gem. As Greg mentioned, Golden and Silver start times are a little easier to mark, but after that it's just a jumbled mess as the options of comics becomes increasingly varied the further we go on. So I just stick with "Investor's Age" for everything 90's onwards, because that was really when we saw prices on comics really jump as people viewed there as being stronger value there than previously.

Then again, I also like to jokingly refer to the 2000's onwards as the "Graded Age" because with the emergence of CGC, it seems the only time anyone talks individual book collecting is in reference to condition, value, and CGCing it

[Shadowman99]

Personally I call everything 1990's onwards as the Investor's Age. Not that people didn't collect comics prior to the 90's, but the 90's seem to be when all of a sudden there was massive investment in comics like they were a stock that could be sold in a couple years for big profit....This lead to mass over-production (Valiant fans know this story all too well), and the comic crash of the 90's...

The funny thing is though print runs are now lower, nothing has really changed. And comic companies know it, because that's why almost every book has to have all these variant covers as a way to sell more copies and help create a second hand market. They are not ignorant of it, and you can argue are consciously encouraging it since it helps sell more comics up front for them. And without making judgment on it or us, we still gobble it up with the hope we acquired something cool and rare that will have value in a few years.

I'm just as guilty as the next person, but I still wonder constantly, do we hit a point where suddenly people have enough of variants and suddenly the interest goes away making these books worthless again. Don't know, and I tend to only buy the ones that introduce key characters or are stunning display covers.

I'm even comfortable including everything through the 80's in the Silver Age, though I know that could be highly debated.

I guess the real question is, does the "Age" really matter? Most times I heard people talking "Ages", it's a way to talk about rarity and condition variances, like "this is in great shape for a Golden Age book", implying that poorer condition is expected and it's still a hidden gem. As Greg mentioned, Golden and Silver start times are a little easier to mark, but after that it's just a jumbled mess as the options of comics becomes increasingly varied the further we go on. So I just stick with "Investor's Age" for everything 90's onwards, because that was really when we saw prices on comics really jump as people viewed there as being stronger value there than previously.

Then again, I also like to jokingly refer to the 2000's onwards as the "Graded Age" because with the emergence of CGC, it seems the only time anyone talks individual book collecting is in reference to condition, value, and CGCing it

I really like your simplifications on the idea of defined eras of comic generations

Can we refer to the current point in time as the 'Cinematic Revival' age? I figure that with the contemporary boom in hero films, which are of course inextricably associated with their paper-based counterparts, has driven a renewed interest in comic characters and universes and is therefore important, even if that's not necessarily translating into increased sales of actual comics.

So maybe we could categorise things: Golden Age/Silver Age/Investor's Age/Cinematic Revival Age?

[nycjadie]

The 1990s were definitely different than the 80s. The 2000s saw the eradication of the newsstand market, lower prints runs, and a focus back on quality. The 2010s have seen the digitalization and diversification of comics, for sure.

I'm not sure what you call them, but the Gold, Silver, Bronze, Copper themes don't work as well anymore. Neither does "modern," as those 3 decades are distinct from one another.