Will we see ANYTHING like the Silver Age again?

[The Shadow]

This thread was brought on by a reply at Newsarama and I wanted to ask it here too... but I don't think we will never ever another Silver Age. Sure there was the bronze age with its horror and grim type heros and villains introduced... but it was an evolution FROM the silver age.

The Silver Age of comics is unique. The Golden Age, while it was the first, could have failed, the stories were aimed at kids, a lot of the heroes were variationsof others (not that it isn't like that now... but it seemed worse back then) and it wasn't very cohesive.

The Silver Age was the first time so many original characters were introduced in such a short amount of time... especially at Marvel... and the industry hasn't been the same since. And I don't mean DC trying to "recapture" the essence of the silver age... I mean a complete new beginning or total change in comics.

The style of storytelling changed, the demographic changed, the types of comics changed (mostly gone were romance, western and war comics), creators became as important as the characters, and real social issues started to be introduced (discrimination, racism etc.)

Things have been pretty much the same since Fantastic Four #1. Sure the types of stories have changed and the styles have evolved, but there was no break like there was between the gold and silver ages and with the exception of stylistic differences the silver age never really ended.

We will never see a renaissance in comics like we did with the introduction of the Fantastic Four again.

Anyone else think the Silver Age (like it or hate it) was the pinnacle... the zenith of comic eras?

If not why? What would have to happen to achieve that level of creativity and originality again?

[Bright-Raven]

Yes, you can have another age of comics, but it would be a cross of evolving beyond where we are now and returning to the Silver Age alike.

How is it to be done? Well, I could go on a rant, but nobody has ever bothered to listen before, so I'm not wasting bandwidth now. I'd be just as well off to try to win the $340 million powerball lotto this week and do it myself (and yes, there are plenty of creators and concepts ready to go if the capital was there).

[The Shadow]

Yes, you can have another age of comics, but it would be a cross of evolving beyond where we are now and returning to the Silver Age alike.

How is it to be done? Well, I could go on a rant, but nobody has ever bothered to listen before, so I'm not wasting bandwidth now. I'd be just as well off to try to win the $340 million powerball lotto this week and do it myself (and yes, there are plenty of creators and concepts ready to go if the capital was there).
Rant away!

I'm curious what others think!

[Bright-Raven]

I think I'd rather start a thread about forming a comics company, in conjunction with others of like minded position. Can't say when or even if I'd bother with such a task at this point in time.

[BoosterBronze]

I think I'd rather start a thread about forming a comics company, in conjunction with others of like minded position. Can't say when or even if I'd bother with such a task at this point in time.

I too have the most brilliant idea ever. And I too choose not to share it with the people. And I too expect people to accept my brilliance at my word.

[Rob Imes]

One could say the same thing ("There will never be another Silver Age") about a lot of things. To me, the Silver Age needs to be understood as PART of its times, which was a time of radical change in many areas of life, not just entertainment. It was the 1960s. And it seems to me that within that decade there were some quantum leaps of change and quality happening, in many areas (not just comics), which resulted in things from the beginning of that decade not resembling things from the end of that decade. In 1966, color TV sets finally surpassed the B&W TVs in sales. We went from "A Hard Day's Night" to "Magical Mystery Tour" in a few short years, from "Twilight Zone" to "Night Gallery."

A good quick snapshot of this change can be seen in the "Beatles 1962-66" and "Beatles 1967-70" album covers. On the earlier cover, the Beatles look like the familiar moptops. On the later cover, only Paul looks about the same, the rest of them with much longer hair, beards, etc. Even though they are posing in the same manner and in the exact same location, and even though only 7 or 8 years had passed between the two photos, a lot had changed. Their music, their image, the world had changed and grown. Attitudes and assumptions changed, as the early Marvel comics went from a Cold War "Reds" mentality to Captain America protecting students from police during a campus riot. The times they were a-changin'.

And just as rock groups like the Beatles had grown from playing 3-minute pop songs with guitars to creating "concept albums" using symphony orchestras, comics experienced their own evolution. Jack Kirby's panels got bigger and bigger throughout the decade, along with his concepts. The comics equivalent of rock groups using orchestras would be Kirby's photo-montage splashes, Steranko's psychedelic experiments, and Stan Lee's pseudo-Shakespeare. While rock musicians were constructing concept albums, comics companies were building their own universes. Songs began blending into one another on the records without the usual pause, while characters began running into each other outside their regular titles. Stories got longer and longer, just like songs were doing. The coolest rock stars and superheroes were those who were misunderstood anti-heroes.

In 1967, the film Bonnie and Clyde was released; the modern movie ratings system was implemented the following year. The movies would never be the same. The Production Code was dead, but the Comics Code endured albeit gradually loosening over the years. The underground comics sprang up outside the Code, beginning with Zap Comix in 1967, while Warren's horror magazine line avoided the Code because of its format. Like the changes in film, these comics would have a ripple effect well into the next decade with even Marvel trying to get into the act.

But the Silver Age itself came to an end as the Sixties moved into the Seventies. Jimi, Janis, Steranko, Neal Adams. In 1970, Lennon and McCartney broke up, and so did their comics equivalent, Lee and Kirby. So, there won't be another Silver Age or another 1960s until we experience something like it again, where we have quantum jumps of quality and change, where creators of entertainment start coming up with a rapid succession of material that was created to be throwaway but instead stands the test of time as classic art.

I think that eventually we will see another time like that, though. I'm optimistic.

[MacQuarrie]

Short answer: No, we never will.

Long answer: Back then, comics were not part of some leviathan of a marketing machine owned by an international media conglomerate. If Julius Schwartz wanted to publish a new Flash, he gave the order and it happened, and it happened without somebody sitting down and grinding out a convoluted year-long masturbatory exercise to explain how and why the the new character fit into the "universe." On the first page, he showed the new guy reading a comic book starring the old guy, and that was all the explanation you were going to get, by God.

There is not one person in comics today who has the power to arbitrarily change anything without it passing through a committee of editors, lawyers, marketing executives, account managers, licensing reps and other assorted buttinskis.

Moreover, there is not one person in comics who has either the courage or the vision to simply say "that was then, this is now, we're starting over." Because of that, we have to be subjected to a convoluted year-long masturbatory exercise of tie-ins and crossovers and "events" to explain and justify what are at heart marketing and trademark decisions rather than creative ones.

Add in the fact that too many writers and editors in the biz today are OCD fanboys more concerned with making all the little fiddlybits of continuity fit together tidily than with telling a rocking good story, and you have pretty much killed off the kind of "flying by the seat of one's pants" that's required for a new Silver Age.

We have castrated the industry; why are we telling it to be fruitful and multiply?

[Buried Alien]

Rant Man's in full rant mode tonight. Since I can't hope to match him in that department, I'll settle for this brief rebuttal:

I'm enjoying INFINITE CRISIS and the continuity minutiae that is a large part of savoring it. Many people don't care much for this continuity tracking stuff, but for some of us, it's a large part of the fun and when done well, adds wonderful texture to a story. What matters isn't so much the continuity details themselves, but the depth of the tradition they represent. A story whose consequences reverberate through decades has a grandeur that can be really awe-inspiring.


Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Bright-Raven]

Booster:

I too have the most brilliant idea ever. And I too choose not to share it with the people. And I too expect people to accept my brilliance at my word.

Actually, my plans were published and presented to various publishing companies over eight years ago, both in the comics and book industries - *and* part of it was dispersed publicly at SDCC in 1997. Some publishers have taken elements of the presentation and used it to their own agendas. But none of them have had the balls to actually do what I outlined.

[PatrickG]

There is not one person in comics today who has the power to arbitrarily change anything without it passing through a committee of editors, lawyers, marketing executives, account managers, licensing reps and other assorted buttinskis.

Moreover, there is not one person in comics who has either the courage or the vision to simply say "that was then, this is now, we're starting over." Because of that, we have to be subjected to a convoluted year-long masturbatory exercise of tie-ins and crossovers and "events" to explain and justify what are at heart marketing and trademark decisions rather than creative ones.


In all fairness, there IS Image.

If Erik Larsen wanted to replace Savage Dragon tomorrow with a little kid with psychic powers and his cyborg pet dinosaur?

Nothin' stopping him.

I think Image is probably the best place for it to happen but if (and only if) they were willing to expand distribution/format options outside the direct market instead of being stuck in 4th place emulating Marvel and DC's distribution tactics.

[Bright-Raven]

Patrick:

I think Image is probably the best place for it to happen but if (and only if) they were willing to expand distribution/format options outside the direct market instead of being stuck in 4th place emulating Marvel and DC's distribution tactics.

Out of the existing companies, perhaps. And yes, you are correct in your assessment. Just don't hold your breath waiting for it.

[Bright-Raven]

MacQuarrie:

I'm disappointed in you.

Given the proper bankroll to function, are you telling me that your own publishing group couldn't spur on a new movement in comics? Dude, aren't *I* supposed to be the defeatist?

[Fabian]

Given the proper bankroll to function, are you telling me that your own publishing group couldn't spur on a new movement in comics? Dude, aren't *I* supposed to be the defeatist?
*coughCrossgencough*

[PatrickG]

Crossgen didn't publish ANY genre titles. The titles were all "crossgenre". And they blew money relocating people and teaching them to speak Italian.

If I were doing a new launch, I would do some super-hero, western and romance... And beyond that, I'd analyze the current genres that are big in TV and film.

Off the top of my head, that would probably mean a comedy about a dysfunctional nuclear family, an outrageous office comedy, a "boy hero on a magic quest" book, maybe an adaptation of a stageplay.

Target several key demographics. Try to recruit appropriate writers from in and outside the comics industry, whether or not they have a "name" draw. Put the emphasis on the product and not the personalities.

Maybe release newstand collections designed to build audiences modelled after various TV programming blocks.

A "Primetime" magazine would be aimed at readers 13-30. The more "adult" stuff would tend to be comedy although maybe a police/crime drama would be a good vehicle for a serious "mature readers" book. People with magic powers and fancy costumes would tend to be targeted at kids.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I don't think we'll see anything like the Silver Age again, no. The world has changed waaaaaay too much since then, particularly when it comes to how much stuff we have competing with each other to entertain us.

Even if you ignore all the other genres that the Silver Age was playing with, and focus only on the superhero stuff, its still a whole different ball game now. In 1960, if you wanted superheroes, your options were limited to comics and maybe reruns of the George Reeves' Superman show, which was extraordinarially limited in what it could do. That's it.

Now? If you're looking for a superhero story, you've got literally thousands of different options beyond the comics like movies, TV shows, cartoons, video games--many of which are doing a far better job with superheroes than the comics. I mean, the best superhero stuff I've seen in the past five years was The Incredibles, Justice League Unlimited and New Frontier. Only one of those was a comic...and it was done by guy from animation.

This is not to say that comics can't still tell great stories and entertain us, but I don't really see it ever regaining the influence and popularity it had during the sixties.

[CaptMagellan]

A "Primetime" magazine would be aimed at readers 13-30. The more "adult" stuff would tend to be comedy although maybe a police/crime drama would be a good vehicle for a serious "mature readers" book. People with magic powers and fancy costumes would tend to be targeted at kids.
A freaky apparition of a decaying eight year old girl, her head barely still connected to her shoulders and cocked disturbingly to one side, rises out of the ground, looks you in the eye, points to you and says.

"Horror. You forgot horror comics. You are a baaaaaaad man!"

[Hoss]

I know that a good bit of the product is reprinted stuff from Japan but there is a silver age going on right now with Manga. That is what younger kids and teen agers are reading - and they're reading it in huge numbers. Us old Marvel/DC types by and large are missing out on the revolution. But the comic book reading audience is radically changing (there's girls!), the genres that are being read is changing (it ain't just Yugio) and the form of the books is changing (magazine compilations and digest collections).

[MacQuarrie]

MacQuarrie:

I'm disappointed in you.

Given the proper bankroll to function, are you telling me that your own publishing group couldn't spur on a new movement in comics? Dude, aren't *I* supposed to be the defeatist?
You're absolutely right. Anybody with some money and a little courage could do it. CrossGen could have done it if they could have thought beyond the current state of comics. I could do it. You could do it. Half the people here could do it.

I just wouldn't look for it to come from either of the Big Two.

[PatrickG]

I think if somebody got the ball rolling, The Big Two would get their act together.

[MacQuarrie]

I think if somebody got the ball rolling, The Big Two would get their act together.
I dunno. They're notorious for jumping on trends a good 3-5 years after they've passed.

[Bright-Raven]

*coughcough*CrossGen*coughcough*

MacQuarrie already replied as to part of why CrossGen failed. I see no reason to add on to it.

[MacQuarrie]

MacQuarrie already replied as to part of why CrossGen failed. I see no reason to add on to it.
More accurately, PatrickG did. I merely pointed to their failure to think outside the box in terms of what a comic could be.

As it happens, I picked up one of CrossGen's paperback compilations at San Diego year before last. It was called "Forge" I think, and it had the introductory stories for about a half-dozen of their books. Only one or two of the stories really caught my interest to any degree, and none enough for me to seek out the subsequent issues or books. Beyond that, I found the unifying "sigil" thing contrived and annoying. Personally, I find the whole shared universe thing to be a major hindrance to good comics.

Look at it like this: Every once in a while on TV, they'll do a crossover episode, where the cops from "Law & Order" show up on "Crossing Jordan" or whatever, and that's all fine and well and good. But suppose the writers of the one show had to constantly pay attention to, and reference in their own show, the events and characters in the other? Suppose the writers of "My Name is Earl" did a crossover with "The West Wing" and then from that episode on, had to take special care to make sure that any and all references to any political activity corresponded to the events in the other show. It would creatively kill both programs, because only the most compulsively anal-retentive fans of the shows would care in the slightest.

Recipe for a new Silver Age, within the context of the DC/Marvel superhero worlds:

1. An absolute moratorium on any referencing or revisiting of old stories for at least five years. In particular, an absolute ban on retroactive continuity. Nobody gets to go back and try to fix anything. If the writers don't like an old story, they can ignore it, but they don't get to bring it up and rewrite it to their liking. The direction to move is forward, not back.

2. Any and all crossovers will be one-way, single-issue stories. Wonder Lemur appears in The Amazing Sea Slug's book for a done-in-one story and it does not continue in the next issue of his own book. For at least five years. No big company-wide events.

3. Make sure that each and every issue of each comic tells a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. Even if it's a single chapter of a 30-issue arc, it still has to feel like a complete comic, not a story fragment.

4. No 30-issue arcs.

5. Leave the universe alone. No more fiddling with the fabric of reality. All it really accomplishes is invalidating somebody else's favorite stories.

But really, if it were up to me, I wouldn't even bother looking for a new Silver Age (or Aluminum Age or Titanium Age or Beryllium Age or whatever the hell) at DC or Mavel. I would look toward some new publisher with the good sense to come up with stuff that appeals to the OTHER 390,000,000 potential customers in the US. It will most likely not be the standard comic book format, but it also won't be TPBs either. Your new Silver Age will be driven by the same forces that drove the first one: cheap, disposable entertainment that appeals to people ages 6-75, both male and female. The Weekly World News is heading in the right direction with their shift from sensationalistic tabloid to outright humor, but there is a lot of space on adjoining racks for comics in magazine or tabloid format, printed on the cheapest paper available, with a healthy enough ad count to keep the price down, with content that supplies a variety of genres and styles.

The first thing to do to produce this new Silver Age is to say "to hell with the direct market" and treat it like any other mainstream publication like TV Guide, Time, People or Sports Illustrated. Say "to hell with the collector market" and put out the best comic possible at the cheapest price possible. Say "to hell with continuity" and put good stories ahead of making everything fit together tidily.

In other words, pull out your tattered old reprint of Action Comics #1 and take a good hard look at what made it work in 1938. I'll give you a hint: It contained about a dozen self-contained stories built around a single theme, ACTION, with no cross-referencing and no mountains of minutia inflated to epic proportions. 64 pages, all in color for a dime.

[Copper]

Crossgen didn't publish ANY genre titles. The titles were all "crossgenre". And they blew money relocating people and teaching them to speak Italian.

If I were doing a new launch, I would do some super-hero, western and romance... And beyond that, I'd analyze the current genres that are big in TV and film.

Off the top of my head, that would probably mean a comedy about a dysfunctional nuclear family, an outrageous office comedy, a "boy hero on a magic quest" book, maybe an adaptation of a stageplay.

Target several key demographics. Try to recruit appropriate writers from in and outside the comics industry, whether or not they have a "name" draw. Put the emphasis on the product and not the personalities.

Maybe release newstand collections designed to build audiences modelled after various TV programming blocks.

A "Primetime" magazine would be aimed at readers 13-30. The more "adult" stuff would tend to be comedy although maybe a police/crime drama would be a good vehicle for a serious "mature readers" book. People with magic powers and fancy costumes would tend to be targeted at kids.

Good ideas in the business sense, but then you'd have the problem of "jumping on the bandwagon." (You want a great example of this, go look up Books of Magic on Amazon, and despite its earlier publication date, the first thing people thought that it was capitalizing on Harry Potter's success.)

The thing about the Silver Age, is most of the time, things weren't planned. Nowadays, it seems like they have these big editorial meetings about which direction a particular line of books is going to go in for a set number of arcs. The thing about Marvel in the 60s, is they were on the verge of bankruptcy, and when Stan Lee created Spiderman and Fantastic Four, he was working under the assumption that Marvel Comics was under its last hurrah, so basically he felt like he could do anything he wanted. There was every indication that those two titles could have been the last gasp of a company on its last legs, but we all know what happened next, right?

The thing is, you can't "plan" a hit. Something can have all the right "ingredients" but it might lack that special spark that makes people want to remember it. The Silver Age wasn't about marketing research, focus groups, trying to guess what the fans wanted; most of the time they just said "Here! New product!" and it either worked or it didn't. If it didn't they tried something else, and they were fine as long as their main lines were going strong. I really don't think anyone in this industry can say there's a magic formula that'll guarentee you a hit.

[MacQuarrie]

What he said.

"I don't know the secret of success, but the secret of failure is trying to please everybody." -- Bill Cosby