Comic Books over the past 100 years have popularly been divided into several time periods, defined by their storytelling, business practices and place in pop-culture. The Golden Age (1938-1950) saw the rise of comics as a storytelling medium and with the birth of popular characters such as Superman, Batman & Captain America, as well as most of the tropes and storytelling devices used today were created. However come the end of WW2 superheroes as a concept began to get less and less popular, thus leading to other concepts taking over such as Westerns and Romance comics. The Silver Age (1956-1970) saw superheroes return to popularity with new characters such as The Flash, Spider-Man and The Avengers. It also saw the Comics Code Authority take power which restricted and censored controversial plots, leading to most stories being wacky and over the top. The Bronze Age (1970-1985) saw the Comics Code Authority die down, allowing comics to begin tackling more serious and grounded issues, including death, alcoholism, drug addiction and the Vietnam War.
Then finally there is The Modern Age (1985-Present) or as I prefer to call it: The Dark Age. This saw the rise in popularity in stories like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns impact comic books across the field, suddenly every comic thought being dark & gritty was the way to go and the only option to be seen as serious storytelling. The Death of Superman, Identity Crisis, Cry For Justice-Okay so a lot of it was DC, but Marvel had their fair share of needlessly dark & gritty stories, you think Tobey Maguire gave us Emo Peter? Try reading anything from The Clone Saga; that is Emo Peter. Not to mention Spawn, Youngblood, Blade, all needlessly violent and gritty, even when it was done well (The Crow) it still enforced the idea this was the only way to tell stories. Even more so the actual industry itself was not doing well during this. The Rise and Fall of the Speculator Boom meant lots of new publishers were created and collapsed within their first year, meaning an over-saturation of material and a general downgrade in readership. Marvel even nearly went bankrupt in the 90s. It was truly a Dark Age to be a comic book fan, and it lasted for a long, long time.
But in my opinion, not only have we move passed that, but we are in such a good age to be a comic book reader. Now it’s hard to define when this happened, my estimates are somewhere around 2012 but this age didn’t really hit its stride until 2015/16. Now the big thing that jump started this new age is two things, one is the internet, because of this it is so much easier now than ever to have your opinion on comic books to be heard, before creators could only ever get feedback through letters, which meant the majority of their audiences’ opinions wouldn’t be heard. Now they could hear opinions and see reviews within hours of publishing, from thousands of people. Then of course there is just the general popularity of superhero stories thanks to their movies. Say what you want about the over-saturation of our blockbusters, but it’s no secret that superhero movies make big money these days. Everyone goes to see them, everyone knows and loves these characters. 10 years ago people would have laughed at the idea of Thor getting his own movie, but now? People scoff at the idea that there was a time where Hollywood was sceptical on if Spider-Man would work as a movie. And while comic sales still aren't what they used to be, they’re slowly picking their way back up in sales.
Even more so is how the industry works and how these stories are written. While DC and Marvel still dominate the majority of the market, lots of smaller publishers are getting a chance to shine in the spotlight too. Comic books like The Walking Dead, Saga, The Wicked + The Divine are considered must reads for any comic book fan. Mostly because of how accessible it is to publish, market and read these comics, again, thanks to the internet. There’s also much more an attempt to diversify comics, to be more inclusive and reach out to a wider audience. Kamala Khan as Ms Marvel, Miles Morales as Spider-Man, Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz as Green Lanterns. Hell, there’s something to be said about how big these stories got. Back in 1992 when it was announced DC were going to kill off Superman that was so big it made it to national news, that was insane to think a comic book story would be that important. But nowadays there’s a big story every few months that makes the news, a female Thor, making Captain America a Nazi, these all made headlines for how mind blowing they were. The focus on diversity also played a role behind the scenes too, more female writers and artists were brought on board, people of different backgrounds were given chances to tell stories, while granted this is an area that still isn’t perfect, it’s a lot better than it used to be.
Then of course there were two major events in the big two to shake things up. Marvel’s Secret Wars and DC Rebirth. Both publishers had major continuity reboots just a year apart and relaunched most of their comic books. While this was the mostly done as a way to invite new readers in on their stories, it also worked to completely rebrand their series. Marvel’s event meant ending their Ultimate Series, which was considered a more grounded version of their characters, when really it just turned out to be really angsty and mean spirited. While DC was joining their prior continuity with the New 52 continuity, overall making the majority of their comics far less dark in tone (Except where appropriate) and going back to what made their characters likeable in the first place, hell, in the DC Rebirth One Shot, the day is saved thanks to a hug…a hug. When would you have ever seen something like that in The Dark Age of comic books?
So to sum up, looks like The Dark Age of comic books is over, now we're in an age where our characters are diverse, our stories teach compassion and our audiences are more engaged than ever. So far, it seems like a fairly good age to be in, who knows where it'll go from here.
-Danny
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