Which age of comic books was the best?

The Bronze Age. End of discussion. My feelings are partially due to the fact that the Bronze Age was the era of comics that I came up in. I had a reminder of that recently when I went to Second and Charles and got some old comics for cheap — ‘80s New Mutants, West Coast Avengers and bunch of other back issues to fill in the gaps in my collection. I think I now own just about every Marvel comic published in 1983.

So there have been four major eras in comics history: The Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age and the Modern Age, which we’re living in now. In hindsight, we’ve been able to demarcate when these periods began and ended.

The Golden Age started in 1938 with the first appearance of Superman in Action Comics #1. This time period had some innocence but also a bit of darkness. Batman used a gun back then, Superman fought a man who abused his wife and the superheroes fought the Nazis, via the Justice Society of America at DC and the Invaders at Marvel. This period was a little like movies before the Hays Code. There was also racism and sexism that is cringe-worthy now but was casual back then. For example, Wonder Woman, one of the most powerful DC superheroes, was the JSA’s secretary.

The Golden Age, and comics in general, petered out in the ‘50s as Fredric Wertham labeled them a bad influence on kids in his book Seduction of the Innocent. At Marvel, Captain America went into suspended animation. At DC, the JSA disbanded after refusing to reveal their secret identities to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Superman and Batman continued on but the crackdown on violent content rendered their stories toothless and goofy.

In 1956, the creation of Barry Allen, the second Flash, revived superheroes and started the Silver Age. The Flash revealed the existence of the multiverse, specifically that the adventures of Jay Garrick, the first Flash, took place on Earth-2. On the new Earth-1, new characters took up the identities of heroes like Green Lantern and Hawkman. The stories during this time were lighthearted and a little wacky.

At Marvel, the Silver Age started in 1961 with the publication of Fantastic Four #1. This comic ushered in a new era of creativity and the sense that a whole universe was open to exploration. The Marvel Universe spread further with the simultaneous publication of Avengers #1 and X-Men #1 in 1963. So many of the characters who debuted in that era are still cornerstones of comics today.

The Silver Age gave way to the Bronze Age in 1973 when the Green Goblin threw Gwen Stacy off the Brooklyn (or George Washington) Bridge. That little “snap” sound effect of her neck breaking was the symbolic beginning of the new era. Main characters could die, and stories got darker and more complicated with more multi-part stories and pyrrhic victories.

My love of the Bronze Age may be nostalgia talking but that nostalgia speaks for a lot of people because the comics of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s have a good reputation and top-notch creators. You had Frank Miller on Daredevil, John Byrne on Fantastic Four, George Perez on New Teen Titans, Walt Simonson on Thor, Roger Stern on Avengers and Spider-Man, and Bill Sienkiewicz on New Mutants and Moon Knight. Most of all, Chris Claremont resurrected Uncanny X-Men from cancellation and guided it to new heights of creativity and popularity.

The Bronze Age died in 1985 when the landmark series Crisis on Infinite Earths erased the DC multiverse retroactively and folded the parallel Earths into one Earth. Barry Allen, who ushered in the Silver Age, died to save the universe. The Modern Age had some great stories, such as Watchmen, which deconstructed the idea of superheroes. The tone was also “grim and gritty.” Wolverine was absolutely everywhere.

It’s been a mixed bag since for every good, thoughtful story, there’s been a story with characterization sacrificed for x-treeem action and superheroes. A lot of the early ‘90s comics look ridiculous now. Marvel went bankrupt and outsourced its flagship titles for a year, leading to the maligned “Heroes Reborn” era. The comics industry collapsed as speculators entered the market. Retailers ordered too many copies of re-launched #1 issues and couldn’t sell them so they went out of business. By the way, those #1 issues you have from the ‘90s are worthless. Everybody and his mother bought the adjectiveless X-Men #1 so there’s a glut in the market.

The Modern Age is what comic readers are living in now. I guess we’ll only know we left the age in hindsight, finding some epochal event that marked its end. Who knows what’s coming next?