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Beelzebub1111
2006-06-24, 10:05 AM
What do you like

Pulp, Gold, Silver, Iron/Dark, Modern? I kind of like the gold age when heros could be heros and the comics code wasn't instantiated, so they still delt with death, drugs, zombies, and other stuff. The heros were also not overpowered. They usualy just had some kind of gadget or trick that they worked off of. I also like the Iron age because the heros were more human and they had problems. The world was more real. Grim and gritty as it were.

Logic
2006-07-30, 02:15 AM
i think all but the "silver age" of comics had their merits (i am assuming the silver age is when the Comics Code Authority was formalized)
But as long as the comic tells a decent story, i like the series. I happen to prefer the modern age of comics at this point, with the dark/iron age being a very close second.

Jarl
2006-07-31, 03:13 AM
Iron as in the Gritty 80s-90s? I liked them. Modern comics are good too, as I'm a manga/anime fan.
Golden Age were crazy, and Silver Age they all just seemed so soverpowered and far too silly for my taste. Silver was 60-70, right? As in Adam West?
Yeah. No thanks.

-I like Gritty and Modern best, I guess.

sun_tzu
2006-07-31, 02:07 PM
I like modern, I guess. Sure, it has its flaws - but there's some pretty good writing out there.

Beleriphon
2006-08-01, 01:44 PM
I'd have to go with the current modern writing as well. Silver Age is fun for the goofy comics, but the characters all the same except for a catch phrase. Seriously, read a bit of dialogue without the catch phrase and it could be coming from any character. DC is particularly bad for this, or at least they were.

Jarl
2006-08-01, 11:42 PM
Oh, duh. Pulp.
Why?
Let me answer your question with another question...

-Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

Alchemistmerlin
2006-08-04, 01:34 AM
Eliminate Wolverine and Batman, and I'm all for modern age writing.

Jack_Banzai
2006-08-06, 09:56 PM
Modern Age. The Iron Age did its level best to destroy the comic book industry with flashy, shallow, overproduced tripe.

menkent
2006-08-09, 03:22 AM
Modern Age. The Iron Age did its level best to destroy the comic book industry with flashy, shallow, overproduced tripe.


fair enough, but it's hard to beat something like Dark Knight Returns or whatever storyline it was where Joker beat in Robin's head with a crowbar. Even some of the wank 90's crossovers like x-cutioner's song were decent reading... or at least more interesting than some of the hyper-contemporary "we have to deal with the issue of the day quick give someone the bird flu and pencil in a real politician" junk. the 80's and 90's also had the crow, ninja turtles (i'll forget that archie's adventure poop), sandman, yusagi, etc. some real classics snuck in there among the marketting ploys and needless variant covers.

Jack_Banzai
2006-08-09, 06:17 PM
fair enough, but it's hard to beat something like Dark Knight Returns or whatever storyline it was where Joker beat in Robin's head with a crowbar. Even some of the wank 90's crossovers like x-cutioner's song were decent reading... or at least more interesting than some of the hyper-contemporary "we have to deal with the issue of the day quick give someone the bird flu and pencil in a real politician" junk. the 80's and 90's also had the crow, ninja turtles (i'll forget that archie's adventure poop), sandman, yusagi, etc. some real classics snuck in there among the marketting ploys and needless variant covers.

That was "A Death in the Family". Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there were absolutely no good comics during the dark/iron age, but for my money most of the really good stories stopped coming in in the mid-eighties. The death of independent studios like Eclipse and First Comics were a blow against comicdom in general, and the birth of Image was a travesty against graphic storytelling. That is, the graphics were good (if you like a lot of characters who all look the same) but the storytelling, atrocious.

menkent
2006-08-10, 03:21 PM
well, the artists (liefeld, jim lee, todd mcfarlane...) ran the show. what could one expect besides pretty cliches on good paper coming out a month or two late?

i'd prefer to split that age in two parts- the iron age and then the market-bubble era that set in around 94ish.

Jack_Banzai
2006-08-10, 05:35 PM
well, the artists (liefeld, jim lee, todd mcfarlane...) ran the show. what could one expect besides pretty cliches on good paper coming out a month or two late?

i'd prefer to split that age in two parts- the iron age and then the market-bubble era that set in around 94ish.

Oh, I totally agree. I don't know why every artist suddenly thought that he was also a storyteller. I guess the sales figures boosted their egos.

Jarl
2006-08-10, 08:16 PM
Last night, I came up with a superhero for each era of superherodom all the way back to the Sherlock era (who DC always seems to insist is one of their heroes...) for this silly little thing I've been working on. It really made me look at the way that heroes have evolved since Doyle turned what could have been just a sleuth into the first Superhero.
The first one was a very Holmesian Great Detective character, then a Robur-esque sky pirate named "The Aviator", then a pulp noir playboy hero who traveled to faraway jungles to rescue beautiful women or whatever, then Major All-Star, the 'roided out Star Spangled Crusader, then Silverman, the Jewish superhero with the power of silver and a glorious mullet, then "The Wit", a wise-cracking cigar smoking lunatic who gunned down criminals in cold blood in the streets.

-So... that's, in order, Dime Novel, Penny Dreadful, Pulp, Golden Age, Silver Age (even in the dude's name), then Iron/Grit age. After that... I dunno. Anime inspired agnsty superheroes who beat up bad guys while Nu-Metal (or Danny Elfman music) plays.

menkent
2006-08-10, 11:56 PM
i dunno how holmes counts as the "first" superhero. seems like you're ignoring a lot of characters from gilgamesh to achilles to siegfried to egil (if you're into vikings)...

Jarl
2006-08-11, 12:16 AM
I know. I was thinking about that. Holmes is the first character to have multiple stories, a supervillain (two, actually), a popular following, and I forget what the other stuff was.
Primarily he's first because before him, you only had those heroes you talked about, all these guys in ancient times. Then, Holmes arrived, and he was kinda similar, but he was also followed. Constantly. Sure, the other guys count, but if you trace the roots of modern heroes back, it all goes straight to Holmes, fighting with Moriarty on the ledge at Reichenbach.

-Which of course, leads me to my next point. Holmes died, then came back for a later publication. Sound familiar?

Jack_Banzai
2006-08-11, 04:45 AM
Jarl: If you're talking about the first modern larger than life hero featured in print in several stories with recurring characters and villains, you're totally forgetting about James Fenimore Cooper, whose hero Natty Bumppo/Hawkeye/Leatherstocking/Pathfinder/Deerslayer preceded the good Mr. Holmes by more than 40 years (published in 1823). So I guess there was also a "Frontiersman" era to add to your list, Jarl.

I was a little surprised that you'd forget about Hawkeye, being a M*A*S*H fan and everything. ;)

But, ignoring Cooper for the moment, the first urban anti-hero was Spring Heeled Jack, who was an urban myth emerging around 1837 and who later on had stories written about him. Of course he had more fun scaring and molesting women and making extraordinary leaps in a weird costume than actually foiling crimes or fighting wars or anything, but he deserves to be mentioned.

Anyway, in the stories written about him, Spring Heeled Jack was cast as a villain, but later on (I think around 1870, also before Sherlock Holmes) he started playing the hero.

Jarl
2006-08-11, 05:03 PM
Damn, Bumpo. He was big then, too, wasn't he? Damn.
Oh well.

-I remembered SHJ, I think I just got the timeline mixed up. Oh well. It's just comic books.

Jack_Banzai
2006-08-11, 05:48 PM
Hey, no big deal, man. Kudos to you for knowing of Spring Heeled Jack at all, he's a pretty obscure figure.

Steward
2006-08-11, 05:49 PM
But, ignoring Cooper for the moment, the first urban anti-hero was Spring Heeled Jack, who was an urban myth emerging around 1837 and who later on had stories written about him. Of course he had more fun scaring and molesting women and making extraordinary leaps in a weird costume than actually foiling crimes or fighting wars or anything, but he deserves to be mentioned.


Isn't Robin Hood also an antihero? After all, he steals people's money.

Jack_Banzai
2006-08-11, 05:54 PM
Isn't Robin Hood also an antihero? After all, he steals people's money.

If you want to classify him as such, but we were mainly talking of modern heroes who first appeared in novels or serials. Robin Hood doesn't qualify as either, and he certainly wasn't an urban anti-hero like Spring Heeled Jack. Robin Hood legends have been around since the 13th century, definitely disqualifying him as a 'modern' hero.

Jarl
2006-08-11, 06:34 PM
SHJ's pretty cool. I make it a habit that, whenever I make a character who has some over-the-top acrobatic/parkour abilities (Spiderman style stuff), I imply he's a descendent of Jack, or in some way has the same powers.
One Character, Thomas Helios, identifies himself as "Panther, Last of the Springheels and Master of the Flying Guillotine".

-'course, he's a D&D character, so he doesn't count.

Beleriphon
2006-08-11, 10:48 PM
-Which of course, leads me to my next point. Holmes died, then came back for a later publication. Sound familiar?


He didn't so much as come back, as Doyle published more stories that took place before Holmes' death.

Jarl
2006-08-13, 12:47 AM
The Empty House.

-The other stuff, too. Baskervilles was post-Reichenbach, wasn't it?

Jack_Banzai
2006-08-13, 08:16 AM
The Flying Guillotine? Jarl, you are this generation's newest hero. Maybe I'll make a Spring Heeled Jack clone named "Son of the Last of the Spring Heeled, the One-Armed Boxer".

Jarl
2006-08-13, 06:47 PM
The Flying Guillotine? Jarl, you are this generation's newest hero. Maybe I'll make a Spring Heeled Jack clone named "Son of the Last of the Spring Heeled, the One-Armed Boxer".
Part two.

-Make him blind. Then add something else. Like... a pirate, or something.

Closet_Skeleton
2006-08-24, 06:03 AM
He didn't so much as come back, as Doyle published more stories that took place before Holmes' death.

Both actually.

Hound of the Baskervilles is was written after Doyale killed off Holmes but set before. In later stories he did have Holmes appear and explain how he has escaped his duel to the death with Moriarty.

ravenkith
2006-08-24, 02:36 PM
Oh, duh. Pulp.
Why?
Let me answer your question with another question...

-Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

The Shadow knows.

Ivellios
2006-09-01, 12:10 AM
Sengoku, or Warring states period, Japan.

I'm a japanese culture freak

Jack_Banzai
2006-09-01, 04:03 AM
Doesn't really apply, but okay. Good to know.

Michael_Proteau
2006-09-01, 09:54 AM
I'm a fan of the Bronze Age (not mentioned) circa 1970-1985, i.e. the comics I read as a kid. They are of a different nature than both the Silver Age (1955-1969) that preceded it, and the Iron Age (1985-2000) which followed. Crisis on Infinite Earths, Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen (and to a lesser extent MArvel Superheroes secret Wars) marked the end of the Bronze age and the beginning of the "grim and gritty" 80's. The black and white comic speculator boom and bust of '84-'86 also fueled the end of the Bronze Age.

The highlights of the Bronze age are Neal Adams on Batman and the Green Lantern/Green Arrow hard-travelling heroes books, Avengers from the Kree-Skrull War through the Korvac saga, the birth of the New X-Men, licensed comics form Marvel like the Micronauts, Star Wars, and the early GI Joe stuff, Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor Smith and John Buscema on Conan, Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan on Tomb of Dracula creating such characters as Blade, Marv Wolfman and George Perez on New Teen Titans, George Perez in general, Alan Moore's early work on Swamp Thing, Marvel's Killraven series, the birth of independent comics such as Pacific comics, Eclipse, Fantagaphics, Robert Crumb's underground stuff, the creation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Frank Miller's early Daredevil material, and much more.

I like the current age, and appreciate the wide range of intersting stuff ouut there-from Age of Bronze from Image to Conan from Dark Horse, from Rex Mundi from Image/Dark Horse to some decent superhero stuff from Marvel & DC, the writing is much more sophisticated today and prooduction values a thousand times better, but it lacks some of the sheer visceral pleasure comics from the Bronze Age brought and still bring when I read them.

For example, I like the Gaiman/Romita Jr. Eternals, but it lacks the sheer punch and roller coaster feel of unadultered wow factor that Kirby's original run in the 70's evoked and still evokes within me.

Every era has some great stuff to offer though, some highlights if you want to sample different eras-

Pulp-can't go wrong with the Shadow or Doc Savage

Golden Age-check out the Finger/Kane Batman stuff, but make sure you check out Will Eisner's Spirit stuff, head and shoulders aahread of its time in terms of sheer story telling chops.

Silver-it's goofy fun, but check out the Schwartz era Flash stuff, and of course the early Marvel stuff, especially the Lee-Kirby FF, the Lee Ditko Spider-Man and the Lee-Ditko Dr. Strange stuff. TO see how the Silver Age evolved, check out some of the later Silver Age stuff too, the Steranko Nick Fury books, the Lee/Buscema Silver Surfer books, and the Thomas/Buscema Avengers.

Bronze-see above

Iron-some great stuff here too, the aforementioned Dark Knight Returns by Miller, Batman: Year One by Miller and Mazzuchelli, Watchman by Moore and Gibbons, Concrete by Paul Chadwick, American Flagg by Chaykin (though started pre '86), Maus by art spiegleman, Will Eisner's return to original graphic novels like Dropsie Avenue, Ostrander's runs on Suicide Squad and Spectre, the Sandman, Grant Morrison on Doom Patrol and Animal Man, Mark Waid's runs on Flash and Captain America (the first time), Kurt Busiek's Marvels and Astro City, there was some cream among the schlock of this period, you just have to look for it, it's jus thtat the schlock and the speculation nearly sunk the industry.

Modern (2000 +) a lot to recommend, perhaps too much, but a few Castle Waiting by Linda Medley, Shanower's Age of Bronze, Fables by Bill Willingham, Y the Last Man by Brian Vaughn, Morrison's the Invisibles, Busiek's Conan, Finder by Carla Speed MacNeil, Powers by Bendis (though I can't really recommend his other Marvel work), Brubaker's Captain America, Jason Lute's Berlin, Jeff Nicholson's Colonia, Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan and Planetary, Eisner's new material before he passed away, and on and on.

There's good stuff out there, look for it.

-M

Diakos
2006-09-01, 09:59 AM
Dont know much about the names of the ages but the age when Lobo and Deadpool were from rocks, also the darker age where The Authority and Extreme power are from

Beleriphon
2006-09-03, 12:28 AM
Dont know much about the names of the ages but the age when Lobo and Deadpool were from rocks, also the darker age where The Authority and Extreme power are from

That would be the Iron Age. Also know as the Men-with-large-muscles-and-small-head Age. ;)

Old_el_Paso
2006-09-12, 05:30 PM
I'm pretty sure that the first superhero was Captain Caveman from the Flintstones. (Ha ha, it's a joke.)