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The Silver Age of Comic Books was a period of artistic advancement and widespread commercial success in mainstream American comic books , predominantly those featuring the superhero archetype.
Following the Golden Age of Comic Books and an interregnum in the early to mids, the Silver Age is considered to cover the period from to the end of , and was succeeded by the Bronze Age. The popularity and circulation of comic books about superheroes had declined following World War II , and comic books about horror, crime and romance took larger shares of the market.
However, controversy arose over alleged links between comic books and juvenile delinquency , focusing in particular on crime, horror, and superheroes. In , publishers implemented the Comics Code Authority to regulate comic content.
In the wake of these changes, publishers began introducing superhero stories again, a change that began with the introduction of a new version of DC Comics ' The Flash in Showcase 4 October In response to strong demand, DC began publishing more superhero titles including Justice League of America , which prompted Marvel Comics to follow suit beginning with The Fantastic Four 1.
Comics historian and movie producer Michael Uslan traces the origin of the "Silver Age" term to the letters column of Justice League of America 42 February , which went on sale December 9, Very soon, it was in our vernacular, replacing such expressions as It wasn't long before dealers were Spanning World War II, when American comics provided cheap and disposable escapist entertainment that could be read and then discarded by the troops, [4] the Golden Age of comic books covered the late s to the late s.
The result was a decline in the comics industry. Batman and Robin were doing better, but Batman's comics were "lackluster" in comparison to his earlier "atmospheric adventures" of the s, and Wonder Woman, having lost her original writer and artist, was no longer "idiosyncratic" or "interesting".
Jacobs describes the arrival of Showcase 4 on the newsstands as "begging to be bought", the cover featured an undulating film strip depicting the Flash running so fast that he had escaped from the frame. With the success of Showcase 4, several other s superheroes were reworked during Schwartz' tenure, including Green Lantern , Aquaman , the Atom , and Hawkman , [14] and the Justice Society of America was reimagined as the Justice League of America.
In the mids, DC established that characters appearing in comics published prior to the Silver Age lived on a parallel Earth the company dubbed Earth-Two. Characters introduced in the Silver Age and onward lived on Earth-One. Although the Flash is generally regarded as the first superhero of the Silver Age, the introduction of the Martian Manhunter in Detective Comics predates Showcase 4 by almost a year, and at least one historian considers this character the first Silver Age superhero.
In the United Kingdom, the Marvelman series was published during the interregnum between the Golden and Silver Ages, substituting for the British reprints of the Captain Marvel stories after Fawcett stopped publishing the character's adventures. The talking animal superheroes Supermouse and Mighty Mouse were published continuously in their own titles from the end of the Golden Age through the beginning of the Silver Age. Atomic Mouse was given his own title in , lasting ten years. Atomic Rabbit, later named Atomic Bunny, was published from to DC Comics sparked the superhero revival with its publications from to Marvel Comics then capitalized on the revived interest in superhero storytelling with sophisticated stories and characterization.
DC added to its momentum with its introduction of Justice League of America , a team consisting of the company's most popular superhero characters. It was a book called The [sic] Justice League of America and it was composed of a team of superheroes", Marvel editor Stan Lee recalled in Goodman directed Lee to likewise produce a superhero team book, resulting in The Fantastic Four 1 November In contrast to the straitlaced archetypes of superheroes at the time, this ushered in a revolution.
With dynamic artwork by Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and others complementing Lee's colorful, catchy prose, the new style became popular among college students who could identify with the angst and the irreverent nature of the characters such as Spider-Man , the X-Men and the Hulk during a time period of social upheaval and the rise of the counterculture of the s.
Comic books of the Silver Age explained superhero phenomena and origins through science, inspired by contemporary science fiction , as opposed to the Golden Age , which commonly relied on magic or mysticism. Comics historian Peter Sanderson compares the s DC to a large Hollywood studio, and argues that after having reinvented the superhero archetype, DC by the latter part of the decade was suffering from a creative drought.
The audience for comics was no longer just children, and Sanderson sees the s Marvel as the comic equivalent of the French New Wave , developing new methods of storytelling that drew in and retained readers who were in their teens and older and thus influencing the comics writers and artists of the future. One of the few most-selling American comics publishers in , Harvey Comics , discontinued its horror comics when the Comics Code was implemented and sought a new target audience.
The publishers Gilberton , Dell Comics , and Gold Key Comics used their reputations as publishers of wholesome comic books to avoid becoming signatories to the Comics Code and found various ways to continue publishing horror-themed comics [26] in addition to other types. Gilberton's extensive Classics Illustrated line adapted literary classics, with the likes of Frankenstein alongside Don Quixote and Oliver Twist ; Classics Illustrated Junior reprinted comic book versions of children's classics such as The Wizard of Oz , Rapunzel , and Pinocchio.
During the late s and the s, Dell, which had published comics in , offered licensed TV series comic books from Twilight Zone to Top Cat , as well as numerous Walt Disney titles. Cartoons characters as Bugs Bunny and such comic strip properties as Beetle Bailey.
With the popularity of the Batman television show in , publishers that had specialized in other forms began adding campy superhero titles to their lines. As well, new publishers sprang up, often using creative talent from the Golden Age. Dell published superhero versions of Frankenstein , Dracula and the Werewolf.
Even the iconic Archie Comics teens acquired super powers and superhero identities in comedic titles such as Archie as Capt. Pureheart and Jughead as Captain Hero. In addition to their individual titles, they teamed in their group series The Mighty Crusaders , joined by the Comet and Flygirl.
Their stories blended typical superhero fare with the s' camp. According to John Strausbaugh of The New York Times , "traditional" comic book historians feel that although the Silver Age deserves study, the only noteworthy aspect of the Silver Age was the advent of underground comics. The Silver Age of comic books was followed by the Bronze Age. Historian Will Jacobs suggests the Silver Age ended in April when the man who had started it, Julius Schwartz, handed over Green Lantern —starring one of the first revived heroes of the era—to the new-guard team of Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams in response to reduced sales.
He observes that in , the character embodied the can-do optimism of the era. I was so young Young and cocky, that was Green Lantern. Well, I've changed. I'm older now Comics scholar Arnold T. Blumberg places the end of the Silver Age in June , when Gwen Stacy , girlfriend of Peter Parker Spider-Man , was killed in a story arc later dubbed " The Night Gwen Stacy Died ", saying the era of "innocence" was ended by "the 'snap' heard round the comic book world—the startling, sickening snap of bone that heralded the death of Gwen Stacy.
Such a tragedy makes a strong symbolic ending. This theory gained adherents when Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross 's Marvels miniseries in ended with Gwen's death, but I'm not buying it. It's too late. Too many new directions—especially [the sword-and-sorcery trend begun by the character] Conan and monsters [in the wake of the Comics Code allowing vampires, werewolves and the like]—were on firm ground by this time.
According to historian Peter Sanderson, the "neo-silver movement" that began in with Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? The Silver Age marked a decline in horror, romance, talking animal humor, and Westerns as American-comics genres. An important feature of the period was the development of the character makeup of superheroes. Young children and girls were targeted during the Silver Age by certain publishers; in particular, Harvey Comics attracted this group with titles such as Little Dot.
Adult-oriented underground comics also began during the Silver Age. Some critics and historians argue that one characteristic of the Silver Age was that science fiction and aliens replaced magic and gods. The Silver Age coincided with the rise of pop art , an artistic movement that used popular cultural artifacts, such as advertising and packaging, as source material for fine, or gallery-exhibited, art.
Roy Lichtenstein , one of the best-known pop art painters, specifically chose individual panels from comic books and repainted the images, modifying them to some extent in the process but including in the painting word and thought balloons and captions as well as enlarged-to-scale color dots imitating the coloring process then used in newsprint comic books.
In January , a live-action Batman television show debuted to high ratings. Circulation for comic books in general and Batman merchandise in particular soared. By the end of the s, however, the fad had faded; in , the best-selling comic book in the United States was not a superhero series, but the teen-humor book Archie.
Swedish cartoonist Joakim Lindengren draws a Silver Age pastiche in his Kapten Stofil comic book series — about the powers of nostalgia in a grumpy, old comic book named Captain Geezer who longs to return to the Silver Age.
Arlen Schumer, author of The Silver Age of Comic Book Art , singles out Carmine Infantino 's Flash as the embodiment of the design of the era: "as sleek and streamlined as the fins Detroit was sporting on all its models". Two artists that changed the comics industry dramatically in the late s were Neal Adams , considered one of his country's greatest draftsmen, [51] and Jim Steranko.
Both artists expressed a cinematic approach at times that occasionally altered the more conventional panel-based format that had been commonplace for decades. One of the few writer-artists at the time, Steranko made use of a cinematic style of storytelling. The following comics are sought after by collectors due to their historic significance. Film producer and comics historian Michael Uslan later contradicted some specifics, while supporting the story's framework:.
Irwin said he never played golf with Goodman, so the story is untrue. I heard this story more than a couple of times while sitting in the lunchroom at DC's Third Avenue and 75 Rockefeller Plaza office as Sol Harrison and [production chief] Jack Adler were schmoozing with some of us As the distributor of DC Comics, this man certainly knew all the sales figures and was in the best position to tell this tidbit to Goodman.
Of course, Goodman would want to be playing golf with this fellow and be in his good graces. Sol worked closely with Independent News' top management over the decades and would have gotten this story straight from the horse's mouth.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Mids to '70s era of comic books. This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in French. June Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
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Main article: Underground comix. Further information: List of Silver Age comics creators. Super Heroes: A Modern Mythology. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN Bleeding Cool. Retrieved April 7, Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Archived from the original on January 17,
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