Golden Age: 1938 - 1956 (The rise of the Superheroes genre) Silver Age: 1956 - 1970 (Marvel glory days & campy stories and the rise of the multiverse concept) Bronze Age: 1970 - 1985 (Handle much darker topics like drugs, violence, and the rise of anti heroes) Copper/Dark/Iron Age: 1984/85 - 1991/92 (The rise of indie comics & serious comics, graphic novels like Watchmen) Chrome Age: 1992 - 1999? (Extreme comic art and holographic comic cover, the rise of Image comics) Modern Age?: 2000 - 2011? (Marvel reboot their universe with the ultimate marvel universe, the rise of superheroes movies which lead to today's media) Post Modern Age?: 2011 - 2016 (DC reboot their universe with the new 52 comic line, until the rebirth in 2016 & Marvel ended their ultimate line back in 2015 i think) Current Modern Age: 2015/16/17? - Present (Nowadays people can read their comics on digital, comic books today's now are not that interesting anymore, well some) Eh, that just my take
Great history lesson! I am in the Copper era camp. IMHO, there should further adjustment of the eras for the speculative boom era of the '90s. It should be called the 'Chrome' era (for the 1000s of variant chrome covers that was pumped out) and cover ~1993 to about 2000 (where the industry starts to recover from the bust). Pretty soon the era the industry is in now cannot be called the 'Modern' era anymore as time goes by. As for what I collect, I tried to collect bronze and copper era comics.
Good point! There definitely should be a line drawn in the early 2000s. I think the release of X-Men & Spiderman start off the Big Screen era of comics, and we're still in it.
IDK man. A heck of a lot of legacy Indie companies have gone bankrupt, are going through bankruptcy or have been bought out by media conglomerates in the last couple of years.
I have never been able to get into the golden age but everything that has came after it has been outstanding. Still I am enjoying the modern age of comics a lot more. Great video! 👍🏾
The modern era crash in late 90's was also caused by Image Comics as they are the ones who introduced the variant covers rather than Marvel and multiple covers of single issues. That said, there's more speculation now than back in the 90's with flippers and CGC. I believe the modern era will be split and the date will be the start of slabbing circa. 2000. CGC has drastically changed the industry with flippers / speculators and 9.8 grade hunters - so my bet is we will have the 'Slab Era'. I love all comics from all eras, but mainly Bronze and Copper. Great content, well done.
McFarlane’s 90’s Spider-man #1 and Jim Lee’s X-Men #1 were the first to pump out the variants. These predated Image because those guys were still with Marvel. Image did not even exist until they left, which means that it didn’t start with Image.
Thanks for the clarification. I'm an old guy who doesn't know much about the post Silver age. It's interesting to hear about more recent trends. My collecting focus is mainly in Golden Age Horror and Humor books, never really been into Super heroes. Although I do own some DC silly books from the 60s that I appreciate.
id argue the modern age is over and we are into some sort of post modern age since the 2010s the way events happen, and single issues are promoted have shifted.
I enjoy the old eras not as collector but investment/historical perspective. We are in a new era now thats made collecting easy now. Digital shops, buy, hold ship models. I am spending 20x more just due to accessability
I love the Modern age the best, which for me, began right after the last issue of Crisis On Infinite Earths, and a very, very close second is The Silver and then the Golden Age. ALl such fun eras.
I'm mostly reading copper age right now, picking up where I left off in the mid 90s. Just finished Batman's "No Man's Land" Omnis. Next up: Absolute Sandman!
Frickin' fabulous history lesson and breakdown in this video...🤘🏼💯✔️ I enjoy collecting Copper and Modern Age Comics...👍🏼 And just generally anything that I personally find interesting and appealing...👌🏼
Really liked this video bro. I’m kind of new to comics. I read like the Mortal Kombat ones from MKX but as far as marvel or dc, just started really diving in with Daredevil vol 1 epic collection. Now I want to see where everything started. I’m collecting all Omnibus Vol 1 from both DC and Marvel to get to know the characters when they first appeared by the people who created them. From there I’ll jump around to the era that I know them from which by the sound of them sounds like the bronze or copper age.
I started reading comics when I was like 3 or 4... JLA, JSA, Thor was one of my favorite...I think I would only look at the pictures. After I learnt to "read", the same books were a lot more fun. Silver Surfer was another favorite. Somewhere along the line I really started liking Dr. Strange. I just ordered the Omnibus Vol . Comics are fascinating.. I used to have silver age X-Men, Metal Men, Superman and others during my childhood.. 70s and 80s... Later MTV era I wasn't into comics that much but.now in my forties I again started reading comics. Great video BTW, I never really cared to find out what.these ages meant, now I k ow what.rhem.mean. keep up the good work.
I am definitely more of a modern age reader. I unknowingly bought the Loki Omnibus because he’s my favorite character in the MCU. I read about halfway through and then stopped because it is dated to an extent and isn’t in my taster. Perhaps one day I’ll finish it, I don’t regret buying it though because I learned a lot and it was nice to read and see the classic stuff. Definitely a lesson learned but this video helped as well breaking everything down with the eras.
Thanks for your overview of the various "ages" in comic book history. I think you did a good job of explaining them. I have a fondness for Silver and Bronze age comics because it mirrors my life in a way. Like a lot of kids in the late 60's I loved comic books. As I grew into my teens and even my life as a young adult I continued to buy and collect comics because as I grew older the titles became more sophisticated and imaginative and I had come to appreciate the many artists whose work I admired. For me something has been lost since then. Collecting comics is now an investment, and new comics are marketed for adults and priced that way as well. Gone are the days when a kid could go down to the local drug store with a pocket full of change and come home with half a dozen comics to get lost in for a little while.
To me, it goes like this The platinum Age 1897-1938, Golden Age-1938-1956, Silver Age-1956-70, Bronze Age-1970-85, Modern Age-1986-2016, Postmodern Age-2016-the present. WHy do I call this era the Postmodern Age? Because it's just so radically different than anything that had come before. My favorite eras, or my top three favorite eras are: The Modern Age, The Silver Age and The Golden Age, To me, the Platinum Age had a few comics, but they were reprints of newspaper strips. The Platinum Age introduced a lot of my favorite characters such as Zorro, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, The Phantom, The Green Hornet, Conan, Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Buck Rogers, Doc Savage, Kull and Popeye. I the that the Bronze age was...I dunno, it was kind of stale in some ways. I like teh era, but overall, I don't love it the way I do other eras.
Excellent video for explaining the different ages. Keep up the good work. I'd like to mention that one of the best ways to read old comics is to go to the local libraries and look the through anthologies that are available. It's a free way to read stuff all the way back to the Golden Age and figure out what one likes. That's what I've been doing since 2005. Also, many libraries have the newest issues that can be read as well. That's saved me lots of money over the years while still getting exposed to what out there. I'm definitely a fan of Bronze Age titles such as Conan the Barbarian and Sgt Rock. I'd say the Copper Age begins with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1st printing. I'd consider G.I. Joe and Transformers as Copper Age titles even though they were released before 1985. The Marvel Civil War is my favorite from Marvel in the 21st century.
Great vid! Another relatable parallel for the outrage that led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority....would be the media/political outrage over video games like Mortal Kombat which led to the ESRB.
I'd say what you call the modern era in this video ended in 2011 with the re-imagining of characters like Carol Danvers transitioning from Ms. Marvel to Captain Marvel. And the release of DC's New 52 timeline which re-imagined almost everything in DC. I'd say between the Copper Age and 2011 would now be called "The Iron Age" and the era we live in now I personally call "The Rainbow Age" due to the rise of the LGBTQ+ movement. American Comics such as DC and Marvel aren't doing to well due to writers pushing their messaging before good story telling, but this is the era where independent and foreign creators get their time to shine. Manga being a prime example of this. 1. My Hero Acedamia 2. One Punch Man 3. Chainsaw Man Etc. They seem to be the popular superhero stories today.
While undeniably Golden Age DC Comics is a separate continuity from the later eras, I've been many opinions on Marvel Comics with their eras, some say the Golden Age era was so retconned that essentially was rebooted, only loosely being apart of the modern continuity, other's say it has little to no issues being apart of the continuity. though some parts of Marvel without question altered continuity with One More Day, and all I think to myself is, there's no way Golden Age Marvel can be 100% canon to current age.
To me, "Modern Era" in any collectible field is when people realized that money could be made... and I call "Ultra Modern" the era where we can get the value of an item by checking how the last ones sold on Ebay on our phones.
I prefer to call the ETA you call the Copper Age the Dark age and extend it to about the speculator bubble pop. The late 90s through early twenty 10s the modern age and we're currently in the Diamond age
Thank you so much for this video! I learned a lot and will definitely keep these things in mind as I continue to put my collection together. I have books that span from the Golden Age all the way up to the modern age. I Mostly just enjoy the art overall. Not really focused on any particulearn age or distinction, of course I do have my favorites from both DC and Marvel, Spider Man, the X-Men, Batman, ect. And I'm also trying to branch out into other companies. Great video again!
This is a good video. I liked it. Nevertheless, I really feel you skipped over the role EC comics played. The Comics Code Authority was written specifically to shut down a company that was subversively progressive. Read the Weird Fantasy #18 story “Judgement Day.”
I love collecting the Skottie Young variant covers that really started in 2012 but you can argue it started in 2009 with x babies! I also really like collecting silver and Bronze Age stuff but more for flipping to be honest. I would love to collect all amazing Spider-Man comics but that arc runs from 1962 to 1991 and has almost 900 books so it would be really hard to collect them all and would be super expensive if I’m going for originals over reprints
Sorry, Crimson Avenger predates Superman, and the Silver Age didn't kick off until the Showcase issue that featured the Barry Allen Flash, several years after 1950. But for a general audience you did okay considering you're relatively new to the hobby.
I've always been a Modern reader for sure, although I do collect Legion of Super-Heroes comics and they started up in the Silver Age. Golden Age is too far back and too difficult to get into!
I'm no historian and don't care how they define the different periods :) but modern comics doesn't start 1986 or 1991 that's 30 or 35 years ago. All other periods you mentioned were around 12-15 years (defined by historians), so we have at least two eras "missing". But anyway for me modern comics start at the earliest around 2000 maybe even later. I only read modern comics (my standard though) at least 98 % or something. Thank you very much for the video, it was informative and fun to watch.
Could have made honorable mention the introduction of underground comix in the 60's and some of the indie publishers of the early 80's like 1st Comics and Eclipse and the creator's rights movement. At 60 I'm a stone cold silver/bronze age Marvel guy who didn't need to see "people who looked like me" or be "represented" in order to fully enjoy the hobby. And maybe the period from 1991-98 (I think when Marvel went bankrupt) should be called the "speculator" age and then from '99 to now the modern or "woke" age.
Silver and Bronze for me, copper is also fun. In my opinion Marvel was way better than its competition in the silver and bronze age. The Marvel way was awesome.