As the 1950s began super hero comics as a genre were fading from popularity. Crime an horror books had begun to take hold, with their horrific covers and lurid content they seemed to resonate more with the public during those early years of the golden age. Gore, violence, and barely concealed sex were prevalent between their covers, though shrugged at today in those more innocent years when comics were still considered strictly children’s fair they were cause for alarm. And thus the shift would soon cause a great deal of trouble for the industry.
In the early 1950s parent and watchdog groups began to appear, rallying against comic books and their apparent corrupting influence on children. One of the more famous was Fredric Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent. Wertham believed that all comics were dangerous to children. Crime and horror comics he claimed turned children into violent criminals; but super hero books were not saved from his attack. Within them he saw subtle connections to white supremacy, homosexuality, and anti government propaganda. In fact in some ways he though these more subliminal messages to be more dangerous. All these criticisms would result in governmental involvement in 1954 with the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.
Comics were essentially put on trial. Blamed for juvenile delinquency and claimed to be a danger to children the industry quickly began organizing to fight back. In an effort to self regulate before the government forced regulation upon them they created the Comic Code Authority . A side effect of the new code was the death of the horror and crime genres that had sprung up. With a vacuum formed by this sudden shift the industry quickly decided to reintroduce super hero books to the newsstand.
A few characters, notably Superman and Batman, had actually continued publication over the five year hiatus of the genre. And in actuality the first new super hero of the 50s would be born in 1951 when Captain Comet started appearing in Strange Adventures, but this was labeled more sci-fi stories, just as Martian Manhunter’s first appearances in Detective comics were seen as more a detective stories. Thus through technically not the first super hero of the genre’s resurgence The Flash’s arrival in Showcase #4 in 1956 is considered the beginning of the Silver Age.
He would soon be followed by reinventions of other classic DC characters form a decade earlier, along with a host of brand new characters. Green Lantern, Hawkman, The Atom, and the creation of the Justice League of America. All of these characters took on more sci-fi origins in place of the more magical inspired themes favored in the golden age. They were also far less violent then their predecessors, a result of the new comic code. In the Golden Age even Batman and Superman would routinely kill villains, the code led to a new kinder gentler era with far more creative battles.
For the first few years of this revival DC basically had the genre to themselves, and thus controlled the market. That would change in 1961 when Atlas Comics began the stories of the first family of comics, the Fantastic Four. They would soon follow it up with a slew of other new character including Iron Man, The Hulk and Spiderman. Thus was renewed the battle for dominance between DC and Marvel that continues today.
The Silver Age itself would continue for another decade or so, ending somewhere between 1970 and 1973. Unlike the Golden Age which has a more defined end date the silver age seems to have ended at a slight different time for different books. There were no wide scale cancellation such as those that ended the golden age of comics, just a subtle shift in how the stories were told. There was also a shift in who oversaw them as a host of writers, artists, and editors would retire around this time. The Silver Age really just faded out, this era of general innocence slowly being darkened by the grittier fair that would dominate the 1970s and the Bronze Age.