Whereas the Golden Age comics, and for the most part the Silver Age as well, had been considered strictly children’s fair; by the time of the Bronze age there was a much larger contingent of adult collectors.  A great many children who had read the books of the sixties had grown up and continued to follow their favorite characters, not to mention the average age of the comic reader had moved from young children to teenagers.  Along with this shift in demographics many of the biggest name artists and writers of the Silver Age, many of whom had started in the Golden era, had retired and a group of younger newcomers had begun to take the reins.

These younger storytellers, artists and writers alike, worked to stretch the boundaries of what the comic code allowed.   They utilized far more realistic and less stylized art paired with much deeper stories that explored all the social issues of the day.   Those members of the old guard who remained reacted to the shift with changes of their own, toning down much of the more fanciful and overpowered elements of the characters who had sprung up during the previous decade.

Marvel led the charge into this new style of storytelling, its characters already having a much more human and vulnerable feel to them over the more “perfect” characters the populated DC’s books at the time.  Characters such as the Fantastic Four and the X-Men had been in many ways dealing with the same issues in more subtle ways since their introduction.  For DC it was a far more dramatic shift in theme and style.  Not only had many of their characters, Superman in particular, become extremely overpowered and godlike in abilities, but they had all been crafted from the start as the classic All American ideal.  They were all honest to a fault, there were no rivalries or jealousies, all were patriotic and conservative, and other then perhaps Batman, none really had any sort of dark side.  It would take Green Arrow, who by this time had been transformed into the companies only “liberal” character to really begin bringing social issues into the books.  The landmark Green Lantern/Green Arrow #85 and its depiction of Speedy, Green Arrow’s sidekick, dealing with drug addiction marked their entry into the new era.

Along with social changes the feminist and civil rights movements had begun to really gain steam and in turn would see era would see the birth of a large number of strong female and minority character.  At the same time Marvel in particular has faced some criticism over its depiction of its minority heroes, many seen as stereotypes meant to cash into what was then the popularity of kung fu and blaxploitation movies.  Despite this many of these character have continued to grow in popularity and become strong characters.

Unfortunately as a result of the surge in interest and popularity of comics during the early seventies DC would begin what it called the DC Explosion in the mid seventies.  Premiering fifty-seven new series between 1975 and 1978 DC flooded the market with new titles, and as a result nearly destroyed the industry.  Almost every series failed and DC comics was nearly bankrupted in the process.  Much of this can be blamed on poor timing as blizzards during those years dramatically effected distribution chains and the country had entered a recession around the same time that caused a drop in readership across the board.  This DC Implosion would result in Marvel comics, always the second place company, to gain 50 percent of the market share.

The era would also see a surge in underground and independent comics that were not governed by the restrictive comic code and were thus able to experiment in both “adult” areas and just generally produce stories that the big companies couldn’t.  Many European series such as Heavy Metal would begin appearing on US newsstands during this era.  And at the same time mainstay genres such as romance books, westerns, and war stories would for the most part come to an end and super hero books continued to dominate the field.

The end of the era is debated almost as much as its beginning.  Like the end of the Silver Age, there is no particular event or date that marks it though the mid eighties are the general time line.  DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths is often marked as their transition in to the modern era as it wiped out the Silver and Bronze age continuities and essentially started them over from scratch.  For Marvel the Secret Wars crossover is usually used as it featured many changes in the personalities of the character, however much like the earlier era shift with Marvel the changes were fairly minor.  Thus began the Modern Age which continues today.

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.

Starting in 1935 various publications would begin to appear featuring stories of tough detectives, secret agents, and western heroes; all taking cues from their pulp forbearers.  In 1938 Siegel and Shuster’s Superman would take the idea of the vigilante hero to a new height and create an entirely new genre in the process.  Though Philip G. Wylie’s Hugo Danner had brought the idea of a “superman” to the world in 1930, the comic book world had yet to see anything like it.  It actually took a few issues for the public to really get around the new character, but by the fourth issue of Action Comics Superman was a certified hit.  Various imitators would soon follow with publishers jumping on the superhero bandwagon at a rapid pace.  Interestingly during this era Superman was actually out sold by one of those Imitators.  Whiz Comic’s Captain Marvel had the highest circulation of any superhero book of the time.  Of course the licensed Disney books being printed by Dell Comics were actually outselling everyone.

Even the pulps that had inspired them began getting into the game, with many of the biggest names making the transition from written word to the four color page.  Street and Smith began publishing Shadow Comics in 1940 which featured all their most popular characters.  Thrilling Publications would quickly transfer its Phantom Detective and others over as well.  And all the other classic genre’s of the pulps, from mystery and westerns to romance stories would quickly begin filling the pages of comics as well.

Comics books became a multimillion dollar industry over the next few years with the height of their popularity in this era coming during World War Two.  Unfortunately the war would be a double edged sword.  Though it drove sales, with both children and service men grabbing up comics to help escape the realities of war, shortages of paper and the fact that the draft pulled a great many artists and writers into the military took a great toll on the industry.   By war’s end a great many smaller publishers of both pulps and comics books had folded. Only the larger scale operations like Timely, who would become Marvel, and National Allied Publications, who would become DC managed to survive.

By the early 1950′s the Golden Age had ended.  Though the official date is debated, by 1953 most smaller publishers had closed their doors and the vast majority of super hero books had been canceled.  Only a few of the bigger names, Superman included, survived through this dark era.  A shift in focus to horror and gritty crime stories had taken place and The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency would soon begin putting comics on trial.  For a time it appeared the industry was heading towards its end after a mere 20 years.

The earliest proto comic books were deluxe collections of newspapers strips.  These hardback collections began appearing as early as 1833 in Europe, though the earliest known version published in English wasn’t until 1842.  Short run comic magazines following a similar format of reprinted newspaper strips began showing up in 1897 with The Yellow Kid being the first.  These were soft cover affairs, usually only a single volume and black and white, collecting particular runs or series from the daily strips, akin to a modern trade paperback collection. The Yellow Kid is also noteworthy as the first to actually have the term comic book printed on its cover.  The first full color affair, The Blackberries, would appear in 1901, alas it would be several years before color would become a primary asset of the comic industry.

The first monthly publication, Comics Monthly, wouldn’t appear till 1922 and would only last a year before being canceled.   The book was essentially a collection of a different newspaper strip series each month rather than any kind of ongoing series. Dell Publishing would follow a few years later when it began producing The Funnies, a weekly series, in 1929.  It would run for 36 issues before being itself canceled.  Though only 24 pages, 16 of those pages being a four color affair, it was the first comic magazine to feature original content on the newsstands.  However as historian Ron Goulart describes it, the publication was less a comic book then it was “a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper”.

It  wouldn’t be until 1933 that what many historian consider the first true monthly comic book would be published.  Famous Funnies was the creation of Harry I. Wildenberg, an employee of Eastern Color Printing Company, a firm whose primary business at the time was printing the comic pages for popular newspapers.  Wildenberg was an advertising agent who developed the idea of printing the comic strips into tabloid sized magazines to be given away as a promotional items.  He successfully sold this idea to several companies and the popularity of the give aways led the way to his plan to publish a sixty-four page magazine.  His creation would first find its way to the masses as a one issue run through Woolworths department stores.  Its success, and Woolworths decision to end the partnership would lead Wildenberg to shift his focus to the newsstands.  It took six months to turn a profit on the new magazine; but once it caught on the modern comic book industry was born.  The series would start running reprints much like its predecessors, though it would add original content as the years went by reprints still made up the bulk of its content until its cancelation in 1955.   However with that little original content such legends as a young Jack Kirby would get their starts.

This era prior to the release of Superman and the so called Golden age is often called the Platinum age by comic historians, its creations known as Proto-Comic Books.  Famous Funnies would spawn dozens of imitators, but their reliance on newspaper reprints would make it hard for them to compete with all the original content soon to flood the market.  And of course the old Yellow Kid and his pals could never compete with the super heroes that were soon to be born on the four color page.