Four Eras Of Comic Books

Comic Books Have Been Categorized Into Four Eras Based On When They Were Published. Each Era Has A Different Feel And Tone.

Outside The Mainstream

Scott Conner’s Thoughts On The Four Ages…

Here is why all the terminology for the various ages of comics is so confusing… No one can really agree upon when the Platinum Age started. Some say it was in 1735 when the element was first identified by Antonio de Ulloa, while others say it started in 1931 when women started dying their hair that color after seeing the Howard Hughes movie with the titular hair color. This is also often confused with the Plantium Age, which started in 1982 when Robert Plant’s first solo album was released. Prior to that when he was in Zeppelin, the years 1968-1980 were known as the Led Age.Golden Age is also a very nebulous term. Some people believe it started in 1985 with the first TV broadcast of the show Golden Girls. Others believe the term came into use when the very first bowl of Golden Grahams cereal was eaten in 1978. Even more confusing is that Golden Girls is an episodic TV series but not considered to be a cereal series. More astute fans often place it as beginning in 1977 with artist Michael Golden’s first published work in comics. Finding those early works by him is very difficult and digging them out of back issue boxes often requires the heightened senses of a Golden retriever.The Bronze Age started in 1933 with the publication of the first Doc Savage book. This is often confused with the Copper Age, but that was due to Doc’s actual skin color. And to further complicate things, Copper was first used in the year 1704 to refer to police officers, although dirty coppers was also used to refer to the godawful printing plates used to publish comics which resulted in such poor print quality.The Silver Age also has very little consensus as to when it actually started. Some say it was in 1968 when the first issue of Silver Surfer was published. Others date it as far back as 1911 and the birth of the comedian Phil Silvers. People have been saving up their money to buy Silver Age books since 1836 when the first silver coin was minted in the United States. This is not to be confused with Mint graded Silver Age books. This is also not to be confused with the ever-dwindling average page count of modern comics, which is known as the Silver Age.The Iron Age is universally agreed upon to have started in 1980 with the release of the first Iron Maiden album. The start of the Iron Age is also when people started pressing dilapidated comics with bent spines. This practice became far more common starting in 1988 when the first Star Trek: The Next Generation comic was published, and such pressed comics were known as Bent Spiners. This trend has been verified by multiple Data collectors.The Chrome Age (not to be confused with the first publication of Conan the Barbarian, which is actually the Crom Age) is also sometimes considered to be linked to the first appearance of the Silver Surfer, not only to his skin color but also to his lack of hair which is known as a chrome dome. There was a very poor attempt at giving him a partial hairdo in one issue, but this was quickly abandoned when the artist simply didn’t draw him with enough hair to have anything more than a chromeover. This can also be confused with the character ROM, who had a very similar coloration. This can be further confused by Marvel missing a Golden opportunity to reprint those issues digitally on a CD-ROM. The lack of which results in dubious disc-burned bootleg copies which often pop up on eBay and are referred to as seedy ROMs.

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