Broken Frontier

"Was there a tombstone on the Bronze Age?" was put to Kurt Busiek: "I think it's a little too close to tell...For there to be a conclusion to the Bronze Age, there must be a clear next Age in effect, and, on that count, there is little agreement at all.” – “One for the Ages” The International Journal of Comic Art Fall 2003

Dearly departed, we are gathered here today to bid our final farewells to a time whose passing was long overdue; one that fought valiantly and with characteristic zeal to hang on, only in the end to pass on quietly and with little fanfare. But too long has it been left out in the sun, like the bones of Polynices unable to be buried by Antigone without the dread repercussion of King Creon. My friends, we must now at last say goodbye to the Bronze Age.

Like the Golden and Silver Ages before it, the Bronze Age served as the universal marker for almost a generation of American comic book superheroes. And, like its predecessors, its onset could only be identified in hindsight: 1938 became the Golden Age inception with the debut of Superman, 1954 brought along the eponymous Silver Age Flash, and, ultimately, the 1970s – full of premieres, industry shifts, price hikes, historical landmarks – themselves sired the Bronze Age. True, its paternity was and remains a topic of debate: whether it began as early as 1967 with the debut of Deadman in Strange Advenures, or in 1970 with the similarly radical Conan the Barbarian #1 and Jack Kirby's leap to DC or that same year, or even, as I have suggested elsewhere (http://onceuponadime.com/hist/ages.htm), in 1972 with Amazing Spider-Man's break from the CCA. Or maybe it was just the 1973 death of one lone woman, a girl named Gwen Stacy, that marked the end of the Silver Age’s innocence and the coming of Bronze sensibilities.

Choose what birthdate you will for the Bronze Age, though, and it nevertheless had a glorious run. The Golden Age had the burden of establishing the superhero genre, distinguishing itself from the pulp heroes that predated it and the horror and crime milieus that were soon to follow. The Silver Age, too, had also-rans like “the Atomic Age” and the well-known and well-publicized “Marvel Age” from 1961 onward with which to contend. The Bronze Age certainly had it no easier, given its vague inception and the early energies of comic book speculation fueling a push for increasing codification: By the 1980s, they wanted an Iron Age; by 1986, they wanted a Dark Age. A Copper Age, a Chrome Age, a Modern Age, a Rust Age, a Steel Age, a Renaissance Age, a Silicon Age, a New/Second Golden Age, a Baroque Age, even a Mica Age.

But none of them stuck – none of them consistently caught on. Whether any of the warring upstarts did manage to wrest brief control from it, the Bronze Age remained the last consistently recognized era of superhero comics.

And now, alas, it is long well over. We take our leave of the Bronze Age.

So, what has ended, and when did it end? This is the central question that plagues the children of the Bronze Age, its various would-be heirs struggling for legitimacy. On one level, just a comparison of Age-length could be used: The Golden Age ran approximately

16 years up until the Silver Age (if we discount any “interlude” periods between them), the Silver Age went roughly 16 years as well, give or take a tenth of a score. Therefore, if the lifespan of a comic book Age is 16 years – a reasonable amount of time for a shift in audience and taste – then the Bronze Age should have been on its deathbed around 1988: Its pulse would have been slowing deep in the heart of a surging “Dark Age” and beginning of the market boom.

(However, there are two major assumptions there: First, that 16 years is “reasonable” in light of a theoretical audience, generally thought to be teenage boys. Both anecdotal and statistical market evidence currently argues otherwise, though. In a September edition of The Beat, comic book web columnist Heidi MacDonald recounts Diamond Comic Distribution’s statistics of comic book readers being the average age of 34, 45% of them having at least a college education.

In addition, 77% of them own a computer, which leads to the second point: The Ages could, in fact, be fluctuating. The sixteen-year estimate is simply that – an estimate. While only a minority contest the 16 year-span of the Golden Age (from 1938’s Action Comics #1 to 1954’s Showcase Comics #4), the Silver Age could debatably be cut to as few as 13 (Deadman’s premiere) or even 7 years (Fantastic Four #1). This seems unlikely, of course, and we should not speak ill of the dead. Still, the Silver Age, a lauded time of exceptional work, could be said to have a shorter, more ambiguous lifespan than its antecedent. In the time since the Bronze Age’s approximate onset, nearly 32 years have passed – time enough for two Ages to ensue, if not more.)

Time alone should not mark an era. Some stopwatch or alarm clock did not prompt, say, Showcase #4’s release with the new Flash. Putting aside the theory that the Ages of superhero comics might have consistent (or consistently diminishing) lifespans, let us focus instead on content. What precedents did the Bronze Age set, which the industry later moved beyond?

First of all, the horror influence in superhero comics has come and gone... then came and went again. 1972 saw Werewolf by Night, Swamp Thing, Tomb of Dracula, and even Night Nurse. It would be a year, though, before arguably the most popular horror-superhero gained his own title, Ghost Rider, beginning its ten-year run. By 1983, the horror trend in comics had largely faded out, only to be resurrected flimsily seven years later with a new Ghost Rider volume and then a slew of related Midnight Sons titles in 1992: Spirits of Vengeance, Morbius, and so on. They soon perished, followed by the second lap of Ghost Rider in 1998. In all, the Bronze Age’s horror influence might remain to some degree at Vertigo (which launched Hellblazer in 1988 and Sandman in 1989), but it no longer remains a going concern.

The emergent Conan comic book likewise eventually dwindled, only to blaze again later from a new spark. From 1970 to 1999 (three years after the original title’s cancellation), Marvel printed more than a dozen Conan titles, from one-shots to movie adaptations to mini-series. This number almost matches Conan’s modern-day expression, the Punisher, created in the pages of Bronze Age Spider-Man, but given his first of almost three-dozen publications towards the era’s close in 1986. Both characters were given new leases on life – one literally, one figuratively – in the last few years with the Punisher shifting to Marvel’s MAX line in 2004 and Conan moving to Dark Horse in 2003.

From another perspective, if Gwen Stacy’s death ended the Silver Age, then perhaps Supergirl’s sacrifice did the same for Bronze. Few fatalities had the same power as Gwen’s, the love of Peter Parker’s life and an unfortunate victim of fate; a loss of this order was generally reserved for a character’s origin, not his or her latest battle against a sworn arch-enemy. However, if readers had come to love Gwen in the eight years since her debut, then the demise of Supergirl twenty-six years after her first appearance in 1959’s Action Comics #252 was jaw-dropping. A number of heroes – from the Swordsman to the Golden Age Batman to Phoenix – had fallen in the course of the Bronze Age, but few of Supergirl’s history and iconic power. Along with the Silver Age Flash, Kara-El gave her life against the villainous Anti-Monitor in Crisis of Infinite Earths after her latest series, The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, had been canceled two years prior. Like all the nostalgic Bronze Age heroes already mentioned, iterations of Supergirl would resurface (most recently in Superman/Batman #8) but the die had already been cast: If Supergirl could die, then any hero could – a dark revelation to end the Bronze Age.

List the many merits and moments of the Bronze Age and compare how many had been reversed, undone, or overlooked by the mid-1980s. (Of course, so many would even later be revisited and mined, but that is a separate issue.) It is an era that inspired many readers’ (and, in turn, many creators’) passion for comics, and it holds a special place in the hearts of many. This can make the formal, ritual recognition of its departure that much more difficult and obscured.

But here, at the gravesite of the Bronze Age – alongside Kara, Gwen, and the Cimmerian – isn’t it time for an end? May we have a final consensus?

An heir will be named, the estate will be passed, but that will all come in due time... For now, let us bid a last goodbye to the Bronze Age – to the end of an era.

(The grieving kindly ask that, In lieu of flowers, please post messages to the Library of Babble forum. Thank you.)