Broken Frontier

The Bronze Age concluded, and a new era need be named. A period beginning roughly in 1986 that now we shall dub -- the Hydrogen Age.

Why Hydrogen? Why 1986? Why now?

Slow down, one at a time.

Naming age periods may not be an art, but it certainly isn't an exact science, either. Still, that turns out to be the best place to begin: Science. Start with the fact that the eponymous Gold, Silver, and Bronze Ages are named after precious metals, sure, but more accurately, they're elements. Now, unless you go atomic and start dealing in protons, electrons, quarks, and neutrinos, the element is the basic matter from which everything else is made. This is wholly appropriate given what the comic industry means by an Age: There's something inherent about a certain period of comics that is entirely unlike other time periods. The Ages are, truly, elemental.

But why metals, why precious metals? As Warren Ellis wrote so fittingly in The Authority, we live in a "consensus reality," one that can assign a mass perception of worth to the essentially worthless. That is, gold has its unique properties: its malleability, its conductivity, its incorruptibility, and so forth. But the world economy no longer runs on the gold standard, and its relative rarity is as poor a reason to favor it as a 1-in-40 Cassaday variant cover to Astonishing X-Men #1. Still, the premier connotation for gold, regardless of its true status, remains strong as does the metaphorical paradigm of Gold, Silver, and Bronze for Olympic metals, mythic stages of Man, and, of course, comic book eras.

At this point, though, that paradigm is antiquated and ready to be retired. Even pursuing it further -- as some have, into an Iron Age -- suggests that comics are diminishing in quality; if anything, the Ages are meant to denote a difference in storytelling and publishing standards so as to mediate such value-comparisons. Comparing a Golden Age story to a Silver Age one isintended to be like comparing apples and oranges. Each Age has its own standard for values and quality, therefore assigning the next, lesser metal to a comic book age only confuses the matter.

Time to break the cycle.

Some have already tried to do so. And, as noted in the previous column, few bear up to much scrutiny. One stand-out, though, from that bunch is Chris Fluit's use of the term "Chromium Age" to label the post 1986-era. In a lengthy thread held at the Captain Comics Round Table message board, Mr. Fluit makes several insightful observations:

One of the major changes in 1986 was a fundamental altering of continuity, especially at DC. This change is cited in the argument for the end of the Bronze Age and it is the major reason why some argue that the Silver Age ended not in 1968 or 1970, but in 1986. The old continuity was out. Indeed, we still argue about this continuity change: Pre-Crisis/Post-Crisis. One could argue that was a more significant development than the changes in mood that were made popular by the Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns. One can't simply look at a comic and say "this was pre-Watchmen" or "this was post-Watchmen" as easily as one can do with Crisis...

Although the continuity change was not as dramatic at Marvel as it was at DC, Marvel did use its 1986 crossover, Secret Wars II, to introduce a number of in-story changes. For example, She-Hulk replaced the Thing in the Fantastic Four and Spiderman [sic] began wearing a black costume rather than the familiar red and blue one. These in-story changes make Secret Wars II stand out more than previous mini-series such as Contest of Champions or the first Secret Wars...

Crisis and Secret Wars did indeed introduce a new type of story: event story-telling. While Watchmen and DKR popularized an existing mood (see argument number three against "Dark Age"), these events ushered in a new era. DC and Marvel began to rely on events to focus their marketing and generate anticipation. Legends, Invasion, War of the Gods. Acts of Vengeance, Inferno, Age of Apocalypse. The Death of Superman, Knightfall, Emerald Twilight. The multi-part, multi-title, intra-company crossover became the major storytelling device of the day. And not just at the big two: Total Eclipse, Deathmate, Wildstorm Rising. And it continues unto today with Disassembled, Reloaded, Identity Crisis and War Games garnering both sales and attention.

...Another major development in this time period was the introduction of imprints or new lines of titles. Previously a publisher would introduce one title at a time. And if more than one title was introduced, it was done so independently of other new titles. There were rare few exceptions, such as DC's Fourth World and Marvel's Epic, but with the new age of 1986, it became more common to introduce an entire line of comics. The first example, spinning directly out of Marvel's Secret Wars II, is the New Universe line. Even though it eventually failed, it became a model for the Ultraverse, Comics' Greatest World, the Image-verse and other lines of inter-related titles and concepts.

While not all of Chris' points jibe with my push for the Hydrogen Age, per se, he does make, as theorized in the last column, the approximate death-date of the Bronze Age of 1986 a better marker than ever.

However, in explaining why this era should be dubbed the Chromium Age, Chris' theory and my own diverge. His two major arguments are that "the term Chromium Age is descriptive of the event stories and flashy covers that were common in that age," noting that it is meant in "a non-judgmental fashion [since] some of those events turned out to be good stories." Still, he ties the artificial and surface properties of chromium -- shiny, glittery, cheap -- to another trend of those times, "a speculator market that couldn't last [...] like the stock market boom of the 1920s or the tech market boom of the 1990s. [...] The Chromium Age reflects the names of similar eras (the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties) in which money, a lot of money, was being made. And a lot of money was made by comic book companies during the Chromium Age. Individual issues set sales records. Back issues brought in record prices."

His argument for the name Chromium, therefore, hinges on three things: the metal element paradigm of previous ages, the packaging techniques of the time, and its short-lived value. These, I feel, do not an Age make, nor do they entirely hold with the reasons he already gave as to how this time-period differed from the Bronze Age. It is, like Chris' own reason for the Chromium name, simply a surface assessment -- judging an era of books by their covers. It is not a nomenclature based on the stories of the time, the art of the time, the new advances of the time, the values of the time, or the limitations of the time. As Chris Fluit notes himself, the covers and the market are the least of what makes the decades following 1986 a remarkable Age.

While much of 1986-onward was engaged in pushing comic book storytelling in new directions, the mainstream genre of superheroes simultaneously remained on a solid continuum with its Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age predecessors. There was an unspoken logic to where the characters and tales had proceeded; it was fulfilling what its predecessors had begun fifty years ago. And which is concluding now.

Comics had new tools, a new foundation, and a new awareness -- and the Hydrogen Age was to be its evolution.

(Would writing "To Be Concluded in 30 Days" sound familiar?)