The Dark Age of Comic Books/Headscratchers


 * As a fan of the Dark Age of comics, it just bugs me how much people hate it. The Dark Age page on this site is so one-sided it makes nearly makes me puke.
 * It's a page on a wiki. Anybody can edit it. If you want to balance out the article just edit it yourself.
 * It's because of how the Dark Age turned out. The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen are credited with starting the Dark Age. Both of those comics were very popular because they had character development and compelling story. But, Completely Missng The Point, the industry figured that the comics must've done so well because they were Darker and Edgier than previous comics, and not because of things like, you know, good writing. It led to the (false) belief that the darker a comic is, the better it automatically is, which in turn led to a bunch of poorly written comics that had gore and character deaths just for shock value. It's similar to the CGI Age (current age) of Animation. The studios producing animated movies started to drop tradtionally animated films because the only animated movies at the time that were doing really well were the Pixar ones. It didn't occur to them that Pixar movies were popular because the filmmakers actually gave a crap about them and actually put effort into them, they just assumed that CGI animation was what made people like it.
 * Because a lot Dark Age fodder is, at best, Bronze Age writing with tits and guns. Batman: Year One retconned Catwoman into a prostitute. The Dark Knight Returns set the stage for a movie starring the world's first sociopathic Batman. There were good things: Watchmen, Sandman, and other legitimately mature (as opposed to "mature") comics probably wouldn't exist, or would exist in vastly different shapes, if not for the Dark Age. What Just Bugs Me is the idea that everything was bright and childish before the Dark Age when serious and emotional writing had been the norm since the seventies (arguably beginning with the Death of Gwen Stacy).
 * I'd like to step in here and defend The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. I'd go so far to say DKR is more mature than Watchmen. It's about actual political problems, rather than Watchmen's superhero story about what it's like to be a superhero, which created a glut of horrible imitations that still keep getting made. The DKR Batman isn't a sociopath, just a little on the brink of sanity. He doesn't even kill anyone, unlike Tim Burton's version.
 * Watchmen isn't about "actual political problems"? The whole story is motivated by the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan and the threat of nuclear war, both of which were very real and pressing political issues in the mid-1980s. Also, one of the biggest themes in it is the political question of peace, and how much should be sacrificed to acquire it. Sure, the "what if superheros were real?" hypothesis is an important element in Watchmen, but as a whole it's very much about real political issues. And it is actually more mature than Dark Knight Returns, because unlike DKR, Watchmen makes it clear that in a realistic world superhero vigilantism couldn't make a political change.
 * Except for the Mutant Leader. Drowns him in mud. Yep, that's Batman for you. And seriously, political problems? The only political questions are brought up by strawmen. You're either a strawman conservative, a strawman liberal, or Batman. And I would argue that Watchmen is more mature, because unlike Miller, Alan Moore grasps the concept of subtlety, and makes a book that is deep on several levels. You have the superhero story, which is great, but there is so much more to it as well. Watchmen is a classic piece of literature that will be remembered for generations to come. TDKR, while having its moments, is just no where near as good.
 * You're selling the politics of DKR short. A lot of it was based on the context of being written in the 80s during a particularly grim point in the Cold War. More of it centers on deconstructing the criticism of Batman as a fascist, because as a close reading will show you, the United States of the DKR universe has itself gone round the bend into a full-blown fascist police state. The question then becomes: can an enemy of a fascist police state himself be considered a fascist, or does the fact he is operating outside and against the state authority make him the ultimate anti-fascist? This troper has a degree in political science and has found more and more layers to the politics of DKR with each reading, although it never gives a truly satisfying answer to the central question (but given Frank Miller's politics, perhaps this is for the best).
 * Minor point: whoa, Batman doesn't drown the Mutant Leader. He beats the living snot out of him and part of it is a little disturbing ("Something tells me to stop with the leg. I don't listen to it.") but it's explicitly stated that Batman doesn't kill him, as later on one of the news casts talks about whether the Mutant Leader is competent to stand trial -- and indeed isn't even suspected of murder until his last fight with the Joker.
 * Also, Year One just retconned Catwoman into someone who had once been a prostitute, way back when. The Long Halloween and Dark Victory continued her arc and showed you more about how she evolved from that into what she eventually became. It's not like her present self underwent a personality overhaul. They just had an interesting new take on her past, that's all.
 * "Way back when?" She was a prostitute in the beginning of the story! She only quit after Batman showed up.
 * People hate it so much because it took all the worst qualities from "dark" but genuinely good works and exaggerated them to the point of total absurdity. Watchmen isn't a good book because it's "dark". It's a good book because it has a complex story that tried to show what superheroes would really be like if they actually existed, and the fact that it seems "grim & gritty" by contrast to the Golden and Silver Ages is entirely beside the point. But most Dark Age writers apparently weren't intelligent enough to fully grasp that fact so they seized upon the most superficial aspects of "dark" stories (the dark moods, the violence, the cynicism, the moral grey areas, etc.) and made THAT the primary focus of their stories. And as the years went by those superficial "dark" story elements became so emphasized that they basically became the stories. Characters with "tragic pasts" who brooded, sulked, and scowled a lot but had few if any definable characteristics beyond that became a substitute for true emotional depth and psychological complexity. Mega-violence and generous helpings of T&A became a substitute for actual mature story themes (considering Dark Age comics were often marketed as being more "mature" than past stories, it's actually remarkable how immature so many of them were). Heroes who used brutal or even gruesome methods to subdue their foes, up to and including lethal force, became a substitute for actual realism; so many idiots in the late 80s and 90s thought that heroes who killed were more "realistic" and "cool" than heroes who didn't and it just snowballed from there. And then of course there's Rob Liefeld's artwork, which is a whole other debate in itself. Look I'll be honest here, the crapitude of the Dark Age IS somewhat exaggerated. Looking back on it, this troper would be the first to admit that a lot of the Dark Age stories weren't really THAT bad. Hell, I'd even go as far to say that Rob Liefeld isn't quite as bad an artist as people make him out to be (though that's certainly not to say he's a good artist). But let's not fool ourselves, out of the four or so Ages the comic industry has been through so far, the Dark Age is clearly the worst of the lot. It's shallow, uninspired, pretentious, over the top (and not in a good way), and aside from the few good stories that came out of it, is best left behind.
 * Or, to put it more simply, people don't hate Dark Age comics, they hate the Flanderization of the grim and gritty themes used by Dark Age writers and artists.
 * To be blunt, plenty of people don't hate it at all. It was popular for a very long time, obviously, and its influence is still felt (just as the influence of previous ages still is). Also, there is certainly a market for Dark Age nostalgia, just as there is for previous ages. The more accurate assessment would be that the people who hate it are more vocal, at least on certain sites. Remember that opinions expressed on the internet are in the nature of a voluntary survey, which any statistician will tell you overemphasizes negative responses.
 * This Troper thinks that the worst of the ages was the silver age, when censorship ruled and 90% of the plots where about Jimmy Olsen marrying a gorrilla. True the dark age went a little too far, but only in reaction to the Silver Age Censorship and "comics always have to be for 6 year olds" stigma that came out of it. While most of the Dark Age does read like a 12 year old's Mortal Kombat fanfic, most of the Silver Age reads like a 5 year old's Dora The Explorer fanfic.
 * Did you even read the Silver Age, dude?
 * The overload of sex and violence in the Dark Age happened, at least partially, as a backlash against Comic Code Authority-controlled previous period. Once it was cancelled the creators started to make comics as bloody and titillating and heroes as anti-heroic as possible (not to the degree of Marvel MAX line though) simply because they could. Fans, who tired of kids friendly stuff, liked it too. After people got used to it the level of S&V became more moderate. It doesn't mean that S&V equal 'bad story', of course.
 * People generally want things to be how they were, or at least compatible with the way things were when they were young. It's partly a desire to feel nostalgic, and partly because people tend to only remember good things once you get far enough away from that period. Just like you listen to Classic Rock radio and you don't hear The Partridge Family or Bread or the thousands of other crappy bands that were around at the time. So people end up only remembering the good things and end up only comparing modern things with the very best of the past.
 * My problem with the term the dark age is that it's faulty at best because it looks at the medium through a very narrow spectrum, the 80s and 90s was time were independent creator's (and I'm not talking about the image founders) came to prominence and a diversification of genres occurred not to mention a collection of material that really does qualify as genuinely intelligent. When people criticize this age all they're focusing on is superheroes which is a problem with this medium.
 * Note that the index is called the ages of Superhero comics. That's what anyone means when they talk about the ages. What the comic book industry did as a whole is different, although the ages are still important to that because superheroes make up such a large percentage of the medium.
 * One of the things I hate is how the whole period reeked of countless marketing ploys. You had issues with trading cards, hologram covers, or variant covers solely designed as a way to boost sales. In order for a collector to get any value you sometimes had to have the whole set of variant covers. Any trading cards had to be intact too. So in order to enjoy them as well as get any kind of money a collector needed to buy two or more of each issue. At least one to enjoy and the others to keep pristine to sell later.
 * And guess how much you get for those comics nowadays?
 * Not much, obviously. However, give it a few more decades. Let the industry go through a few more Ages. Then see how much a Dark Age variant cover comic is worth. You never know. The market might surprise you.
 * Considering that the comics in question were made in mass quantities (like millions) and the reason why Golden Age comics are so highly valuable today is their increasing rarity... I just don't see it happening.
 * Could still happen. Do you know anybody who still keeps their Dark Age comics in sterile plastic anymore? I sure don't. Like I said, the market might surprise you. As Dark Age comics become rarer as people discard them, believing them worthless, they might increase in value. Or they might not. You never know. I'm just saying, don't be too surprised if a Dark Age comic increases in value some day.
 * A lot of those old Golden Age comics also had print runs in the millions. What they didn't have was people buying them and putting them in mylar bags by the thousands as an "investment", thus preventing them from being thrown out and increasing that rarity over time.
 * Much of the "old Golden Age comics worth a fortune" thing was a scam. Dealers who had sat on a lot of old comics or bought them for cheap started seeding stories about selling to some "anonymous collector" for a ridiculous amount, and then offering a sizeable "discount" to other people wanting to buy them. Comics have always been a step above Billy Beer in terms of investment opportunity. Almost all of the Dark Age "collecting" was also done by dealers.
 * What's to stop them from doing that again in 20 years once people forget how things went down in the 90's? Things are worth what people will pay for them.
 * Because the Golden Age comics are not just rare, but in many ways pieces of history that are notable and significant to lots of people. Action Comics #1 sells for so much not just because it's rare, but because it's the first appearance of Superman, and the first significant appearance of modern superheroes; it's a significant part of cultural history however you look at it, and a lot of people are going to be interested in it. Same goes for a lot of other fairly popular, well-known superheroes like Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. There's a lot of cultural value there, which translates into economic value as people are competing to own this particular property. Conversely, it's fair to say that Bloodstrike #1 or Youngblood #1 doesn't have quite the same cultural significance for most people, and that's probably not really going to change, either tomorrow or in twenty years. So there's going to be less people overall interested in owning that particular piece of history, ergo there's going to be less demand for it, ergo you won't be able to get away with charging huge prices and expecting people to pay them.
 * Why do people hate it? Perhaps a combination of changes to people's most beloved characters and 90% of everything being crap. People were disinclined to like their iconic heroes changing, and the fact that (inevitably) a lot of the changes were done poorly reinforced their prejudice. Also, since the Dark Age is fresher in our minds, people remember the crap, whereas the Silver Age is old enough people only remember the 'classics.'
 * Then again, a lot of what is being said here, mirrors current comics. In fact, the Dark Age could very easily include the 00's and 10's.
 * Well...yes and no. The 00s and 10s are definitely "darker" compared to the Silver Age, but so was the Bronze Age. The point is, there's more to the Dark Age of Comic Books than "darkness".
 * It just bugs me that it's referred to as the Dark Age. Darker and Edgier was a feature of quite a few titles from 1986-on (and plenty before, and plenty after), but the books that did the most sales were still relatively innocuous fare aimed at the typical comics market of older kids and younger teenagers. What killed the comics market in 1995-96 was that the sales-boosting Re Tools made the books impossible to follow casually (and that the entire "comics boom" was artificially inflated by publishers giving any idiot with a $500 check a "distributor" discount), not that some third-string character in a second-string team book had a trenchcoat and needed a shave.
 * It's not meant to be a literal description, just a play on words. While the Dark Age arguably did popularize Darker and Edgier characters and stories and quite a few Darker and Edgier characters debuted in that time period, all of which contributed to the Dark Age moniker, the main reason for the name is the perceived drop in quality of comic books during the mid-90s.
 * Look at everything posted above and tell me that with a straight face.
 * Tell you what with a straight face? That there's more to the Dark Age moniker than Darker and Edgier Nineties Anti Heroes? There, I just did it. The fact is, the "Dark Age" label is a play on words. It's supposed to symbolize that this was the low-point in the comic book industry, just as the historical Dark Ages is perceived as the low-point in European history (you don't think they called the the Dark Ages because it was literally dark do you?).
 * Of course they were. There were a lot of knights.
 * If nothing else, I believe that the Dark Age trumps the Silver Age in the humor department; most Dark Age comics had at least one Deadpan Snarker character, and the absence of the Comics Code meant that writers were free to use Gallows Humor, social satire, and more subtle jokes in the writing. The Silver Age's (intentional) humor was largely restricted to puns and slapstick, unless one also counts Narm (which is pretty much laughing at things that were supposed to be taken seriously). Certainly, I have yet to see the Silver Age equivalent of The Joker dressed as a 90s Hollywood director (complete with ponytail) with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert as his henchmen, collaborating with a genuine and consenting Hollywood producer to create a movie about actual murder of Batman.
 * That's...debatable at best. First of all, social satire was really more a feature of the Bronze Age. To the extent it occurred during the Dark Age it was mostly a bleed-through from the previous Age of comic books, much like how the Modern Age of Comics still contains a few of the old Nineties Anti Heros even though their popularity is nowhere near where it used to be. The attempts at social satire that were actually created during the Dark Age (aside from Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns) were simplistic, unintelligent, and poorly written in my humble opinion. Second, Gallows Humor is a very subjective brand of humor. What seems like Gallows Humor to some comes off to others as writers being crass and crude for the sake of being crass and crude, and I would argue that's what happened most often during the Dark Age. As for Deadpan Snarker characters, I am honestly at a loss to come up with even one single example of a true Deadpan Snarker character who originates from the Dark Age of Comics. Spider-Man? He was like that before the Dark Age. Wolverine? Also like that before the Dark Age. Deadpool? Whether he technically counts as a Deadpan Snarker is debatable, but regardless he only acquired his current humorous persona at a time when the Dark Age was basically over. And as for subtlety...aside from certain visionary works Dark Age comics were about as subtle as a shotgun blast to the face.
 * Perhaps this is not the right place for this, but what is with the Bronze and Iron Age? Not the ages themselves and the content of them, but the names. The Golden and Silver Ages take their names from the stages of Latin literature, Golden Age Latin being (vaguely) the period of the late Republic and very early Empire with its most famous authors being Cicero, Caesar, Livy, and Vergil and the Silver Age being later early Empire authors, generally dated from the death of Augustus to the death of Trajan (according to The Other Wiki) with its most famous authors being Seneca the Elder, Seneca the Younger, Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, and Pliny the Younger. If the aging is based on the ages of Latin Literature, that's it. Traditionally, those are the only two ages given special fancy names (perhaps the Bronze Age could be the Late Age and the Iron Age the appropriate Medieval Age). I suppose the naming could be a reference to the "Four Monarchies" from the Book of Daniel, in which case it is somewhat appropriate, though the Modern Age of comics should be called the Iron and Clay Age and whatever comes after the Stone Age. There is also the possibility that this is a reference to the Five Ages of Man that Hesiod refers to in Works and Days, in which case the names of Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age hold up, but after the Bronze Age comes the Heroic Age, not the Iron Age, so again, the naming convention falls flat. Ultimately, this is a really nitpicky and pretentious problem with comic age naming conventions, but I wanted to air my complaint all the same.
 * It's more to do with a perception of quality. The term "Golden Age" is used in many contexts, to refer to the period when things were the best. The great age that follows is called silver because it is second best, and bronze follows naturally, as in Olympic medals. There are no medals after that, so people got creative: the Iron Age and The Dark Age(s) were real things, so inspired the next names. The Iron Age of history followed the Bronze Age, and is thought of as a "baser" metal, not being as pretty a color. It's "darker", in fact, like The Dark Ages, which are generally thought to be of lower quality than the period preceding them. So to answer your question more basically, there is no one-to-one correspondence to any other sequence of ages because, while it did look elsewhere for inspiration in the names, it refers to the ages of comics, and not to anything else.