Zonker

That's a good point. As you note, comics did start to introduce non-white characters in the 1960s, but most of them were either tokens, or were introduced solely to make a point. Jackie Johnson was part of Sgt. Rock's Easy Company in the 1960s, Gabe Jones was a Howling Commando for Sgt. Fury, there was also Johnny Cloud, the Navajo air man, and the Black Panther you covered. Probably because the Civil Rights era was a late Fifties / early Sixties event, comic books had a longer lead time to get on board. I'm not too familiar with Falcon or Black Goliath, but the John Stewart GL and the now-better-forgotten Legion of Super-Heroes member Tyroc were introduced to make various points about their Black-ness. I remember when Black Lightning was introduced, they tried to stress that he was a super-hero who just happened to be Black, rather than a Black-Super-Hero. But nevertheless part of his super-hero disguise was that huge Afro and fake jive speech pattern. It probably wasn't until the New X-Men that you had a racially-diverse cast just because, rather than to make some heavy-handed point about the ethnic group each member "represented." Supposedly Dave Cockrum, a big Blackhawks fan, had the idea for reproducing the Blackhawks member-from-every-nation idea as a super-hero team. Then of course that became the template for super-hero team revamps for the next decade... quite successfully with New Teen Titans, and quite stupidly with Justice League Detroit (featuring Gypsy & Vibe)

Couldn't agree more! (thumbs u I remember reading in my teens one of David Gerrold's behind-the-scenes books on the making of the original Star Trek series. He recalled that the network censors nixed one of his plotlines because it wasn't acceptable to have "big business" be a villain on commercial TV at the time. And that was the late 1960s, and in a futuristic sf setting, to boot. The culture really did loosen up, or the counterculture became mainstream, take your pick, in the late 1960s, with music, then film, then TV and commercial comics bringing up the rear. And at the risk of stretching the analogy too far, by the late 1970s (post-Jaws), you had the rise of the summer blockbuster crowding out more serious films, and in comics the dominance of super-heroes over other genres.

"Give a Damn" huh? Does anyone remember any clearly Silver Age books that allowed the use of the word Damn? A GCD search of story titles suggests there were no code-approved books that contained Damn as a part of a story's title up until "Kingdom of the Damned" in 1971.

In the category of "more adult themes," I didn't really talk about profanity (partly cause it still seems stupid to equate adult with cursing, but that's another rant). I've been curious for some time about the gradual loosening of restrictions regarding language in CCA-approved books. Here's a cover that surprised me when I first studied the slogans on the signs:

1st 4 Dollar Comics Worlds Finest issues, 3 with Adams covers.

and more! 9 Silver Age issues in all...

3 15-cent Covers: Detective Comics

JLA/JSA/Seven Soldiers of Victory/Phantom Stranger How cool is that? Cardy covers on 'em all.

Once again... Zonker's Lots for Sale on eBay 4 Bronze Age Batman Neal Adams Covers, 3 of them feature Ras al Ghul

I think the buzz kill came in my very first post in the thread: Instead, I should have said: "After the Marvel Spotlight #5 CGC 9.8 is pressed to a CGC 10.0, it will certainly kick GL #76 hass and be recognized as the first book of the Bronze Age"

Thanks guys! It was fun to do... The previous generation wrote letters to the editor-- but we get to nerd out on the message boards.

Don't forget the stellar 4th World line of drek as well. ...must...not...launch...flame...war...in...own...thread...

Makes it a bit more understandable how they would green-light titles like Strange Sports Stories, Prez, or Brother Power the Geek, doesn't it?

3. Radical experimentation / anything goes / the suits relinquish control - Though there are many different stories out there about The Night Gwen Stacy Died, it is clear that Stan Lee had left the day-to-day oversight of the character by then: - Indeed, after Stan Lee stepped down as Marvel Editor-in-Chief, Marvel went through 5 EICs in as many years: Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin. - Howard Chaykin (in his intro to the Best of Walt Simonson TPB) remembers with paper shortages being hyped in the early 1970s, that “most of us with half a brain figured comics were due for oblivion by the early eighties.” - Over at DC, the editors apparently have no idea what’s really selling. D ick Giordano tells this story: - Irving Donnefield told Bob Beerbohm in an article published in Comic Book Artist #6: - In that same issue, Neal Adams says to Beerbohm: - Creators were beginning to be thought of as more important than the creations. DC brought Kirby over from Marvel, and let him run wild. Some of Kirby’s resulting Fourth World stuff I thought was wonderful, but some of it (Goody Rickles, anyone?) cried out for an editor. - But this piece of self-indulgence takes the cake. In one of DC’s flagship titles, JLA, scripter Mike Friedrich is allowed to devote an issue to his vanity project love letter to Harlan Ellison. “Crash-pounding of his creative soul” my . I can’t imagine what the typical 9-year old boy thought when he picked this issue up, expecting to read a story of the world’s greatest superheroes, and finds this instead… - In summary, there came a time when the business controls became pretty loose over what made its way in to print. This was evident both by frequent editorial hands-off behavior, as well as a lack of reliable, actionable metrics regarding what was actually succeeding in the marketplace. While these were certainly management problems, I would suggest those problems oddly enough contributed to an explosion of creativity that mainstream comic book readers and collectors have benefited from ever since. OK, now your turn...

2. New generation of creators, new pretensions, both political and literary - Denny O’Neil came along carrying a lot of literary and/or journalistic aspirations. His GL/GA was captioned with quotes from Norman Mailer’s “Armies of the Night.” He added Dylan quotes to at least one of his World’s Finest scripts. - O’Neil’s New Journalist faux-realistic writing style found a perfect complement in Neal Adams’ photo-realistic art style, a style that emerged as a competing house style to the Jack Kirby model of an earlier time. Rather than a science-fiction sense of wonder, the new style was realism, or occasionally an allegory trying to make a point about the real world. - While in earlier years you might have pop culture celebrities like Elvis, the Beatles, (or Perry Como even farther back) show up in the books, Roy Thomas chose to turn New Journalist Tom (“Electric Kool-Aide Acid Test”) Wolfe into a comics character in Hulk 142. (And apparently Wolfe appeared earlier as well, though I don’t have the footnoted book cited below): - In earlier years, you had a few writers doing most of the work: Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Gardner Fox, John Broome, Bob Kanigher. Kanigher made the transition to the 1970s, as did guys like Roy Thomas, Bob Haney and Arnold Drake. But the later decade saw a huge influx of new talent to Marvel & DC, many of them comics fans turned pro: Denny O’Neil, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Archie Goodwin, Steve Gerber, Steve Englehart. - Most of these writers were decidedly left-of-center, and one way it showed was the social consciousness storylines in the early 1970s, most notably in Green Lantern / Green Arrow, but also in Superman and Justice League comics of the day. - Marvel was more subtle, at least up until the Captain America Secret Empire arc, but there was this aside in Conan #3, which I always thought was a swipe at the prosecution of the Vietnam War—but for all I know it might be in the Robert E. Howard original. - Comics creators started handing out awards to each other, as in the Academy of Comic Arts “Shazam” awards. In the 5 years they were handed out, the majority went to Conan, Green Lantern / Green Arrow, Manhunter & Swamp Thing. Previously there were the fandom-based Alley Awards, but now we had pros congratulating each other for their artistic successes. - We may disagree on the merits of Kirby’s Fourth World, but clearly he was attempting something epic in scope, and envisioned it as a multi-volume permanently-bound collection, a graphic novel before there was such a thing. His reach may have exceeded his grasp, but the ambition was certainly there. - In the wake of Conan’s success, creators looked to other pulp fiction for material to adapt. DC procured the licensing for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ creations, Fritz Lieber’s Fafrd & the Grey Mouser and The Shadow. Marvel got most all of the Robert E. Howard library and Doc Savage. It got pretty ridiculous when DC apparently arrived at the conclusion that a good way to take on Conan was to launch a comic book recounting the adventures of… the Old English epic poem Beowulf.

1. More Adult Themes - Anti-authority, whether it’s GL questioning the Guardians or Captain America taking on the Secret Empire (aka the Nixon White House). You no longer automatically know who the good guys are. - Conan has his own moral code, and the world around him is one of moral ambiguity. Kings can be treacherous, thieves can be loyal friends. This world is much less morally black & white than that found in the previous Silver Age material. - Batman starts to threaten suspects, never-mind-the-Miranda-decision - Violence: Conan, Kirby’s Fourth World, Simonson’s Manhunter, Kaluta’s Shadow, Wolverine. On the villain side, the Punisher is introduced, and the Joker returns to his original portrayal as a homicidal maniac. - Drug books, first pill-popping in Spidey, then the more explicit GL/GA heroin 2-parter. - Death as a natural outcome of “real-world” super-heroing: Gwen Stacy, certainly. But also Manhunter, Thunderbird, Jean Grey (until she got better), Elektra (ditto). - The occult and monsters take on a new prevalence. The CCA was revised to allow for vampires for the first time since 1954. Tomb of Dracula, Monster of Frankenstein, Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, The Demon, Ghost Rider all emerge. - And can you imagine a post-Code period either before or since when a comic entitled “Son of Satan” would be marketed to an all-ages comic book readership? - Sex: Mike W Barr said Green Arrow & Black Canary (in the O’Neil-Adams GL/GA ) were the first comic characters he could believe had a real sex life. Later, I think that would apply equally well to Phoenix-Cyclops and to Batman-Silver St. Cloud. And it is certainly implied that Jean Grey took a walk-on-the-wild-side during her Black Queen segments. - Joe Quesada gets a lot of grief for his current stewardship of the Spider-Man franchise, but I don’t think even he is having Peter Parker making references to current porn stars, as in this Deep Throat reference from Marvel Team-Up 16:

It occurred to me that one reason all the many debates about the merits of GL 76, what book started the Bronze Age, etc. etc. keep spinning around and around is because there really isn’t a concise definition of what we mean when we talk about a bronze age of comics. With Golden Age, it is pretty much accepted that it is the rise of comic book costumed super-heroes. With Silver Age, it is pretty much accepted that it is the return to popularity of comic book costumed super-heroes. With Bronze, it’s usually a case of can’t define it / but know it when I see it. In this thread, I’ll invite your opinions about how to define the Bronze Age—independent of any consideration of what was first, what was the greatest, what was the most influential, what should receive the highest price when encased in plastic with a big number at top left, etc. So what do we think we mean when we talk about the Bronze Age? - The rise of the anti-hero? Yes - Increasing use of violence by super-heroes and super-villains? Sure - Accelerating death toll of characters? Yes - Greater prevalence of monsters and occult themes? Certainly But in my opinion, that’s too narrow an idea, as to my way of thinking, the Bronze Age was more than just that, and those aspects were just part of the larger picture. Surface symptoms of a larger underlying transformation, if you will. In my view, the Bronze Age can be defined by 3 inter-related trends: 1- More adult themes captured within commercial, Comic Code Approved American comic books 2- New generation of creators coming on board with new political and artistic pretensions. 3- A fertile period of experimentation from the Big Two Publishers: the inmates begin running the asylum, as Stan Lee went to Hollywood and Carmine Infantino was pretty much flying blind at DC. ...more soon...

VCC Kudos to tkg2627 for books I bought, tightly graded, quickly shipped and to hesdeadjim for buying my books, in the mail to you today! Thank you both!

Bunch of Cockrum, Grell, Giffen issues

Batman 349 350 Annual 8 Detective 511 513 515 517

Batman Family 17 18 19 20 Different lot than sold above.

Original Roy Thomas - Jerry Ordway Run

JLA 135 136 137 147 148 Plus All-Stars & DC Special 29

Kaluta & Starlin covers, Mike Golden, Marshall Rogers artwork inside SOLD

Highlights of the Goodwin/Simonson Manhunter run. 3 100 Pagers!