How far into the '80's will the Bronze Age creep?

[joe_collector]

About what year does bronze stop feeling bronze to you Vince?

 

Near the end of 1980/start of 1981, after the Death of Phoenix.

 

What's really weird, is that two incredibly important books/events happened in January of 1981 - X-Men 141 Days of Future Past (which essentially set up a few decades of X-stories) and Daredevil 168 (where Frank Miller started his run and introduced Elektra). On the DC side, New Teen Titans appeared on November of 1980. right around the time when Dark Phoenix was being offed.

 

1981 was also when Jim Shooter tried to really take over Marvel and put his stamp on the company, pushing the DM, introducing Dazzler #1 in March of 1981, Byrne started his FF run in July of 1981, etc.

[joe_collector]

Chuckles: "In my opinion... "

 

That should be enough to discount it right there.

[DrWatson]

To me, it is so easy and clean to say that books with cover dates up to December 1979 are Bronze Age and books with covers dates of January 1980 or later are Copper Age. That way there is no blurring or debate.

 

Sure, you can divide the Bronze Age into Early Bronze, Mid Bronze and Late Bronze, but then how do you decide which books are in those sub-categories? It seems somewhat arbitrary.

 

In a way it also makes sense to me that the Bronze Age didn't last as long as the Gold or Silver Ages, because in the 1970's cover prices were increasing much more frequently.

 

The Bronze Age era has been debated to death, opinions vary widely, and it doesn't appear that there will ever be a consensus.

The reason you can't just cut it off at 1979 Bronze/1980 Copper is because you can't cut story arcs or a particular writer's run in two.

[joe_collector]

The reason you can't just cut it off at 1979 Bronze/1980 Copper is because you can't cut story arcs or a particular writer's run in two.

 

That's why 1981 works so well, as it clearly delineates Marvel's major writer-artists and story arcs of the period. Frank Miller took over Daredevil in January of 1981, and Byrne closed off his X-Men/Dark Phoenix run and followed that up on FF in mid-year.

[Zonker]

(where did the earlier post go?),

 

2nd time in 2 days! WTF? Am I now on the black list?

 

edit...

 

OK, looks like the OP "private_dick" got himself deleted. I guess I should learn not to reply to a possible shill.

 

But then why did JC's reply get protected while mine was trashed?

[Zonker]

Something definitely changed between 1980-81, and pitching books to the fan/direct market was a big part of that. Here are the dates I pulled out from another post:

 

May 1979: Daredevil 158- First Miller art

Sep 1980: X-Men 137- Death of Dark Phoenix

Oct 1980: DC Presents 26- first New Teen Titans

Nov 1980: New Teen Titans 1

"1980" : Superboy Spectacular- Direct Sales only 1-shot

Jan 1981: Daredevil 168- First Miller -script; Intro Elektra

Jan 1981: X-Men 141- Days of Future Past launches alternate time line that would form the basis for lots of X-continuity over the next several years

Mar 1981: X-Men 143- Final Claremont/Byrne

Mar 1981: Dazzler 1- First direct-sales-only for an ongoing series

Nov 1981: Captain Victory 1- First Pacific Comics issue, direct-only publisher

 

 

[joe_collector]

Don't forget FF 232 - July 1981

[Mike Bray]

dont have the overstreet handy for reference but -- what about when all the war and horror books were dropped by DC , last Adventure Comics -- wasnt this all about `83 ....... and wasnt this around the birth of all the mini-series that Marvel and DC pumped out in the 80`s ( I`ve always thought this was a minor change by the big2 )--

[bigfiver69]

dont have the overstreet handy for reference but -- what about when all the war and horror books were dropped by DC , last Adventure Comics -- wasnt this all about `83 ....... and wasnt this around the birth of all the mini-series that Marvel and DC pumped out in the 80`s ( I`ve always thought this was a minor change by the big2 )--

 

The war books started falling off, believe it or not, in mid-1978 when Our Fighting Forces was cancelled (a DC implosion victim) and it took a full ten years before the last DC war book was cancelled (Sgt. Rock). In the early 1980s, I was a pimply-faced teen who was collecting really hard - buying lots of everything both publishers were putting out. Even then, you could feel the energy shifting from some titles to others.

 

X-Men, Daredevil, Teen Titans were tour-de-force books, yet House of Secrets, Unknown Soldier, and Jonah hex could barely sell half the print run. Soon, all the genre books were gone. Compared to the quality of the DC war and horror boosk from just ten years before, those non-hero books of the late-70s and early 80s were pretty spot affairs, so it's no surprise... the creative resources were going almost completely to the hero books.

 

You are right, though, to point to 1983 as a pivotal year. After that year, direct really took over and regular newsstand sales began to drop off. The miniseries came, the mando and baxter books came, and Pacific, Eclipse, First etc were coming on.

 

It was exciting in some ways, because there was a lot of interesting, creative things happening all over the place. In retrospect, though, I look back on that era with some sadness because as a DC collector, the regular runs of many, many wonderful titles came to an end - some of which had been running since the dawn of the Silver Age. And, for me, they were replaced for the most part with a very homgeneous product. It really was the end of a great era.

 

Shep

 

 

[joe_collector]

dont have the overstreet handy for reference but -- what about when all the war and horror books were dropped by DC , last Adventure Comics -- wasnt this all about `83 .......

 

Sure, but new Ages are never about endings, but beginnings. New material, trends, ideas, directions, titles, etc. start, and then force some of the previous "hot trends" out of the limelight a few years later.

 

Look at what the SA did to funny animals, humor, western and romance books? None of those dropped off the map immediately, and it took years for most titles to disappear.

[kimik]

Chuckles: "In my opinion... "

 

That should be enough to discount it right there.

 

If it had not been corroborated by folks in the other thread I would have to agree with you.

 

Interesting that the Direct Market hit comic sales in the 70s just like Marvel's attempt to circumvent distributors backfired in the 90s.

[joe_collector]

If it had not been corroborated by folks in the other thread I would have to agree with you.

 

I'd like to talk to these "folks" who firmly believe that both Marvel and DC would have gone out of business had Star Wars #1 not hit the shelves in 1977.

[joe_collector]

Interesting that the Direct Market hit comic sales in the 70s 80's just like Marvel's attempt to circumvent distributors backfired in the 90s.

 

(thumbs u

[TupennyConan]

I think one thing we can all agree upon is that the BA was over by the time Dark Knight '86 & Watchmen '86 hit. There is nothing BA about those books. They are quintessential Moderns.

 

Moving further back, there is TMNT '84. Nothing BA there.

 

It is worth noting that Cerebus was December '77 & was a parody of Conan October '70, a book often said to be the book to kick off the BA. Cerebus comes off to me as such a Modern book...but '77? That's still the BA for sure.

 

My interest is in the advancing tide of the BA...I have this gut feeling that the end date seems to keep moving forward by the definition of different & diverse parties for different & diverse reasons.

 

Am I alone in this Spider sense?

[DrWatson]

The Bronze age, for all intents and purposes, had come to a close by 1981.

[the blob]

I'm thinking that march 1981 is a good date for marvel and oct/nov 1980 for DC as the end of bronze/start of copper and copper ending with death of superman or x-men 1 or spiderman 1 (whichever came first).

 

 

as for SW saving comics in 1977.....i'm a little confused didn't marvel's big batch of #1s that came out in 76 and early 77 sell zillions of copies? peter parker 1, nova 1, ms. marvel 1, john carter 1, et c. etc. etc. peter parker was a $5 book forever because there were trillions of copies.

 

sure, chuck and other retailers may very well have done a great business selling star wars toys, no doubt, and perhaps it helped them ride the storm and such. my childhood LCS back then, which seemed to be doing fine and didn't close until the mid-80s (and for nothing to do with poor sales), did not sell much in the way of star wars toys.

[TupennyConan]

The Bronze age, for all intents and purposes, had come to a close by 1981.

 

Agreed, pretty much.

 

But Doc, will you agree with me that there are forces at work attempting to reclassify much more of the 1980's as part of the Age of Bronze?

[DrWatson]

The Bronze age, for all intents and purposes, had come to a close by 1981.

 

Agreed, pretty much.

 

But Doc, will you agree with me that there are forces at work attempting to reclassify much more of the 1980's as part of the Age of Bronze?

Possibly, but to what avail?

 

When a series breaks, it breaks. There is definite change in the book. It isn't something you have to search for. Maybe that's why some long running series ended up being discontinued and genres abandoned. They didn't change with the times, survival of the fittest. They could no longer adapt and therefor became extinct. As with any species (series) there are always a few stragglers. Representatives that linger on, out of time, until they are finally canceled.

[joe_collector]

But Doc, will you agree with me that there are forces at work attempting to reclassify much more of the 1980's as part of the Age of Bronze?

 

Sure, but it's widely known to be a pile of dealers with boxes of unsaleable early-80's crepe they're now trying to pawn off as "High-Grade Bronze Age".

 

And I cannot believe OS is playing along with this BS.

[Zonker]

The Bronze age, for all intents and purposes, had come to a close by 1981.

 

Agreed, pretty much.

 

But Doc, will you agree with me that there are forces at work attempting to reclassify much more of the 1980's as part of the Age of Bronze?

 

I think it's not too much a stretch to believe that people with 1980s books to sell might want to call them Bronze Age. Apart from everything else, the "Bronze Age' books were the last ones distributed primarily through the newstand and grocery stores, so more of the surviving copies exist as low grade rather than high grade. That's not the case with Direct Sales era books, which are plentiful in relative high grade.

 

I wonder if CGC actually has it right identifying "Modern" as 1975-up. Clearly by the time Jim Shooter could launch Dazzler as a Direct Only title, the newstand was no longer the primary breadwinner for Marvel. But how much earlier than that was the Direct Market a viable alternative, facilitating the wholesale hoarding of high-grade books? I remember the first comic con I attended I was amazed to see books on sale a whole month before they were supposed to hit the newstand. That was 1977 or so, so maybe 1975 really is the tipping point for the Direct Market and hence the end of any true scarcity of high grade books.