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Next Age?

Started by s-man,

121 posts in this topic

awe4one

awe4one

Posted
Posted
Yes, we're officially adding an Age after Bronze, and then "Modern" kicks in after that one.

 

Well there's a whole new market ripe for exploitation....

 

And I'm not trying to imply that this is bad. I think the Modern label crosses too many different events which has marked a change in comics themselves and collecting in general.....

 

Jim

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chrisco37

chrisco37

Posted
Posted
Yes, we're officially adding an Age after Bronze, and then "Modern" kicks in after that one.

Arnold

 

Well....What is it? You know we're all going to buy the dang thing anyway..... smile.gif

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ArnoldTBlumberg

ArnoldTBlumberg

Posted
Posted

Sorry, I can't say until the book is out. But very few people will be completely shocked by the name or the general year range. As you recall, we ran over a year's worth of aggressive requests for opinions, feedback, etc., and received tons of letters and e-mails, many of which we published in the Review and online in SCOOP to indicate that there was indeed a large discourse on the subject. One such reply even led me to ask the man who wrote it to join the effort and provide some additional material and graphics for the article, and he did a great job. So all of this feedback was distilled into the article where we present our sort-of-but-not-really-all-that-new Age structure. The one we're debuting has been in somewhat common parlance for years now anyway.

 

The part that I'm excited about though is another aspect to the article, in which we establish our reasoning for why the Ages are divided the way they are, and also that the turn-over from one Age to the next is not exactly one book and one year (how could it be) but something a bit more complicated...

 

Arnold

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CompleteRunComics

CompleteRunComics

Posted
Posted

"Ultimate Age" for 2000-whenever sounds good to me.

 

What was the last Ultimate book to place outside of the top 10 on Diamond's monthly top 100?

 

But...since were actually talking about a time period roughly between 1980-1999 what better event to name the age after than the great crash. And the "Crash Age" was born...

 

 

CRC

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valiantman

valiantman

Posted
Posted
Do you really want a comic series that is not even in the regular Marvel continuity to represent an entire age of comics? Do we call the late 70's/early 80's the "What If?" age? No, and for good reason. You Ultimate fans have to admit - none of those stories even "count". If DC had followed suit and done an Ultimate line, there might be some credence to the "Ultimate Age".

DC obviously won't use the "Ultimate" titles...

but you can't deny that the Hush storyline, Batman/Superman,

and the recent changes to the "What if?" Superman stories

ARE influenced by the success of Ultimate books for Marvel.

 

I'd place a big label that "these stories won't count" on EVERYTHING

that's selling well for both companies right now...

Come on, have you seen Superman lately? That's not Superman.

Marvel & DC are both doing the same things... Ultimatesque.

 

Not that I blame them...

How do you get people to become excited about 40 and 60+ year old heroes,

when they're perpetually stuck at the same age.

They've been the underdogs, the victors, broken, killed,

cloned, replaced, outerspaced, teamed-up, pitted-against, married-to, separated-from,

old, young, very young, heroes, villains, and re-booted too many times to count.

There have been hundreds of comics (thousands in total) with them

as the title character... So how do you make people care TODAY?

You've gotta try something different... something "better" than before, right?

It's gotta be the "ultimate" revamp yet.

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read_em-migration

read_em-migration

Posted
Posted
...there was indeed a large discourse on the subject. One such reply even led me to ask the man who wrote it to join the effort and provide some additional material and graphics for the article, and he did a great job.

 

Arnold, was that Gifflefunk by any chance? Just wondering... that guy is serious about his comics/grading, in a scientific way.

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read_em-migration

read_em-migration

Posted
Posted
Then comics really have no long-term hope. sorry.gif

 

"Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope..."

 

Actually, Star Wars doesn't have any long term hope either.

Oh well, thank you for playing

 

You took JC's comment out of context. Why didn't you include the quote he was replying to? Obviously, I tend to agree with JC in the correct context.

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ArnoldTBlumberg

ArnoldTBlumberg

Posted
Posted

Doug provided some research on the Comic Code and a way of looking at the Ages in light of the Code's creation and shifting influence that enhanced what Jeff and I were already writing for the piece, and he also worked up the timeline graphics that run at the bottoms of the pages and illustrate the Age spectrum and the big new thing (as far as Overstreet is concerned) - the notion of specific Age "shifts." Ooh, just think of the fighting this will inspire on message boards everywhere! smile.gif

 

Arnold

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gifflefunk

gifflefunk

Posted
Posted

Did the CCA Code get considered for the Age delimiters? I'm still fighting to unify it all with:

Golden Age/Pre-Code (1933-1955)

Silver Age/1955 Code (1955-1971)

Bronze Age/1971 Code (1971-1989)

Copper Age/1989 Code (1989-2001?)

Chrome Age/"Modern Age"/2001 Code (2001?-present)

 

I can't wait to see how much headway my arguments may have made in the new guide. wink.gif

 

And I'm still trying to figure out if the CMAA met in 2001 and altered the CCA Code yet again....

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gifflefunk

gifflefunk

Posted
Posted

The entire layout to that argument can be found in the posts here, but in a nutshell, the Code is the only thing that affected all mainstream publishers and all genres from 1955 to 2001 and is something that impacted the industry and is not based on fan hind-sight of their favorite company or characters.

 

The reality of the Ages is more like the "spectrum" discussed in that thread, but we still need some delimiter for the more mundane aspects of collecting (such as eBay catagories, etc.). And not too surprisingly the CCA Code changes occur around the same time the current Age lore is defined and seem to make a logical candidate for being the focal point that can be used as that delimiter.

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ArnoldTBlumberg

ArnoldTBlumberg

Posted
Posted

I think one thing we make very clear in our approach is that *nothing* can be a sole determining factor. If you're going to try to apply artificial labels to periods of history - a purely academic exercise in the best of situations when you get right down to it - you have to look at a combination of factors. But the Code does play a part in examining the subject.

 

Arnold

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joe_collector

joe_collector

Posted
Posted
The entire layout to that argument can be found in the posts here, but in a nutshell, the Code is the only thing that affected all mainstream publishers and all genres from 1955 to 2001 and is something that impacted the industry and is not based on fan hind-sight of their favorite company or characters.

 

Come on, isn't this like the tail wagging the dog?

 

Marvel and DC had already published Code-less drug-related books, Conan and other "heroes" were killing with abandon and pushing the "horror" elements back into comics, and these were all big hits with readers, critics, and even the general media.

 

From my point of view, the Code reacted to the growing Bronze Age trend, it certainly didn't start it. The Code revisions in 1971 basically opened the barn door, well after the Bronze horses had already run out.

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