POLL: When did the Bronze Age begin?

[Aman619]

Great stuff Kev! You underline a major element of the 70s books: the switch from fan loyalty to characters, to fan interest in the talent. A sideline of this as I remember it was that these new creators were "our" age, young guys who grew up reading comics and praying and salivating that they'd get their chance someday. Not dads or granddads from the 40s. They popped in and out of titles trying everything and we followed them.

 

This changing of the guard in the trenches was, the more I think about it, a much bigger aspect to the early 70s than the variations on spandex that they ultimately put to paper.

 

Hey, are you allowed to change your opinion on these posts? screw GSXMen after all!

[joe_collector]

I'm still not getting where you catologue the 1970's as declining and the 1980's as sales increasing....

 

Are you saying that as of 1970, sales dropped and continued droppig until the 1980's and then things rose again and sales spiked?

 

Because I'm not seeing that, at least from the Marvel end, and there is no comic in the 1980's that came close to the top-sellers of the early 1970's and even up to 1979, top-selling Marvels pushed as many or more books than the X-Men throughout the 1980's.

 

The number of titles at Marvel also didn't shift that much overall in the two decades, and many 1980's titles were poor sellers and quickly cancelled. I can remember hearing in the mid-1980's that demand was at its lowest ebb and that Dark Knight Returns was responsible for invigorating the Adult Buyer and paving the way for the speculator-crazy 1990's.

 

So where, pray tell are you getting this "70's Slump / 80's Spike" data, and could you please post it for all to see? The numbers I'm seeing show an erosion of overall sales since the early 1970's and never really catching up until 1988-9 and then spiking into the 90's.

[Aman619]

I dont have the figures, and I hope that doesnt come across as a dodge...... The DC Implosion is fact...Did Marvel's sales decline as well? I thought so. It seemed like it at the time. Also, as direct sales increased and surpassed the declining newsstand numbers, the sell-through totals get skewed as they are not returnable anymore.

 

Are you saying that as of 1970, sales dropped and continued dropping until the 1980's and then things rose again and sales spiked........So where, pray tell are you getting this "70's Slump / 80's Spike

 

As you yourself say, DKR spiked sales in 1986, and interest was growing before that. I remember growing crowds on new comic day beginning in the early 80s. Also the slump/spike doesnt exactly coinside with the beginnings of the decades. It wasnt "as of 1970 that the dropoff happened....Sales were dropping in the mid-to-late 70s and were brisk in the mid-to-late 80s, then collapsed in mid 90s.

[Kevin Boyd]

Re: Atom Age

 

I understand what you are saying, but superheroes were not the backbone of the industry in the 1950's, nor really were horror comics. It's my understanding that the biggest selling comics of the 1950's were published by DELL... DELL was so powerful sales-wise that they completely dodged the entire Wertham senate debate comics code fiasco. And you can't forget Classics Illustrated.

 

DELL had Tarzan, the Lone Ranger, Disney characters, Woody Woodpecker, Bugs Bunny and other cartoon favorites. They also had other TV, Movie and Western comics and their sales did not dip at all during the decade.

 

And I'd have a hard time saying that the industry was crippled per se, but definitely restricted perhaps from the type of material it could produce. And yes, EC suffered from it. So did Atlas/Marvel (which was a decision by the publisher himself when he saw the inventory of unpublished material Stan had been accumulating). But DC wasn't really affected by it. And the stronger companies were able to turn their misfortunes into strengths by adopting the code. In fact, at no point did anyone say comics should stop doing things a certain way - remember the comics code was created by the PUBLISHERS themselves, not by an outside body. They did it to avoid having someone tell them what to do. The publishers that didn't want the code suffered simply by not having the seal of approval.

 

Re: 1970's comics

 

As Joe Collector points out sales in the 1970's weren't exactly hurting on some titles (the core superhero books from Marvel and DC mainly). What was hurting sales was that the dozens of new titles launched by Marvel and DC (and Atlas) were not being carried by the traditional outlets. If you were a drug store why would you gamble on Son of Satan when you can order more Spider-Man?

 

Conversely, at the same time you had the rise of the specialty shops and the early comics distributors who sold to them who made sure that they carried every title. There was really only one way you could ensure that you got your Son of Satan and that was by buying from Capital City or Seagate, etc. Those distributors initially got their books from the main news media distributors and bought them out of the obscure books that the corner stores weren't really keen on carrying.

 

There are many stories about GL/GA and Conan 1 and other early 70's books being sales failures for the companies but for some reason these same distributors had thousands of copies available. I'm still amazed at the sheer volume of Shadow 1s that I've seen come out of the woodwork in the last couple of years. These guys were hoarding the books.so they could be sold on the secondary market to collectors.

 

So by 1977 DC and Marvel simultaneously came to the conclusion that since their sales were coming less from the mainstream outlets and more from the specialtty shop market they would avoid the news media distributors entirely and ship directly to these shops. Obviously cutting out the middle man meant higher profits and they were able to offer higher discounts.

 

So yeah, sales were declining in the mainstream outlets - but not from lack of interest - sales were still pretty decent - they were declining from lack of interest by the shops themselves - they weren't making enough money off of them and the publishing explosion that benefitted Marvel also benefitted the hundreds of new magazine publications that launched during the 1970's. If you make a $1 from a new magazine and a dime from every comic sold, what would you do? You have to do ten times the work or have ten times the sales to make the same $1.

 

There was also a paper shortage in the late 1970's which led to rising paper costs, which is why DC imploded and Atlas and Charlton collapsed. They did not implode due to lack of sales but from the fact that production costs made them not financially viable to PUBLISH.

 

So I still have a hard time believing that superhero sales sucked enough to warrant the exploration of other genres. If anything the publishers wanted their cake and pie, not realizing that people didn't really want pie. That's why DC went back to making more cake, and since Marvel was still making the best cake around they weren't really affected any of this.

 

1980's comics sales were actually LESS than most 1970's comics. The difference was the way that they were sold meant that the money from sales went directly to the publisher, and they no longer needed to accept as many returns, so that meant more sales.

 

For example 1/2 million copies of Spider-Man published in 1973 might equate to 70% sell-through and 30% returns. But by 1983, Marvel might only be publishing 250,000 copies of Spider-Man but because of the direct market they had 90% sell-through. Less sales than a decade prior (by a few thousand copies) but with less distribution costs meant that Marvel was making more money in 1983 than in 1973 -even with inflatiion and rising production and creative costs.

 

Kev

 

[Kevin Boyd]

Thanks aman, what was interesting about those seventies artists (aside from being young) was that they were also fans of comics in general.

 

By 1970 the silver age fanboys like Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Jim Starlin, et al. were now the guys making the books. So the books got more fannish, more intricate and reliant on continuity than their Silver Age counterparts.

 

And why we saw more revivals of the silver (and gold) characters in the 1970's like X-Men and the JSA.

 

Kev

[Aman619]

There are many stories about GL/GA and Conan 1 and other early 70's books being sales failures for the companies but for some reason these same distributors had thousands of copies available.

 

yeah, I remember reading about this afew years ago by Beerbohm I think. But I cant remember how it worked. If the distributors sold the comics directly to dealer/speculaors, why didnt that still show up as sales to DC? I remember he stated that DC cancelled books from the data they were receiving. Was it an 'honor system?' Distrib just SAID they didnt sell?

 

I had a couple of other comments while reading your reply...but nothing major. Again, great job...

[Aman619]

So where, pray tell are you getting this "70's Slump / 80's Spike" data, and could you please post it for all to see?

 

I looked through the Krause Standard Book Price Guide stats that came out this year at a store today. As you probably know, they collected sales data from the "statement of ownership" published once a year in most titles in most years and now list it with every book they found info for. Krause lists the same figure for an entire year, as that was all the info the 'SofO' revealed, so the figure change abruptly. And changing yearly they are little help for the short-lived title so common at this time

 

A quick look reveals that DC sales (e.g. 'Tec, Flash) dropped steadily from 74/75 through 85/86. Big drops in late 70s (>100,000 copies a year) and slower losses after that. Marvels core titles (Spidey) dropped much less, 20,000 copies or so. X-Men, as some have pointed out, was not an imediate success---it remained constant after the relaunch (#94) and started increasing with the Byrne issues and getting up to 400,000 in the issues in high hundreds. Spidey was still selling more...which was surprising since XMen sales were reportedly being bought by the caseload for resale at shows, I would have thought It was the highest seller by that point.

 

Sales increased through '93 where they fell off a cliff.

 

I was surprised that the 70s slump was apparently so one-sided hurting DC far more than Marvel.

 

[Bronty]

My take on that (and I'm no historian, comic or otherwise) is that all of the top DC artists left (or dropped production) around '74- '75. Quickly think of the top DC artists of the late 1970s. Pretty slim pickin's, huh?

 

Adams was still doing some work but not nearly as much as previously..

Kubert did a few covers but had also curtailed production...

Kirby was past him prime by '76 or so..

Wrightson, Jones, and Kaluta were gone/ largely gone

etc. etc. etc. etc.

 

Sure, it happened at Marvel too but more so at DC, I think.

 

 

[joe_collector]

>>Spidey was still selling more...which was surprising since XMen sales were reportedly being bought by the caseload for resale at shows, I would have thought It was the highest seller by that point.

 

Finally, someone actually takes a look at the numbers! Spidey was the man in the 1970's and 80's, and also keep in mind the boy was pumping out 5 titles at that point.

 

I remember talking to a dealer about the X-men in the mid-80's and he joked that if it wasn't for the Byrne issues being valuable (and inflating the 144-and up comics as well), that the X-Men might not have lasted too long. The high sales were based a lot on dealer speculation and fans picking up one of each of their fave titles and 5-10 of each Uncanny X-Men comic.

[PovertyRow]

Well aman - I tried to express my opinions on the "waves" but no reply frokm you. Am really interested in what you have to say about what I precieve as several waves.

[Aman619]

sorry povertyrow, I read your post, and I can't remember the sequence of events, but I remember quibbling with just a few points, then reading Kevs reply and having more immediate comments to make, expecting to "double reply" again...but got so long-winded I never got around to answering you.

 

So, here goes. I'm glad you picked up on the "Waves' idea.... you even counted a few more! So here are the quibbles: To me. Platinum doesn't get an 'age'. It's sort of like what outer space was before the big bang, it's 'before the beginning'. Comics didn't know what they were, wanted to be, or could become before Superman. Like TV before Milton Berle. Like the internet before _______ (fill-in-the-blank. I think Netscape). Action #1 STARTED comics industry moving, and I thinks it started the first age/wave.

 

Age 2 through 5---ditto! I'm with you on all four.

 

Especially as you describe the 4th (aka Bronze age) as reminiscent of Age 2 (Atom Age) as a retrenchment from greatness. Although, as you see from my later posts, my memories have clouded somewhat as my opinions hardened. I am now open to the idea that what Ive thought of as poor old Bronze Age really had much more significance than I have posted at first. BUT more so from the standpoint that it was an opening up of the field to a new, energetic, raised-on-comics, gung-ho group of talented kids (our age) raring to get their cool ideas published. This really was a Wave of its own, as a 'New Wave' of creators took over from the Golden/Silver age greats. I still think however that what these guys eventually came up with PALES compared to the Silver age, but....

 

As for your Age 6---well, I must admit that I too had a comics blackout from '75 to like '81 or so. I did buy a handful of titles each time I saw them at a newstand, and like Dazzler, they dont exactly stack up as world-beaters: Action, Superman, Spidey, Jonah Hex! and anything that looked interesting or well-drawn. Picked up some early Miller work and a Team-Up with a really well drawn Dr Strange cover with playing cards (issue 70-something)..but I didnt start the weekly treks to the stores till years later..

 

Checking out the sales figures yesterday made realize, (sadly I admit) that my memories of this period have had more to do with my lack of interest at this time than to what was really happening in comics. My opinions expressed heretofore were based on articles, interviews etc that I have read over the years written by those in the know talking about these times. Guess you can't believe EVERYTHING you reada, huh?

[PovertyRow]

Well Aman - I do appreciate your reply but I have to reply tomorrow - have printed it out but there is much to posnder and I really do not want to do an "off the cuff" response. So as they used to say in 1966 "Same Bat Time...Same Bat Channel".

[PovertyRow]

Platinum doesn't get an 'age'. It's sort of like what outer space was before the big bang, it's 'before the beginning'.

 

Hidey ho, Aman! I do have to disagree here. The "Platinum Age" is what, in my opinion, created comic books. I feel if there were not so many of these Sunday Funnies reprints etc.(and the number of entries in Overstreet reveal that there was certainly a viable market) we may well be collecting Sunday Funnies in color for larger bucks and b&w dailys for less.

 

I would not consider Platinum to be BEFORE the Big Bang. I would consider Platinum the physics that came FROM the Big Bang from which the "higher entites" evolved. Even today, using the Big Bang theory, there are "star nurseries" where new stars and, when conditions are right, new solar systems are being created.

 

You have to ask yourself - if the market created by the Platinum books ahd not been created, would Action 1 even be thought of?

 

[Aman619]

Certainly there was static in the universe pre-Action#1, but nothing of consequence individually that called any attention to the medium itself. A lot of the Platinum Age includes all kinds of paper 'things' with printed cartoons and panels on them. I'm not putting them down, or saying they weren't historic predecessors of "comic books".

 

But to me, they're more like the various "missing links" that all came before Lucy.

(Way before she met Desi!) Theyre stepping stones....and suddenly, in 1938, the medium realized its true purpose.

 

From what I understand, there are only a handfull of true comic books before Action #1 that were in the same form, on the same paper, with glossy covers and sold for a dime. Thats a comic book. And the first was, correct me if im wrong, only a few years before Superman appeared (1933?) and it may be an Age...but its not a wave---not even an East Coast shorebreak!

[PovertyRow]

From what I understand, there are only a handfull of true comic books before Action #1 that were in the same form, on the same paper, with glossy covers and sold for a dime. Thats a comic book.

 

Well you actually put the hammer right on the nail (NO Arch - I am NOT referring to our own Hammer - just an expression!).

 

My point is this: the basic concept is not paper, glossy covers and sold for a dime. My concept is that some publishers started realing that panels from Sunday funnies etc would actually SELL. Panels here is the key - not the stock or the price etc. Panels panles panles - must be flannels - in a rich man's world! (OK - maybe ABBA isn't appropriate here! )

 

What I am saying is that the basic CONCEPT of what we now know as a comic book - panelled contiguous storyline - originated in the binding and selling of those Platinum books.

 

Now do you really think that, without those, we would have had an Action 1 in 1938? If you say "No - Action 1 may have come later" - then I submit that Platinum Age is the true and rightful parent of the comic book.

[Aman619]

I thought I clearly agreed that the concept had come first...certainly there were comics before Superman. But not too many 'real comics'. And I added the price as an example of my position that they had no idea where they were going with this idea because the first comic was given away free. Then thay added a price when they saw that "shoot!---kidsll pay money for these collections of used comic strips". Then original comics stories were commissioned (Detective #1?) THEN, shortly after, from the same publisher, they scored big time..and the race was on! And history was made. And, here we are, 60 years later, happily up at 2 in the morning talking about it.

 

We wouldnt be here w/o Action #1...even though obviously something came before it in the comic form. I just cant give any of those examples too much credit on their own.

 

I cant believe you dont agree with the analogies I gave: Lucy vs missing links, or Uncle Miltie for TV???

[Kevin Boyd]

Hey aman, you really love to focus in on super-heroes don't you.

 

I have no problem classifying Platinum as an age unto itself as many comic book genres preceeded the superhero between 1934/5 -1938 (i.e. the western, the detective story, the funny animal comic, etc.).

 

I would harken the popularity of comic strips as the true big bang that gave birth to the repackaging of those strips in comic "book" collections in 1933 in Famous Funnies, which in turn became successful. For many years those books were classified as being part of the Golden Age.

 

In fact Detective 1 is still listed as one of the top 100 golden age books in terms of value.

 

It was only in the last year that Beerbohm et al. decided to shift those early comics as being more in tune with previous Platinum age books. I find the Platinum age books prior to the Famous Funnies release to be more in tune with the different formats used for packaging newspaper strips that continues to this day. (Like the Garfield, Peanuts, Doonsbury, Bloom County, Mutts et al. collections that are released to book stores all of the time in various size books). Heck, they've even gone back further and decided to include Victorian Age materials.

 

The only problem I find with doing that is that they should be including detailed listings of comic strip collections released off-format (i.e. not as comic books) since the Platinum age as well. I see where they are coming from - that those collections eventually evolved into the comic book which then went on it's own path - but I see that more as a separate evolution as that format continues to this day.

 

Here's an analogy. I love analogies.

 

I create a book on motorcycles but I start with the first car.... then I follow the evolution of the automobile until someone creates the first motorcycle then I want to look at motorcycles only from that point on. Still a good book for people that like motorcycles, and it might be interesting to find out what happened before the motorcycle that led to it's eventual creation, but automobiles continued to evolve down a different path.

 

I don't know much about motorcycles really, but I think Famous Funnies was like that first motorcycle - all clunky and car-like (you know, with sidecars and all of that). Action 1 is more like the first streamlined cycle that really got the attention of consumers and is basically still manufactured today. Supeheroes are like Harley-Davidsons - they aren't the only genre in comics (e.g. motorcycles), but they are the kind of that most people associate with the format and have the strongest group of devoted collectors.

 

Kev

 

[PovertyRow]

As regards the analogies re: Lucy and Miltie. Yes, before that television had not coalesced, but it was still television and there WERE some groundbreaking shows

 

I think the major difference between us lies in our perception of the medium. For example, in 1939 the first Major League Baseball game was broadcast. In 1946 the first televised boxing title fight (Louis vs Conn), the first Variety Show (shades of Uncle Miltie) was aired (NBC's Hour Glass), the first Soap Opera (Dumont's Faraway Hills). In 1947 Howdy Doody debuted. In 1948 we had Miltie but also The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1949 we had the first detective show, Martin Kane Private Eye, the first American sit-com (The Goldbergs) and the Emmy's were first broadcast. Lucy didn't appear until 1951.

 

What I am getting at is that there are factors that create an Age (or Wave). As you can see from the abbreviated television outline above, a lot of things were going on before Miltie and Lucy. And all of the things I have cited are still happening today. So was the pre-Miltie/Lucy a fluke, or did these offerings help formulate and solidify the television medium? I vote for the latter.

 

I feel it is the same with comic books. Factors create an Age/Wave. Take the end of World War II. For a few years the comic book fans were deluged with Allies vs Axis. When the war ended well - somehow a bank robber was not quite the same as an enemy spy. Kids could no longer take to the coasts with their binoculars seeking those enemy submarine periscopes. But that which ended the war, the Atom Bomb, ultimately gave birth to the Atom Age. After a few years of relief - THE WAR IS OVER! - paranoia took hold of the general public. Even though HUAC was around since 1937, the end of WWII gave us some "breathing room" and gave a lot more focus to the Un-American Activities. Coincidentally, from about 1950, "Hollywood" began pumping out a lot of monster and outer space movies. As most of the superheroes declined (except that rascally DC), horror and sci-fi began proliferating...along with more crime and romance. All of these genres tended to exploit their subjects, and the public was ready for that exploitation until the code came along.

 

Basically it is influence upon influence that creates a Wave. Just as the major new characters starting around 1970 could not really be considered SuperHEROES, as there were almost no Superheroes from about 1949-1954 (again with the major exception of DC), there were no superheroes (or very few) in what has been called the Platinum Age. But it is like television. We had all of these "firsts" and they began to be added on and expanded. Why? Because of the medium. Because television was now in people's homes and people were watching, just as those pre-1938 books were in peoples homes and people were reading. And the folks watching the the people watching TV, and the folks watching the people reading comics, began to experiment and ultimately understand (and then, in the modern age, began not to understand - what to do?).

 

Phew - this has to be one of my longest posts but it is a thing I am passionate about - and I actually have no interest in collecting "Platinum Age". It just seems, to me, that Plats were directly responsible for where we are now, and should be cited as such.

 

[Aman619]

Let me start with an easy comment as I still try to digest yours and Kevs responses. (And re-reading this post ahead, I think I'm replying to both of you here

 

First--a little misunderstanding of my post, but it doesnt affect your answer: the Lucy I cleverly (so I thought) mentioned was the ApeMan missing link ancestor of humans....not Lucy Ricardo, who, in the context of my comments would have only been 'Batman' to Miltie's 'Superman' anyway. Maybe I was too glib in mentioning Desi in the same thought...

 

As we talk about the origins of comics and the increasingly long history of comics things that are now called Platinum books.... I think we agree that it is a given that Action #1 STARTED the Golden Age, right? It boosted the fledgling "comic book industry" into a money-making, genre-originating, Wave of Super-heroes that was copied and expanded upon furiously for 5 years, and became the model event for the Silver Age when the heroes returned, and the Bronze Age (remember the Bronze Age?--that's how we got started on this discussion), whenever it was. In THIS context of Superhero/comic book ages, Action #1 is the Big Bang event.

 

I think where we are disagreeing is over the importance of the Platinum Age. You seem to be saying that the few 'prototype' comics in the thirties actually constitute an Age of their own. I'm saying they were experiments that led to the Golden Age, nothing more. I'm saying that as Beerbohn keeps adding backwards to his Platinum Age anything that combined words and line drawings back to Daumier and heiroglyphics (not yet anyway--that was McCloud), that these few fairly isolated efforts like Carnival of Comics, New Book of Comics or Famous Funnies, or even Detective #1 fall, to my mind, in some nether as yet unnamed period between comics and the Platinum books, collections, strip reprints and hardbounds Beerbohm is finding. Or WILL or SHOULD be considered a such, and that Platinum, as Kev stated, will get it own timeline through today, with comics as maybe an offshoot standing on its own. (And didnt motorcycles come first as inventors attempted to add a motor to a bicycle and THEN created a coach to sit INSIDE of on 4 wheels?)

 

So before I go on (this does get windy as you said)...do we not agree on this? And I hope it makes sense, I kept doubling back on myself and rewriting and patching.....

 

[Kevin Boyd]

The motorcycle analogy wasn't meant to be fact, I don't know that much about them... I just wanted an example of one item spinning out of another and developing a similar yet separate following of it's own. and I think you got the gist of my point... regardless of what Beerbohm's research indicates, Platinum age books, as interesting as they are, are not Comic Books per se, but prototypes for the format and are more like the strip reprint collections that are still published today.

 

Now between 1933 and 1938 you get a lot of comic book firsts including the format... and some of those firsts is the publishing of all new material in comic book format. Action 1 is really the first SUPERHERO comic but Overstreet accepts that it is the first Golden Age Comic so I'm not going to argue that point.

 

But I really don't have any problem accepting New Fun, Detective 1-26 and other comic books that featured NEW material (i.e. not strip reprints) as being part of the Golden Age.

 

Kev