What comic started the bronze age?

[Wrightson fan]

I think you have proven we are all wrong with your choice, heck, the age is right there in the title.

[Norrin_Radd]

I choose to believe it was a confluence of events.

 

Conan 1

GA/GL 76

Kirby's move to DC

[tth2]

I choose to believe it was a confluence of events.

 

Conan 1

GA/GL 76

Kirby's move to DC

I've always believed it was when prices changed from 12 cents to 15 cents. A 15 cent book is just not SA, in my opinion.

[awe4one]

Groovy #1...

 

Jim

[awe4one]

The first and only time I've heard the Weird War theory seriously put forward was in an article in Comic Book Marketplace years ago. The writer must have had a pallet of #1s stored away?

 

I still have that CBM...almost spit out my Coke after reading it...

 

Jim

[Rip]

Yep, got to echo what Joe said

[FlyingDonut]

I don't know

 

but we surely have talked about it

 

a few times on these boards

 

over the past few

 

years. I guess this proves that nobody knows!

[the blob]

I used to always think it was the switch from 12 cents to 15 cents too, but then people decided it had to do with the content of the comics, not the cover price. who was i to argue? I used to divide my boxes of comics by 12 cents and earlier and 15 cents and later.

[the blob]

we'll see how the slabbed 9.0 turns out. so far, not yet at the unslabbed VF OPG price.

[Zonker]

I don't know

 

but we surely have talked about it

 

a few times on these boards

 

over the past few

 

years. I guess this proves that nobody knows!

 

 

But Dan, you forgot at least one...

[BradleyX2]

I'll throw in my 2¢ and vote for ASM #121.

 

It marked the end of the "age of innocence" that was the Silver Age.

[joe_collector]

It marked the end of the "age of innocence" that was the Silver Age.

 

 

 

 

 

[bigfiver69]

As much as I Love Weird War Tales, you can't seriously consider #1 to be the start of the bronze age. WWT was created as a way for DC to pillage the art files and repackage weirdly-themed war reprints. Joe Kubert decided to add a few pages of artwork in the front and back to tie the stories together. The title was not expected to last - as I have heard it, DC was quite surprised when it took off. So how could that be consisdered the start of one of the greatest ages in comics?

 

Even though there are good stories and covers in the first 7 issues, it wasn't until issue #8 that the book really took form as a showcase for new stories, drawn primarily by the more talented Filipino artists like DeZuniga, Alcala and the Redondos. It stayed smokin' hot until about issue #50.

 

Can you nail it down to one issue? Why bother. To me, once the DC books hit 15 cents, the Bronze Age was on.

 

Shep

[rob_react]

I don't know

 

but we surely have talked about it

 

a few times on these boards

 

over the past few

 

years. I guess this proves that nobody knows!

 

That's what I'm saying.

[tth2]

I don't know

 

but we surely have talked about it

 

a few times on these boards

 

over the past few

 

years. I guess this proves that nobody knows!

 

That's what I'm saying.

Of course nobody knows, because there was no single cataclysmic event signalling the beginning of the BA, unlike SA (Showcase 4) or GA (Action 1). Hell, even Copper is easier (TMNT #1) because that signified the first market success by a superhero not from the Big 2 (Marvel/DC) since the GA.

 

In a lot of respects, its a totally artificial distinction. There was no definitive change in the stories or art, or characters, or dynamics of the hobby, it happened very gradually. That's why I go with something as arbitrary as 12 cents to 15 cents, because it signifies the change was completely non-substantive. You could also go with 1969 turning into 1970, Kirby leaving Marvel, Conan #1 (the first new genre, sort of), the first comic by Sal Buscema (the archetypal BA artist, for better or worse), etc. etc.

[Zonker]

 

 

 

Nahhh....

[tth2]

Nahhh....

Kind of makes my point, actually. You could start 20 or 30 issues earlier, and go 20-30 issues later, and see no discernible difference that would make one issue SA and every issue thereafter BA.

[Aman619]

except GL76 because it was a radical new approach both in artwork and storyline. It was a totalbreak from the lackluster monthly crappola stories churned out each issue through #75

[Zonker]

 

And of course I've made the same argument about the effect of the first O'Neil/Adams Batman story in Detective #395 (January 1970 cover date).

 

Marvels are admittedly harder to pin down, at least in the case of the pre-existing series. The effects of the brand-new Conan #1 arriving on the scene have been well discussed on the previous threads. But I do think the 1970 first non-Kirby FF and (somewhat later) the first non-Stan Lee Spidey are significant mileposts that things have changed since the Silver Age. Avengers I never could really pin-point in my Silver-to-Bronze system, unless we want to delay it up to the point when Adams arrives to take the Kree/Skrull war up to the next level.

[joe_collector]

I've said this before, but it really depends on how you view the Bronze Age.

 

For me, it's a transition from the "Boy Scouts" of the Silver Age, into the more grim heros of the Bronze. This was an era where there were actually real-life repercussions to the actions of a hero and villain, with death being the most prevalent.

 

In this scenario, Conan is the obvious link, as his death-dealing, take-no-prisoners, loner attitude is mirrored in Bronze heroes from Wolverine to Deathlok to the Punisher. On the Marvel side at least, Conan also helped bring monsters back in vogue, and led to the hero-monsters that killed out of necessity, like Werewolf, Morbius, Dracula, etc. Conan was also a non-super powered hero and this led to Marvel taking more chances with "normal guys who liked to kill" like the Punisher and Bullseye.

 

Even heroes like Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Shang-Chi, who later mellowed down, started off as pretty harsh, uncompromising characters, and if you've never read their early issues, these can be real eye-openers. Seminal issues like ASM 121-122 rose from this attitude, as well as readers demanding more heroes, villains and stories that fit the times.

 

The shift to Bronze was far more than just a price change, or some artist leaving, but an almost total shift in focus away from the "rose-colored glasses" appeal of the SA, into a more "loss of innocence" mode that reflected the 1970's culture perfectly. This type of cultural transition is present in virtually all media from the early 1970's, from music to movies to magazines.

 

There are many popular examples of this phenomenon, but I remember it really hitting home in an issue of Captain America, where Solarr proceeded to burn a couple of cops to a literal crisp, and then took part in this mass murder of some innocent bystanders.

 

While other books were understandably jumping onto the "death-dealing" bandwagon, this is pretty grim stuff for Captain America.