Dark Age/Modern Age Controversy: The Dark Age Of Comic Books

In my ventures around the Netscape I've noticed that there is a bit of academic controversy between the various sites who take it upon themselves to operate on these facets. There seems to be a significant grey area round just what the Dark and Modern ages are and when they started/ended.

For example, this site lists a Dark Age as having existed after the Bronze Age and then leading into the current Modern Age.

Wikipedia on the other hand has the Modern age flowing directly after the Bronze Age with a link to out Dark Age page as an alternate name.

From this I've determined that there are three possible scenarios.

• The Dark Age was a period of time with-in the Modern Age and late Bronze Age
• The Dark Age ended sometime around 2000 and was fowls by the Modern Age
• The Dark Age never ended and we are currently within it. (Or alternatively, there is no Dark Age and the modern age started back in the 80s)

I personally, am of the first camp, as it would allow both the Dark and Modern age pages to continue to exist without significant modification (such as how our Post-Crisis is a sub-period within a period)

I've listed some notable sources and there stances on this controversy

Wikipedia: Option 3 Comics Alliance: 3 Film geeks’ Mark Voger: 2 TV tropes (currently):2 Marvel comics: 3 My own proposal: 1

My suggestion is to add some lines to the Dark Age, listing it as a rough trend that existed during the Modern Age (the “Palleosider Age” to keep the History analogy). That was fazed into the current Modern Age, the dawn of Deconstruction and the gradual shift into reconstruction

Anything past the Bronze Age gets pretty messy and contentious among comics fans, and even those ones get tricky. "Endpoints" in particular are unsurprisingly hard to pin down, as "ages" might start with a bang, but don't end with one, more likely to just gradually fizzle out until the bang that starts the next age.

For instance, it's now apparently common to shift the endpoint of the Bronze Age well into the '80s... but during the '80s, we regarded the Bronze Age as something that had already come and gone, with Bronze Age being defined roughly as The '70s. That's still my own personal take — to me, the Bronze Age is roughly defined as "the ascent of the Young Turks" - when the comics-fans-turned-pro started making themselves known and even taking over from the old guys who broke in during the Golden Age. I wouldn't lump things like, e.g., Alan Moore's Swamp Thing in with "Bronze Age," because to me he's from a different movement. I'd probably classify the "next" age as starting with the big influx of British talent into American comics.

But that's the problem - ask a dozen comics fans about this sort of thing and you'll probably get two dozen answers.

I'd personally say the Dark Age is something like "period within the Modern Age".

edited 18th Apr '11 9:17:38 PM by suedenim

That's why, I suggested we fold the Dark Age into the Modern Age.

The less ages the better, more inclusiveness, betters an encyclopedia of any format.

Yeah, though even if it's not an "age" per se, the Dark Age does describe something relevant and noteworthy - all the odd stuff about "the Nineties" in comics.

That's why I suggested "The Dark Period" or something like that.

But the consensus on the name for the phenomenon is to call it the Dark Age. The only debate is on when it started and when it ended. Renaming it will just confuse people for no reason.

Yeah, the Dark Age is a pre-established term in comics history. We can't just change it.

I don't think merging the Dark Age to Modern Age is a good thing, as the previous post explained. It is actually known to comic book fans - it's just the date.

But you misunderstand, I didn't mean to change it's name, "Dark Period" was just an anology.

I meant I redefintion of what the "Dark Age" actualy was/is.

It could be as simple as tacking on a "within the Modern Age" sticker, but there is an air of acedemic uncertainty, I went with the one that seemed to have the most, unique consensus that would result in a minimal disturbance.

There's not a consensus that it's within the modern age, as it's an age that most people are pretty sure is over, and the modern age is more or less what's happening now. Really, I don't think anything needs to be changed. So the dates are fuzzy. Not everything has a clear cut start and stop date, nor does it need one.

I gave several examples of various reputable sources. Most of them say that the Modern and Dark ages were/are one age, but to keep consistency I interpreted that to mean that the Dark Age was an earlier part of the modern age.

Note how on the page, Post Crisis is listed under the Dark Age, what I’m proposing is something like this:

• The Golden Age Of Comic Books
• The Interregnum
  • Comics Code
• The Silver Age Of Comic Books
• The Bronze Age Of Comic Books
• The Modern Age Of Comic Books
  • The Dark Age Of Comic Books
  • Post Crisis
  • The Great Comics Crash Of 1996

Because most of the sources I've listed either recognize the Dark Age as independent, or deny its existence as a separate entity all together) with the later outnumbering the former) I was compromising in a fashion that would result in minimal alterations.

edited 19th Apr '11 6:50:15 PM by JusticeMan

Personally, I'm not sure if we should list "Modern Age" at all. Way I see it, an age is defined almost as much by what comes after it as what comes before it, so defining the boundaries of the age you're currently in is often just speculation. For example, what we see as the defining elements of The '50s would probably be very different if we didn't have The '60s to contrast them with. Similarly, until the next age of comic books begins, we can't really be sure what aspects of our current age the next generation of comic book fans will view as most significant. And if we don't know what defines the Modern Age of comic books, then how can we determine a proper starting date?

The Modern Age does have some use though as an index for contemporary works. The issue is, unlike the Dark Age it's not really over, and unlike Post-Crisis, it's not defined by a discrete event. It's just kind of a nebulous term which is why it's hard to separate it from the Dark Age. It's not that the Dark Age isn't defined. It's that the modern age isn't.

I thought the Dark Age ended in 2000 when Ultimate Spider-Man started.

But until the Modern Age is defined, we can't say when it began, meaning we can't really say when the Dark Age ended.

No, we can say the Dark Age ended because the things that defined the Dark Age are no longer present in Modern Books. The same as we can say the Bronze Age is over. The fact that we can't pin down the present does not stop us from classifying the past.

Below is a link to a mock-up of a rouge draft of my proposal, essentially the elements that are more akin to the Modern Age, (the rise of Crisis Crossovers and Indie Publishers) would be folded into the Modern Age of comics page; now that they would not be restricted to exist in the dark Age.

I mean an Age is a very delineated timeline, noted by the state of the Comics Economy, the pool of artists working, and several common elements that exist through the industry; under these parameters the Modern Age stretches back to the 1980s, and the Dark age is really just a loose trend that existed within the late Bronze and Early Modern Age.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=i8uor2qhs54fh07tkxkxpktr&page=105#2613

But the things that define the Modern Age, Crisis Crossovers on the rise, a steady cycle of Deconstruction and Reconstruction, Writing for the Trade, more realistic heroes, a greater integration with non-comics medium, Indie Comic Publishers, the competition with Manga, all date to the 1980s, which would mean that the Modern age would have to be concurrent with our current definition of the Dark Age, which is why i state it couldn’t be and age (since ages don’t overlap) but a rough art and writing style and general thought pattern that existed in various forms of popularity in the Bronze ages before the seminal works of Moore and Miller pushed it to a peak in the early modern age, before having a falling out; a style of writing doesn’t actually equal an Age. Otherwise we'd be breaking things down into the Pulp era, the Cowboy Era, the Sci-Fi Era etc. I'm also going with the academic consensus here, and as I showed I do have support for my viewpoint.

edited 20th Apr '11 9:24:16 AM by JusticeMan

This whole thing is nebulous as best, and saying that, I see no reason to change the way things are now.

What I’m saying is that the nebulosity here is unnecessary, as the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, Marvel itself and other sources hold that 1985-present was a single continuum; I'm just trying to define that continuum in a way that causes minimal changes.

edited 20th Apr '11 9:30:56 AM by JusticeMan

And there's just as many sources that say the exact opposite, so there's no real point in changing things around just yet. Especially since a lot of the Dark Age deniers are trying to just sweep that whole era under the rug because it led in part to the comics crash.

I have 90's comics. I have modern comics. They are two completely different beasts. The reason that people refer to the modern age as all one era is because they want to pretend that the dark age never existed. It's a recent move in the past five years because they're hoping no one has a memory that long.

edited 20th Apr '11 10:16:11 AM by shimaspawn

I'd do the opposite. I'd say that the Modern Age is one era because the Dark Age is still going on.

It's true that there are now big name comics that aren't dark, but that's been going on for a while—yeah, we have Ultimate Spider-Man now, but we had the 1980's Justice League International and Valiant Comics back then.

I sited sources, I'd be happy to see yours.

Those same sources five years ago. I've got the mags in my room. I lack a scanner.

I think it doesn't need to cite when you have Extreme! stuff existing in the 90's as well as the '90s Anti-Hero.

Huh?

the presence of a style doesn't not an age make.

The silver age was well known for sci-fi elements; but that doesn't mean that there was a "sci-fi" age in comics that lasted from Superman and Batman's births in the 30s and 40s to the Magic and Badassnormal Boom of the 70s. The silver age was a combination of the Comics Code, the revitalization of the superhero genre, D Cs mass reboots(Earth-1 Earth-2) the rise of Stan and Jack, and the boom in popularity within the child and pop culture markets. An age is a solid continuum of economic, social and administrative unity that lasts for an extended period, the current continuum stretches back to the 80s (The boom of Comics in the teen and young adult sector, the rise of Indie Publishers, Morrison; Moore; Miller; Stravinsky;Johns; and Waid, the rise of thirds parties like Dark Horse and Oni, the creation of the Crisis Crossover and the current status of Dc Continuitites.)

Dark Age tendencies, such as Deconstruction, Grimdark and the like date back to the Bronze Age and the art style could be really traced to Liefeld; the popularity of a writing style within some circles doesn't define an age, especially since the Grim Dark nature isn't nearly as promagulated as some believe. Sure there WAS a boom(especially in early Image) but not enough to define an era; really I think it work best as a reworking into a Genre (Dark Heroics?) And then have a line showing it's popularity rather than having it as a separate age.