Is this supposed to be readable?: The Silver Age Of Comic Books

Because it's not, at least to me. Anyone got a bigger version or something with less minuscule letters?

I'd rather not use it at all. From the titles listed on the page, I think I'd much rather see the first issue of Fantastic Four used.

Hmm, good points on both sides. FF #1 is more "key issue" while Jimmy Olsen #72 is more "this is what the Silver Age was like," but the problem with that approach is that the weirdness of Weisinger Superman comics was just one aspect of the era (not to mention that a lot of it predates the Silver Age.)

Anyway, bigger scans, along with Showcase #4, the generally-agreed-upon first comic of the Silver Age:

Either the FF or Flash would work for me.

I'd say showcasing the feeling of the Silver Age is important, so if we have to choose one of the above two, the Fantastic Four cover (it's both cracky and iconic, plus a very important moment).

However, lets be realistic: when most people think of the Silver Age, they do think of the Lighter and Softer, childish, fluffy, cracky insanity that was distilled in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. However, if the current image isn't quite good enough, here's another possibility:

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Go with that last one. It has the biggest font and it's more than cracky enough.

I've always thought this image really summed up the Silver Age nicely, and it should be a lot more readable.

"The World of 1000 Olsens" is already on Superpower Silly Putty and probably fits better there.

That's hilarious, but a cover would be better. And is it real?

edited 21st Jun '11 3:40:50 PM by nrjxll

Aren't those just parallel universe versions? The real Jimmy appears to be perfectly normal on that picture.

Actually, every one of those "alternate Olsens" represents something that actually happened to the "real" Jimmy on an adventure.

Maybe the FF or Flash covers combined with one of the Olsen pics, captioned "From groundbreaking to just plain silly."?

Ooh, I found a scans_daily post where someone mentions knowing the context for the anti-gravity shoes panel, but I can't find the issue. Nonpowered humans wearing antigrav shoes to visit Kandor was a big Silver Age thing though.

Anyway, if it's got to be a cover, I think it should be one with a gorilla on it, because gorillas on the the cover no matter what actually happens in the comic is a classic Silver Age trope. How about this?

(BTW, how come the Bronze Age page has four covers as the image? I just noticed that.)

That was decided in a recent IPD. I was against it, by the way.

The Bronze Age image would be okay if it wasn't so horribly compressed. We really need to implement some standards for this.

Why, what's wrong with it?

Doesn't really matter now, since the majority liked it. Anyway, I think choosing one cover that demonstrated a decent amount of the tropes associated with the age and displaying it in decent size would have been a better choice than choosing 4 to demonstrate as many tropes as possible, and having to shrink them that much.

edited 23rd Jun '11 4:41:06 PM by ArtisticPlatypus

Well, I missed the discussion for the Bronze Age one, but...yeah. It's too compressed, and honestly without seeing the discussion, it's not at all obvious what most of those comics are there to represent except for the Dark Phoenix one. Having read the article, okay, the Joker gets to kill people again (but that's not clear from the cover itself) and Green Arrow and Green Lantern dealt with social issues (again, not clear from the cover itself). I'm still not sure what Miracleman's doing there when Miracleman wasn't even published until the Bronze Age was nearly over. Maybe it'd be more obvious if they were more readable, but they're not, so I'm not sure how putting up all four of them is supposed to be an improvement over just putting up Dark Phoenix.

...Sorry for the tangent. But standards for this would indeed be good.

As the creator of the Bronze Age pic, I went with the collage because those titles were specifically mentioned as being prominent in that Age. The Dark Phoenix cover was used because that was a really prominent arc in that time, the Batman pic was because that issue is widely seen as being the point where the Joker went back to being portrayed as a psychopathic killer as opposed to his Silver Age silliness, the GL/GA pic was because the "Speedy on smack" cover was already being used (which prompted the IP discussion in the first place) and Miracleman was an emblematic title of the Age...I wanted to use 2000 AD or Judge Dredd but sizing issues made that difficult.

EDIT: Damn, shoulda read the previous post...well, at any rate, I don't believe that the covers are so compressed that they're unreadable...maybe a caption would help that page, but for right now I'd say it's good as is.

For those reasons, I'd like to do something similar for the Silver and Golden Ages, which is why I suggested using the Flash or FF cover combined with the Jimmy Olsen pic.

edited 12th Sep '11 7:46:04 AM by Willbyr

The dialogue on the GL/GA cover isn't readable, but I don't think it especially needs to be, for this purpose.

I like the "four covers" approach simply because (excepting the Golden Age, where there *is* one undisputed standout representative of the Age) the "Ages" are complex and diverse enough that no single cover can encompass the whole thing. Four can't either, really, but at least "Here are four key issues from the period" can give the reader some feel for the era.

I would prefer at least a two cover image (one marvel one DC.) to be fair to fans of each.

I'd stick with the multiple covers approach as well. FF #1 has been offered as iconic, what else?

Fantastic Four #1

Actually, something we could do is a two-panel pic, one with either Flash, FF, or another iconic "serious" comic and one with one of the Jimmy Olsen covers, and caption it: "The Silver Age: From one extreme to the other."

edited 11th Aug '11 10:21:56 AM by Willbyr

People who recognize those covers probably already know what the age in question was defined by. People who don't recognize them won't understand sh*t. Nobody wins.

Here's my suggestion: Try to find one cover or panel which, no matter how un-iconic it is, is an example of as many of the tropes associated with the era as possible. It will do a much better job of illustrating the trope.

edited 11th Aug '11 10:27:13 AM by ArtisticPlatypus

Bump.

The Jimmy and Flash covers are important to the history of the silver age, but the Flash one doesn't really say anything about the age. I'd prefer the one with the two Flashes running together, if it was one of them, or any of the multiple Jimmy ones.

Or this

I think a lot of these covers are based on a severe misappropriation of the nature of the Silver Age. The Economic, Cultural, and Creative factors that went into it are often misunderstood by the myopic as "The Crazy era with all the weird powers, Camp, and Physical Gods" not many people realize it;'s pretty much the Nexus for most if not all modern Superhero medium; I think something iconic that represents the big two, like a dual page post of The Flash and the Fantastic Four would work best. As Tropers it's not our duty to reinforce what "most" people think, but replace it with what is correct and proper. We're an Encyclopedia, not ED.