The Ages of Super Hero Comics

The Super Hero genre is best-known in the medium of American Comic Books. But even there, its fortunes have gone up and down, and this has influenced the perception of superheroes in general. Each age has had its own good and bad qualities, its classics and its trash. And the pendulum swings on...

• Proto-Superhero
• The Golden Age of Comic Books (1938)
• The Interregnum (1945)
  • The Comics Code (1954)
• The Silver Age of Comic Books (1956)

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• The Bronze Age of Comic Books (1970)
• The Dark Age of Comic Books (1986)
  • The Iron Age of Comic Books
  • Post-Crisis (1986)
  • The Great Comics Crash of 1996
• The Modern Age of Comic Books (1996/2000)
  • DC
    • New 52 (2011)
    • DC YOU (2015)
    • DC Rebirth (2016)
    • DC Universe (2018)
  • Marvel:
    • Marvel NOW
    • All-New, All-Different Marvel
    • Marvel Now! (2016)
    • ResurrXion
    • Marvel Legacy

Although a "Platinum Age of Comic Books" is recognized, it was comprised of reprints of newspaper comic strips, not original material. It did pave the way for original comic-form stories, by developing a production-system for such compilations and establishing a market for that publication format.

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