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I think calling the digital distribution age Diamond is pretty funny.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:06
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Phylodox posted:Would this age be defined by its own self-awareness? I feel like comics nowadays recognize the silliness in their own premise and, rather than fighting so hard against it like back in the "Dark Ages" of the 90s, they embrace it. I'm also seeing a lot of slice-of-life, naturalistic kind of comics, like Hawkeye and Superior Foes of Spider-Man where there's as much just hangin' out and examining the personal lives of these larger-than-life characters as there is action.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:12
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Also, wouldn't this era be the post-modern era? It's kind of fitting, what with the re-visiting of the older characters, ideas, stories, etc. but through a more modern, deconstructionist, media-savvy lens. I wouldn't call it cynicism, really, so much as just appreciating that today's media consumers are more sophisticated than they were back in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:17
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Phylodox posted:Would this age be defined by its own self-awareness? I feel like comics nowadays recognize the silliness in their own premise and, rather than fighting so hard against it like back in the "Dark Ages" of the 90s, they embrace it. I'm also seeing a lot of slice-of-life, naturalistic kind of comics, like Hawkeye and Superior Foes of Spider-Man where there's as much just hangin' out and examining the personal lives of these larger-than-life characters as there is action. I think it's less about those comics existing, because I think they have for a long time in indie comics, but more that they are being put out by a major publisher using "big" characters.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:19
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Phylodox posted:Would this age be defined by its own self-awareness? I feel like comics nowadays recognize the silliness in their own premise and, rather than fighting so hard against it like back in the "Dark Ages" of the 90s, they embrace it. I'm also seeing a lot of slice-of-life, naturalistic kind of comics, like Hawkeye and Superior Foes of Spider-Man where there's as much just hangin' out and examining the personal lives of these larger-than-life characters as there is action. I think also the loss (at least on Marvel's part) of the "house style" and the fact that indie comics are getting more and more exposure will be part of the definition of the current age. Maybe also how readers are starting to follow artist and writers instead of characters? Also, the fact that the super-hero movies and TV shows are having such an impact might skew the definition of the age towards not only comic fans but to the public at large.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:23
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I actually really like Diamond Age for Ultimate Spider-Man to New 52, that is clever goddamn wordplay for an age defined by being dominated by writing for the trade and displaced by what will probably end up being the Digital Age.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:39
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Instead of "trade waiting", I'd say the current digital era is becoming defined by "sale waiting".
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Apr 22, 2014 17:49
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"Writing for Trade". This is another way to say "six issue arcs", correct?
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Apr 22, 2014 19:11
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zoux posted:"Writing for Trade". This is another way to say "six issue arcs", correct? Unless you're also doing decompressed storytelling. Then it's six issues per issue of a normal comic book.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:14
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The Endlessly Discussing What Age Of Comics We're In Age
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Apr 22, 2014 22:11
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Before this conversation I had no idea how many ages there even were considered to be. I remember as late as 1990, when I was a kid, and people still thought they were still on the tail end of the Bronze Age at the time in comics. Despite stuff like Watchmen and DKR being older, comics were only really starting to embrace the "gritty" dark stuff in the mainstream around that time, with stuff like Wolverine and Venom being cooler than the less violent good guys, and Image's takeover with things like Spawn or Shadowhawk and whatnot being about the violence over the quality. It's funny how in so many different interest groups, things that were once determined by large gaps of time now have people scramble to use the same measurement tools for smaller and smaller periods. This is hardly limited to comic eras.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:13
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Mr. Maltose posted:Wasn't it Benito Cereno who said that a good mark was when Jack Kirby took over Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen? That's Chris Sims's preferred cut-off point, but it's largely a symbolic one: the Silver Age-y-est character is radically revamped for a new generation. My preferred milestone is the revision of the Comics Code in 1971, as this changes the tenor of superhero comics to include elements of horror and social commentary, two hallmarks of the Bronze Age. But, as CapnAndy says, there are no clear cutoff points. It's not a thing where it's like, "Welp, guess we're in a new age of comics now" and suddenly everything is stylistically different. Even the Golden Age/Silver Age transition isn't that clear-cut: while Showcase #4 is considered the kick-off of the Silver Age, there were new, Silver Age-style stories being told with the Martian Manhunter a few years before Barry Allen Flash showed up, for example. I know this comes up a lot, so one more time, here is a basic breakdown of the ages, keeping in mind that these are just generally agreed upon terms that don't actually mean anything. It's just shorthand jargon. Also, these eras only refer to superhero comics, generally speaking. 1) Golden Age (1938-early 1950s): from the first appearance of Superman, the fledgling genre finds its feet. Stories are often rough, art crude. Once WWII starts, superheroes explode and they're all slapping Japs. Major influences are the pulps. 2) Silver Age (mid-1950s-early 1970s): In the postwar era, superheroes lost their luster and a large percentage of the audience (i.e. GIs overseas), so there is a period between the Golden and Silver Ages where not much is happening with heroes, and most books get cancelled other than Superman and Batman--OR the books transition to genres that were more popular at the time, such as Captain America becoming a horror book, for example. But in the mid-1950s, those popular genres--crime, horror, and so on--get banned by the Comics Code when Congress flips its poo poo. So: some clever editors decide to reintroduce superheroes, but with a sci-fi twist to make them relevant to the Atomic Age. What we think of as Marvel Comics begins in this era, adding the ideas of bickering teammates and distinct character voices to the mix. 3) Bronze Age (early 1970s-mid-1980s): A number of things change: the CCA is revised to allow horror elements back in, Kirby moves to DC, Stan Lee is promoted to publisher and the writing at Marvel gets handed to a bunch of youngbloods, comics develop a social conscience, readership ages. All this contributes to a very 70s kind of vibe, with kung fu and exploitation everywhere. On the flipside, you have the first generation of new writers who grew up with comics coming in, and so nerd-style continuity gets real big. And those are the only three that are firmly agreed on. However, you'll notice each era is about fifteen years, so, although this kind of stuff is generally determined in retrospect by historians etc, we can say we are probably three eras removed from the Bronze Age. While nothing is named, I would suggest: 4) mid-1980s-late 1990s: This is the era of the direct market, creator ownership, black and white boom, speculator boom, comics' attempts at being taken seriously as literature, and comics learning the wrong lessons from those attempts. This is the grim 'n' gritty era. 5) ca. 2000-early 2010s: This is the post-bust, post-Marvel bankruptcy era. Quesada/Jemas mark a whole new approach to comics, bringing writers to the forefront, experimenting with bold new directions. Widescreen storytelling, decompression, bookstore markets, superhero movies. 6) early 2010s-???: This era will almost certainly be notable for the rise of digital distribution, but who knows what else is coming? It's hard to see a paradigm shift when you're in the middle of it. Anyway, like I said: none of this really means anything. But there you go.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:55
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Benito Cereno posted:6) early 2010s-???: This era will almost certainly be notable for the rise of digital distribution, but who knows what else is coming? It's hard to see a paradigm shift when you're in the middle of it. To contrast 5), artists are seeming to be moving back toward parity with writers, at least (Marvel's recent move away from a house style, Image bringing a lot of style ... again). And creators raised on the Internet/webcomics are gaining prominence and jobs with the Big Two.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:00
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What does decompression mean in a comic book context? Nice write up, by the way.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:06
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Mid-80s to late-90s is pretty widely known as the Dark Age now, because of the grim-and-gritty it introduced and all the people learning the wrong lessons from it. And like I said earlier, I quite like Diamond Age for late-90s to early-10s, it's fitting and clever. zoux posted:What does decompression mean in a comic book context?
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Apr 23, 2014 02:07
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Well, I was going to mention the pendulum swinging in favor of creators' rights, increased parity among creative teams, and more diversity in both characters and creators, but I didn't want to jinx it.quote:What does decompression mean in a comic book context? It means more or less what it sounds like--decompressing the stories to give individual moments and images space to breathe rather than cramming in as many actions and captions per page as possible. Some people call this "padding" or "writing for the trade," but it's just a tool like any other: used properly it can be very powerful. Decompression has its origins in manga: consider something like One Piece where 250 page can be dedicated to a single fight scene. In traditional superhero comics in, say, the Bronze Age, that would have to be compressed down to eight pages or so. Make sense? Benito Cereno fucked around with this message at 02:10 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 02:07
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Benito Cereno posted:Well, I was going to mention the pendulum swinging in favor of creators' rights, increased parity among creative teams, and more diversity in both characters and creators, but I didn't want to jinx it. Oh no, what have I done!
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Apr 23, 2014 02:11
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Yes, quite. I prefer the long form, I guess, since I don't know if I've ever read a comic outside of a trade/Unlimited medium. I can see how it would be frustrating for events like that to play out over a year or so. I'm about to be current on all the Avengers and X books, so I guess I'm gonna find out first hand.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:17
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Thanks for giving us the perspective from the inside of the industry, Benito, it's always appreciated. I'm always curious to see what history will say of the present, and where its lines of demarcation lie. Like I was saying earlier, my first period of comic book fanboyism was pretty much riding through the entire Dark Age. It's easy now in hindsight to say it started in the 80's, but outside of the rise of indie comics majorly breaking off from the Big Two, which happened gradually throughout the 80's in far smaller doses prior to the big Image break, it really wasn't obvious that a major paradigm shift had happened until it was already there in the early 90's. Maybe because it was such a gradual change, but one minute it seemed like the Bronze Age was still being clung to, and the next, boom-that was a thing of the past.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:21
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zoux posted:What does decompression mean in a comic book context? Amazing Fantasy 15 contains the origin of Spider-Man and another, complete, story about a dude who gets super powers from his dad being exposed to nuclear radiation. Ultimate Ben Parker doesn't die until the fifth or sixth issue of Ultimate Spider-Man.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:25
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Skwirl posted:Amazing Fantasy 15 contains the origin of Spider-Man and another, complete, story about a dude who gets super powers from his dad being exposed to nuclear radiation. Ultimate Ben Parker doesn't die until the fifth or sixth issue of Ultimate Spider-Man. Who's the other guy? So, was there a notable first decompressed story that played out over a few issues, or is it something that's always been a part of comics that's just used way more now?
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Apr 23, 2014 02:41
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I dunno about the earliest, but The Trial of The Flash was a famously drawn out story for the time. It takes up a whole 592 page Showcase collection by itself. e: That's 1983. I thought it was way earlier since the Showcase collections are usually of 60's comics. Teenage Fansub fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 02:45
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zoux posted:Who's the other guy? I read it decades ago, so I don't remember, but I'm pretty sure he never showed up again. He could fly and had telepathy if I remember correctly. There is probably something before Ultimate Spider-Man that used a more decompressed style, but that's when I first noticed it. I love USA, but there's some ridiculous poo poo in there. The first Green Goblin arc as an issue that is almost entirely made up of old panels with Norman Osborne's crazy inner monolog added.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:49
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While there are certainly older examples, I would say probably Bendis's work on Ultimate Spider-Man helped kick off the trend in the 2000s. Warren Ellis is/was also an early adopter of this style.
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Apr 23, 2014 02:50
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Maybe I misremembering the 90's but there wasn't nearly as many graphic novels/TPB's as there are now, and decompresion has lead to things like trade waiting where there is no point in waiting month after month for an arc to finish when you can read it all at once.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:03
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Well, decompression most certainly predated the 2000s, but mostly for "event" comics, and then the fringe stuff, like say, Sandman and the like. I'd say Vertigo was probably the main starter area of that trend, ushering it in with their lengthy "mature audiences only" stories.
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Apr 23, 2014 03:13
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Choco1980 posted:Well, decompression most certainly predated the 2000s, but mostly for "event" comics, and then the fringe stuff, like say, Sandman and the like. I'd say Vertigo was probably the main starter area of that trend, ushering it in with their lengthy "mature audiences only" stories. I don't think Vertigo titles were particularly decompressed (especially the earlier titles) but they figured that the titles could basically sell in pertuity as collected editions in book stores, and they were pretty much right.
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Apr 23, 2014 04:25
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I always thought the Prismatic Age was less about "silver age through the prism of grim and gritty" or whatever than about sort of the effective end of 'new' characters and endless prismatic variations on the iconic characters. Obviously that's existed more or less forever (at least since the Flash of Two Worlds, or the Squadron Sinister, or Bizarro, or whatever, take your pick) but look at so many of the 'modern era' events/big runs: There are pretty much no 'modern era' superhero events/runs that do not factor in "alternate interpretations of the main hero" into their runs: *More and more alternate timelines/realities (House of M, Flashpoint, Hickman's FF, Hickman's New Avengers, Countdown, Age of Ultron, revisiting Age of Apocalypse, Titans Tomorrow, Futures End) *Retcons to show that some concept you thought was a singular thing are part of a larger thing (Green Lanterns --> Eighty Different Lantern Corps, Iron Fist --> Immortal Weapons, Green Arrow --> Whatever it is Now, Ghost Rider ---> Hundreds of Ghost Riders, Batman ---> The Wayne Legacy vs. The Court of Owls) SHIELD being around since Ancient Egypt, Avengers 1959 and Avengers 1978 and etc., Spider-Man's Spider-Totem stuff) *Lots of storylines about people deliberately trying to recreate a unique character (Red Hulk, Red She-Hulk, Red Leader, the Ikari storyline in Daredevil, the Three Ghosts of Batman, Damian, Dark Avengers, Daken/X-23/Weapon X, Extremis, Superior Spider-Man, Secret Invasion, Evil Deadpool/that recent Posehn/Duggan North Korea storyline, Weapon Plus, Weapon Minus, Justice League 3000, the post-Decimation New Warriors, Uncanny X-Force This isn't even getting into "nudge nudge you see it is an ANALOGUE" stories like Invincible, Squadron Supreme, regular Supreme, Planetary, Irredeemable, Incorruptible, End League, anything Mark Millar or year(decade) of whoredom Warren Ellis has ever written, etc. I also don't really see the point in including non-superhero titles into this 'age' discussion, since previous ages certainly didn't take into account what Carl Barks or Crockett Johnson or R Crumb or Charles Schulz or Los Bros Hernandez or Peter Bagge or Chris Ware or whomever were doing, so why would we take Vertigo into account any more than we'd accept Bone or Concrete or Duplex Planet as an argument against the early 1990s being characterized as obsessed with grim/gritty/variant/speculations? Edge & Christian fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 05:28
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Edge & Christian posted:This isn't even getting into "nudge nudge you see it is an ANALOGUE" stories like Invincible, Squadron Supreme, regular Supreme, Planetary, Irredeemable, Incorruptible, End League, anything Mark Millar has ever written, etc.
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Apr 23, 2014 05:36
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Doctor Spaceman posted:Or Watchmen, for that matter. It's kinda like the subsequent styles were taking lessons from it in two different (the grim gory grittiness of the 90s and the introspection and self-referentiality of the 00s), but that might be overstating its influence. On the other hand, when you do a story with Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099 and Superior Spider-Man and Spider-Man Noir and Spider-Man of Arabia and whatever, everyone knows that Spider-Mans are variations on Spider-Man. When Mark Millar pitches a book as WHAT IF BATMAN WAS A MASS MURDERER people know that Nemesis is supposed to be an evil Batman. When an evil group of four people who one is a rock monster and one is on fire and one is an invisible lady decide to kill a guy with a power lantern and a baby in a rocket after kicking Dracula in the nuts, people know who those are. Watchmen stands on its own as a story about superheroes that you can appreciate with zero knowledge of specific other superhero comics in a way that I feel like Red Lanterns probably does not without knowing what a Green Lantern is, or in a way that Red Son is probably less interesting if you've never heard of Superman.
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Apr 23, 2014 05:44
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Edge & Christian posted:I also don't really see the point in including non-superhero titles into this 'age' discussion, since previous ages certainly didn't take into account what Carl Barks or Crockett Johnson or R Crumb or Charles Schulz or Los Bros Hernandez or Peter Bagge or Chris Ware or whomever were doing, so why would we take Vertigo into account any more than we'd accept Bone or Concrete or Duplex Planet as an argument against the early 1990s being characterized as obsessed with grim/gritty/variant/speculations? It all ties back into the digital thing, the lowering of walls. There's less barriers to entry, there's less gatekeepers telling you what you can't make, and the lines between this genre and that, between indie and the big two, have all gotten very blurry.
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Apr 23, 2014 05:57
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CapnAndy posted:Because there's overlap in a way that there really wasn't before Marvel got desperate enough to hire that indie guy from Jinx to write Spider-Man. Carl Barks was not on Superman, Charles Schulz never wrote X-Men comics; yet these days the guy who writes Iron Man and Hawkeye also does Sex Criminals and the same guy is working on the Avengers and something called God Is Dead at the same time. It all ties back into the digital thing, the lowering of walls. There's less barriers to entry, there's less gatekeepers telling you what you can't make, and the lines between this genre and that, between indie and the big two, have all gotten very blurry. The Golden/Silver/Bronze/whatever ages don't take war or horror or romance or Western or humor comics into account, even though the same guy that did Daredevil did fill-ins for Terry and the Pirates and edited witzend and Weird Science and drew the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster.
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Apr 23, 2014 12:50
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Edge & Christian posted:That's all well and good (except that Marvel and DC have been hiring people out of the indies as long as there have been indies and before it was indies it was fanzines). Wally Wood 
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Apr 23, 2014 12:52
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I personally think it's really weird to lump Watchmen and Spawn in the same age of comics just because they're both "Dark". I never really bought the idea that making mature superhero comics somehow opened a pandora's box that had Identity Crisis and Bloodshot in it. I think the Image guys, the speculator market, and a lot of other cultural factors forged the Xtreme 90s all on their own. Obviously it's all links in the same big, complicated chain, but I just don't buy that you can point to Alan Moore's work or Kraven's Last Hunt and say that's why DC has Joker rip his face off today or whatever. Lurdiak fucked around with this message at 14:00 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 13:57
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I thought it was pretty well accepted that Watchmen changed the game as far as what comic book creators could do, but also as evinced by my questions in this thread I am a raw comics dilettante who may just be laboring under false information I read in a buzzfeed article.
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Apr 23, 2014 15:00
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zoux posted:I thought it was pretty well accepted that Watchmen changed the game as far as what comic book creators could do, but also as evinced by my questions in this thread I am a raw comics dilettante who may just be laboring under false information I read in a buzzfeed article. I terms of publishing, it follows in the footsteps of Camelot 3000 (which I haven't read), which lead to Frank Miller's Ronin, which lead to DKR and Watchmen.
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Apr 23, 2014 16:05
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Dark age would be a lot better if it were based off Watchmen rather than Miller's work, but honestly, it's mostly based off Miller.
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Apr 23, 2014 16:16
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More of a comics related question than a comics question, but wasn't there a blog or podcast that went through the X-Men books Tom vs JLA style? I always meant to check it out and now I have a bit more free time coming up, but I don't remember the name.
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Apr 23, 2014 18:01
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HitTheTargets posted:More of a comics related question than a comics question, but wasn't there a blog or podcast that went through the X-Men books Tom vs JLA style? I always meant to check it out and now I have a bit more free time coming up, but I don't remember the name. Uncanny Xcast?
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Apr 23, 2014 19:27
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So, where are the Runaways now? I know Nico and Chase are in Avengers Arena/Underground, but what about everyone else?
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Apr 24, 2014 13:28
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