Is this the second 90's Dark Age Era or did the first one never truly die?

Is this the second 90's Dark Age Era or did the first one never truly die?

Personally I'd say the turn of the Millennium period constitutes its own age, tending towards reconstructive works and creating a bunch of new classics (probably call it the Renaissance), but around Civil War we enter the current era where events and a focus on publicity are all the rage. I wouldnt call it a second dark age as there isnt enough edge/darkness (far more phoney souless optimism if anything), and quality doesnt really factor in as there still a ton of great stuff coming from the 90's.

Though the comics Age system is inadequate in a lot of ways.

There was a brief renaissance in the early to mid '00s where long-form, decompressed stories were told to really dive deep into characters and explore interpersonal drama. Ultimate Spider-Man #45 could not exist as it is in any other era of comics.

But then the money grubbing happened when the industry realized they could make creators stretch out their one/two issue storylines into five parters and then sell them for mass amounts of cash in bookstores/Amazon and dodge the Direct Market.

>Though the comics Age system is inadequate in a lot of ways.
well it's impossible to really classify an age until at least a decade or two later

>probably call it the Renaissance
thats probably a great way to classify it.

If I had to classify the current 'era" it would be as an eras of gimmicks.

everything is part of an event, (making events themselves no longer special) or trying to synergize with movies, or just trying to experiment with gimmicks.

that said, where traditionally eras defined the entire industry, so far, marvel and DC have gone down such different paths that they only barely classify as the same era, connected only by their focus on gimmicks, though DC's latest gimmick is an attempt at reforming their comics, which, depending on how rebirth pans out in the long run, could be itself considered a mini-era of reform.

I would definitely tie the current era with the films and the shorter "runs" (especially from Marvel) that are more akin to televisions seasons than traditional comic book volumes. I think, more than the events (which crossovers, events, and tie-ins have been a thing since the '80s), that's what defines this era apart from everything else.

>Though the comics Age system is inadequate in a lot of ways.
This. A lot of it just doesn't make sense. Golden age, Silver Age have solid beginnings and endings you can point to. Bronze age has a solid beginning in the form of the slackening of the CCA. But making the end of the Bronze age COIE is arbitrary, it has no bearing on the industry as a whole, the only meaning it has is to DC. I would argue the bronze age continues through the end of the eighties to the beginning of the speculator boom. At which point we enter the modern age.

art reflects life I guess. between the 40's and the 90's there's a very specific marked beginning and end to each decade and its culture and trends, but post 2005 or so, everything sort of muddles together.

Both the Dark ages and 2000s were completely opposite for DC and Marvel, so I don't why not the Bronze age? DKR, Watchmen, Swamp Thing and Sandman had more to do with the end of Bronze age than COIE. Swamp Thing was the first direct market comic iirc.

Both the Dark ages and 2000s were completely opposite for DC and Marvel, so I don't why not the Bronze age? DKR, Watchmen, Swamp Thing and Sandman had more to do with the end of Bronze age than COIE. Swamp Thing was the first direct market comic iirc.

Something that's typically brought up is super-heroes post 9/11. I think everything after 2001 could be factored into a darker age. After all, we got Civil War, Disassembled, Identity Crisis, and all the other shit that's being running up till now.

Crisis only marked a definite end point for the Bronze Age in universe on a narrative level, the real thing that marked the beginning of the Dark Age was Watchmen and DKR.

Millar is a Neocon, how many still din:t figured this out? Most Neocons are Liberals who are scared of brown people and Russians

It only seems muddled now because we're too close to it. You're literally talking about the past 10-15 years. Give it another couple of decades and hindsight will give us some clear cultural demarcations separating the decades. Of course, marking cultural shifts by the decade is in itself a pretty artificial shorthand for benchmarking cultural history. Culture changes on a continuum not by the decade, but we always like to look back at the decades as codified little chunks of history. The 2000s-2010s will be no different.

There was a brief period of recontructionism in the late 90s with Supreme, Morrison's JLA, Kingdom Come and Busiek Avengers but in the early 00s went back to grim and gritty and post 9/11 superheroes. It's really hard to draw a line and nailing down the characteristics of the era from the late 90s to the current day.

Those works were irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. I think the beginning of the new era was the post 9/11 era/early 2000s with the rise of digital coloring, decompressed storytelling and constant events.

If you're talking about current moment in comics, I'd brand it as extreme sexual puritanism crossed (get it?) with extreme graphical violence. That and worst traits of Whedonism, whose writing is far more influential than Moore's and for a good reason - instead of actually writing a character you can drown it in bunch of pop culture mores. Basically Whedon and China Mieville is what constitutes modern comics writing (fortunately the other Marxist isn't involved...yet). Hell, it's going to get even darker as future writers will be recruited straight from twitter. In fact think of tweets as dialogue prompts in future comics. Preachiness, censorship, faux morality and cultural marxism are going to eclipse even Comics Code era.

You are now aware that the turn of the millennium happened over a decade and a half ago.

Well , the medium got past that, and I reckon it'll do so again if it survives that long.

This also provides an example of how comic ages often have exceptions, as All Star Superman came out right at the height of this attitude towards superheroes, but is perhaps one of the most 'Renaissance' works out there.

The 90s was better than now

I think what it boils down to is freedom. Look at the Golden Age. Creators were free to go ape and write and draw whatever they wanted. All they had to worry about was copyright infringement, but plenty of super-heroes still emerged and made the Golden Age what it was. Then the CCA stifled and censored comics in the Silver Age, and yet during that time, and leading into the Bronze Age, creators like John Byrne, Jim Starlin, and all these other liberal college-educated artists came onto the scene. Bronze Age was the result of almost total freedom and some creators got a bit ahead of themselves, and you end up with guys like Jim Shooter having to rain everybody back in. Then of course just look at comics today. Heavy editorial influence during the 00's produced repetitive stories that sold and now there are creators who don't care about having freedom to write what they want and are content to write the same tripe over and over. Originality is the best thing for a comic to have nowadays because people are like, "Wow, this is actually refreshing!". It is a bit topsy turvy over the last 17 years though.

And the increase in Indie Comics has lead to a state of affairs where theres both total freedom and barely any depending on the work in question

This is the dark age

And those Indie Comics, in a lot of cases, far surpass the major publishing companies in quality. Heck, go to any small Con, the sheer number of Indie creators and people who write and draw web-comics is insane. The level of variety has never been higher, but the overall perceived quality is in a weird state.

>Heavy editorial influence during the 00's produced repetitive stories that sold and now there are creators who don't care about having freedom to write what they want and are content to write the same tripe over and over


> By the end of the nineties, I felt weary. My approach to JLA, which I’d intended to be progressive, had instigated a wave of nostalgic “Dad’s comics”
- Morrison

>the overall perceived quality is in a weird state

There is a need for editors, but the controlling nature of the Big 2 seems to have given the title a bad perception. An editor is the first person between an artist and their audience, they help the artist make sure their vision is presented in a clear manner than someone other than themselves can see.

Editors have bad raps in general.

Y'see the genuine creativity that came out of the Bronze Age got turned into flavor of the week shit. Then that flavor of the week shit turned into massive events that were basically flavor of the year shit.

A good editor will always elevate a comic book People who get mad at Marvel over editors complain about a lack of editorial over the books, as well as editors themselves not being competent. I think, given Marvel's prominent place in the market, that's where a lot of the bad impressions of editors have come from of late. Because a lot of them are social media obsessed and are constantly tweeting out to the audience and interacting with the audience. It's too interactive. Look at the whole Milkshake thing. Editors responded to bullshit criticism en masse as if it was some serious issue. If anything, it just furthered the lack of competence people associate with Marvel editorial.