Silver Age of Comic Books

The Silver Age of Comic Books was a period of artistic advancement and commercial success in mainstream American comic books, predominantly in the superhero genre, that lasted roughly from 1954 to the late 1960's/early 1970s.

It was preceded by the Golden Age of Comic Books and was one of the major commercial peaks of the comics industry, along with the collectors boom of the 1990's.

During the Silver Age, the character make-up of superheroes evolved. Writers injected science fiction concepts into the origins and adventures of superheroes. More importantly, superheroes became more human and troubled, and since the Silver Age, character development and personal conflict have been almost as important to the image of a superhero as superpowers and epic adventures.

Origin of the term
Comics historian and  movie producer  Michael Uslan traced the origin of the term to the letters column of Justice League of America #42 (Feb. 1966), which went on sale December 9,  1965. Letter-writer Scott Taylor of Westport, Connecticut wrote, "If you guys keep bringing back the heroes from the [1930s-1940s] Golden Age, people 20 years from now will be calling this decade the Silver Sixties!" The natural hierarchy of gold-silver-bronze, as in Olympic medals, also took hold, and as Uslan writes, "Fans immediately glommed onto this, refining it more directly into a Silver Age version of the Golden Age. Very soon, it was in our vernacular, replacing such expressions as . . . 'Second Heroic Age of Comics' or 'The Modern Age' of comics. It wasn't long before dealers were . . . specifying it was a Golden Age comic for sale or a Silver Age comic for sale".

Events leading to the Silver Age
Following World War II, superheroes faced a steady decline in popularity. Their development was complicated by the rise of gritty horror and crime comic books, as well as by national parental concerns ignited by Dr. Fredric Wertham's influential book Seduction of the Innocent, and fanned by U.S. Senate hearings on  juvenile delinquency. In response, the comic book industry implemented the Comics Code, which forbade gore, excessive violence, sexual suggestiveness, and disrespect of authorities, among other tenets. This made certain genres more difficult to publish, though comic books, like the similarly constrained media of film and  television, of necessity, developed new means of storytelling and new types of stories.

Beginning
The Silver Age began in 1956 when various superheroes from the 1940s were reimagined. Only their names remained the same; their costumes, locales, and identities were changed. Science fiction took the place of magic. The original Green Lantern was engineer Alan Scott. His ring was powered by a magical lantern. His replacement Hal Jordan's ring was powered by an alien power source. The inspiration for this change came from DC editor Julius Schwartz, a lifelong science fiction fan.

The beginning of the Silver Age began with DC Comics' Showcase #4 (Oct. 1956), which introduced the modern version of the superhero the Flash. According to Will Jacobs, three super heroes still had their own titles in 1956: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Superman was available in "great quantity, but little quality." Batman was doing better, but his comics were "lackluster" in comparison to his "atmospheric adventures" of the 1940's. Wonder Woman, having lost her original writer and artist, was no longer "idiosyncratic" or "interesting." Then Showcase #4 arrived on the newsstands, "begging to be bought." The cover featured an undulating strip of film and the Flash running so fast he came out of the film and at the reader.

Under editor Julius Schwartz, super-speedster the Flash took only his power and his superhero name from the company's 1940s star, and became the first of many old characters DC revised as streamlined,  science fiction-influenced models. Other DC heroes published continuously from from the 1930s and 1940s, such as Superman and Batman, were retconned as living in an  alternate universe called  Earth-Two, with the present-day versions considered as living in the modern-day mainstream continuity,  Earth-One.

Marvel and DC
DC added to the momentum by introducing the Justice League of America, an all-star group consisting of its most popular characters, the success of which prompted rival Marvel Comics to introduce its own superhero team, the Fantastic Four. Apocryphal legend has it that in 1961, Timely and Atlas publisher Martin Goodman was playing golf with either  Jack Liebowitz or  Irwin Donenfeld of rival DC Comics, then known as National Periodical Publications,  who bragged about DC's success with the Justice League (which had debuted in The Brave and the Bold #28 [Feb. 1960] before going on to its own title). Film producer and comics historian Michael Uslan later debunked some specifics, while supporting the story's framework:


 * "Irwin said he never played golf with Goodman, so the story is untrue. I heard this story more than a couple of times while sitting in the lunchroom at DC's 909 Third Avenue and 75 Rockefeller Plaza office as Sol Harrison and [production chief]  Jack Adler were schmoozing with some of us ... who worked for DC during our college summers.... [T]he way I heard the story from Sol was that Goodman was playing with one of the heads of Independent News, not DC Comics (though DC owned Independent News). ... As the distributor of DC Comics, this man certainly knew all the sales figures and was in the best position to tell this tidbit to Goodman. ... Of course, Goodman would want to be playing golf with this fellow and be in his good graces. ... Sol worked closely with Independent News' top management over the decades and would have gotten this story straight from the horse's mouth."

Whatever the specifics,, Goodman, a publishing trend-follower aware of the JLA's strong sales, confirmably directed his comics editor, Stan Lee, to create a comic-book series about a team of superheroes. Lee recalled in 1974 that, "Martin mentioned that he had noticed one of the titles published by National Comics seemed to be selling better than most. It was a book called The [sic] Justice League of America and it was composed of a team of superheroes. ... ' If the Justice League is selling ', spoke he, ' why don't we put out a comic book that features a team of superheroes?'"

This led to the era's rise of Marvel under the guidance of writer-editor  Stan Lee and such artists/co-writers as  Jack Kirby and  Steve Ditko. Marvel introduced more sophisticated characterization and dynamic plotting into superhero comics, and began aiming at teen and college-age readers in addition to the children's market. Based on the success of The Fantastic Four, Lee and his artists created 11 new series in the next two-and-a-half years, with Spider-Man and, after a slow start with a canceled series, the Hulk among the most popular new characters. Other significant and enduring Marvel heroes introduced during the Silver Age include Iron Man, Thor, Daredevil, the X-Men, and Marvel's own all-star group, the Avengers. After an initial period of hesitance, DC began to adopt some of Marvel's creative approaches.

Comics historian Peter Sanderson wrote that in the 1960s,


 * "DC was the equivalent of the big Hollywood studios: After the brilliance of DC's reinvention of the superhero.... in the late 1950s and early 1960s, it had run into a creative drought by the decade's end. There was a new audience for comics now, and it wasn't just the little kids that traditionally had read the books. The Marvel of the 1960s was in its own way the counterpart of the  French New Wave.... Marvel was pioneering new methods of comics storytelling and characterization, addressing more serious themes, and in the process keeping and attracting readers in their teens and beyond. Moreover, among this new generation of readers were people who wanted to write or draw comics themselves, within the new style that Marvel had pioneered, and push the creative envelope still further."

For example, as comics historian Craig Schutt observed, DC heroes were straightforward in their support of each other, and quickly banded together to defeat an enemy. Marvel's heroes, in contrast, trusted each other less, and would frequently fight each other before a misunderstanding was resolved and they joined together against a common foe. DC's approach detailed the differences between heroes without violence, Marvel's, said Schutt, "addressed the age-old, little-kid question of which hero would win in a fight".

Other publishers
The resurgence of superheroes proved so influential that publishing houses not known for such characters — including Archie Comics, Charlton Comics and Dell Comics — attempted their own superheroes, but met with limited critical and popular success. Tower Comics was an exception with the well-received if short-lived THUNDER Agents series by Wally Wood.

The period hit its commercial peak from 1966 to 1968 with the popularity of the ABC network's campy Batman TV series, which both heightened interest in comics and damaged their public image as a legitimate artistic medium &mdash; this despite the Batman comic books themselves having taken a more serious tone in 1964 with the introduction of the "New Look Batman".

Underground comics got their start during the 1960s portion of the Silver Age. However, because the artistic content, goals and marketing of these comic books were so different from the mainstream companies, it is generally considered a separate movement in the medium.

End of the Silver Age
Multiple endpoints have been suggested for the Silver Age. According to Will Jacobs, the Silver Age ended when the man who had started it, Julius Schwartz, handed over Green Lantern to Denny O'Neil and  Neal Adams in response to reduced sales. Another is the publication of the last 12 cent comics in 1969.

Subsequent eras
After a brief period dominated by horror and fantasy titles, a third period of superheroes (commonly referred to as the Bronze Age) began, with a new wave of creators including writers Steve Englehart,  Mike Friedrich,  Steve Gerber,  Don McGregor,  Doug Moench, and  Len Wein, and artists such as  Rich Buckler,  Marshall Rogers, P. Craig Russell, and  Bernie Wrightson.

The period after that is variously referred to as the Modern Age of Comic Books, the Dark Age of Comic Books (referring to both a decline in the industry and the popularity of grim titles such as Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and  Dave Gibbons' Watchmen), the Iron Age of Comic Books, or the Diamond Age of Comic Books (suggested by  Scott McCloud, with the different facets signifying the current diversity in the medium).

"Neo-silver", a term many attribute to IGN columnist  Peter Sanderson, has been used in the 2000s to describe comics such as  Kurt Busiek's Astro City that attempt to return to the lighter, more noble aspects of Silver Age comics while retaining the maturity and complexity of later ages.

Stylistic conventions
Certain styles and conventions were generally common to titles during the Silver Age.

It was common for the first page (also called the "splash page") to serve as a second cover, giving a tease to what was to come later in the issue. Most stories actually started on page two.

Comic book covers
DC covers of the Silver Age are notable for the abundance of speech balloons. Marvel, after its first year or so, generally opted for an action scene or a dramatic tableau, frequently with such symbolic elements as floating heads watching and reacting, and only returned to speech balloons occasionally toward the end of the era — creating controversy among Marvelites at the time. Speech balloons eventually fell out of favor and are rarely seen on covers today, except as homage or  parody.

Noted Silver Age talents
Notable artists of the Silver Age include Jack Kirby,  Steve Ditko, and  Gene Colan. Additionally, new artists, many of whom grew up with comics as well as being formally trained, began to expand the mainstream medium into new art styles. Major examples include Neal Adams who introduced naturalism with his illustrative style, and  Jim Steranko who introduced  op art, touches of  Surrealism, and  graphic design elements.

According to R.C. Baker of the Village Voice, Neal Adams is one of the country's greatest draftsmen, and is best know for returning Batman to his somber roots after the campy success of the Batman television show. His realistic depictions of anatomy, faces, and gestures changed comics' style in a way that is still seen in modern graphic novels.

One of Marvel's strongest creative forces in the late 1960's was Jim Steranko; his art owing a large debt to  Salvador Dalí. He started by inking and penciling the details of Kirby's artwork on Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. but by Strange Tales #155, Stan Lee put him in charge of both writing and drawing Fury's adventures. He exaggerated the James Bond-style spy stories, introducing the Vortex Beam (which lifts objects), the aphonic bomb (which explodes silently), a miniature Electronic Absorber (which protected Fury from electricity), and the Q-Ray machine (a molecular disintegrator) all in his first 11 page story.

Arlen Schumer, author of "The Silver Age of Comic Book Art" described Carmine Infantino's Flash as the embodiment of the design of the era, "as sleek and streamlined as the fins Detroit was sporting on all its models."

During this period in mainstream companies, artists, especially at Marvel, began to play an increasingly important role as story co-plotters.

Top 20 Silver Age comics
According to "The Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide #38" by Robert Oversteet, the following twenty comics were the most sought after by collectors.