 Wolverine, a member of the X-Men, a popular franchise in the Modern Age, and an example of an anti-hero, a popular character type of the Modern Age The Modern Age of Comic Books is an informal name for the period of American comic books generally considered to last from the mid-1970s until present day.
The Modern Age is the most widely used name for the period following the Silver Age of Comic Books. Other terms include the Dark Age of Comic Books (due to the popularity and artistic influence of grim titles such as The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen), and the Diamond Age of Comic Books (suggested by Scott McCloud, because of the new diversity found in the medium). The period is sometimes referred to as the Bronze Age of Comic Books (by analogy with Bronze Age), although this term is usually used more specifically in reference to comics published in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Important events
Because the time period encompassing the Modern Age is not well defined, it is difficult to write a comprehensive history. In rough chronological order by the beginning of the trend, here are some important developments that occurred during the Modern Age:
The revival of the X-Men
In Giant-Sized X-Man #1 (1975), Marvel Comics introduced a new team of X-Men. Under writer Chris Claremont, this version of the team became one of the most successful properties of the 1980s and spawned several spin-offs. By the early 1990s, the X-Men franchise was the most popular in the comic book industry.
The rise of anti-heroes
In the 1970s Marvel anti-heroes such as the X-Men’s Wolverine, The Punisher and writer/artist Frank Miller’s darker version of Daredevil challenged the previous model of the superhero as a cheerful humanitarian.
Two artistically influencial DC Comics mini-series contributed to the trend: Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, also by Frank Miller and Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, both of which were series of impressive psychological depth that starred troubled heroes.
By the early 1990s, anti-heroes had become the rule rather than the exception, although some fans complained that too many of them were unlikable psychopaths of little depth and originality.
Some critics believe that this trend is tied to the cynicism of the 1980s, when the idea of a person selflessly using his extraordinary abilities on a quest for good was no longer believable, but a person with a deep psychological impulse to destroy criminals was.
Horror and "sophisticated suspense"
Starting with Alan Moore’s groundbreaking work on DC’s Swamp Thing, horror comic books incorporated elements of science fiction/fantasy and strove to a new artistic standard. Other examples include Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Preacher. DC’s Vertigo line, launched in 1993, specializes in this genre.
Crisis on Infinite Earths
For decades DC Comics sloppily maintained its continuity, writing off some heroes and events as existing on "parallel worlds." A cosmic event in the 1985 mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths merged all of these realities, allowing writers to restart the extensive histories such long-running characters as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and The Flash from scratch. This helped revitalize DC, allowing the company to loose much of its excessive baggage while keeping select highlights from its characters’ continuing sagas.
Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns
In 1986, DC published two groundbreaking mini-series Watchmen by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. As described above, these series helped usher in the era of anti-heroes. But, more importantly, they were two of the most artistically ambitious and psychologically complex comic book series every produced. They helped gather respect for the medium and set the bar for subsequent writers.
Maus and other prominent non-superhero comics
In 1987, Art Spiegelman published the first volume of the graphic novel Maus, which recounts his parents’ struggle to survive the Holocaust as Polish Jews and Spiegelman’s own attempts to connect with them. The second volume was published in 1992. The work won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award in 1992, the first comic book to do so.
Maus signified that the medium of comic books is capable of telling stories other than those of superheroes, including ones of great emotional weight. Although superheroes remained, by far, the most prominent form of the medium, adult-orientated, non-superhero comics received notice after the publication of Maus. These include Ghost World by Daniel Clowes, American Splendor by Harvey Pekar and Strangers in Paradise by Terry Moore.
The rise of franchises
After the X-Men franchise proved profitable, Marvel and DC expanded popular properties, such as Spider-Man, Batman and Superman into networks of spin-off books in the mid-to-late 1980s. Some of these highlighted a concept or supporting character(s) from a parent series while others were simply additional monthly series featuring a popular character.
Both to heighten publicity and sales and to tell ambitious stories, companies regularly published crossovers, where one storyline overlapped into every title in the “family” for a few months. Such headline-grabbing stories as The Death of Superman and Knightfall, in which Bane broke Batman’s back, were told as crossovers.
The rise and fall of the speculator market
By the late 1980s, important comic books, such as the first appearance of a classic character or first issue of a long-running series, were sold for thousands of dollars. Mainstream newspapers ran reports that comic books were good financial investments and soon collectors were buying massive amounts of comics they thought would be valuable in the future.
Publishers responded by manufacturing collectors’ items, such as trading cards, and “limited editions” of certain issues featuring a special or variant cover. This led a market boom, where retail shops and publishers made huge profits and many companies, large and small, expanded their lines.
But few in the glut of new series possessed lasting artistic quality and the items that were predicted to be valuable did not become so, often because of huge print runs that made them commonplace. A crash occurred, where sales plummeted, hundreds of retail stores closed, many publishers downsized, and Marvel Comics, the largest company in the industry, declared bankruptcy in 1996. The industry has still not yet fully recovered.
The rise and influence of Image Comics
By the early 1990s, Marvel artists, such as X-Men’s Jim Lee, The New Mutants/X-Force’s Rob Liefeld and Spider-Man’s Todd McFarlane, became extremely popular and were idolized by younger readers in ways more common to sports stars and musicians than comic book artists.
Propelled by star power and upset that they did not own the popular characters they created for Marvel, several illustrators, including the above three formed Image Comics in 1992, an umbrella label under which several autonomous, creator-owned companies existed. Image properties, such as WildC.A.T.s, Gen13, Witchblade and especially McFarlane’s Spawn provided brisk competition for long-standing superheroes. However, many criticized Image for prioritizing flashy artwork over storytelling and originality.
In addition to maintaining its own lines, Image flashed light on comic books outside the Marvel and DC realms, which had existed discreetly for years. Dark Horse Comics’s Hellboy and Madman and Slave Labor Graphics’ Milk and Cheese and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac also gained popularity at this time.
Also many popular creators followed Image’s lead and attempted to use their star power to launch their own series; ones that they would have licensing rights for and editorial control of. Chris Claremont, famous for authoring Uncanny X-Men created Sovereign Seven, Joe Madueira, also made popular by Uncanny X-Men launched Battle Chasers, and Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross, the creative team behind the popular mini-series Marvels created Astro City.
The rise of the trade paperback format
Although sales of comic books dropped in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, sales rose for trade paperbacks, collected editions in which several issues are bound together with a spine and often sold in bookstores as well as comic shops. Some series were saved from cancellation solely because of sales of trade paperbacks and storylines for many of the most popular series of today, such as DC’s Justice League and various Batman series and Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man and New X-Men, are put into trade paperback instantly after the storyline ended. Trade paperbacks are often even given volume numbers, making them serializations of a serializations of sorts.
Because of this, many writers now consider their plots with the trade paperback edition in mind, scripting stories that lasting four to ten issues, which could easily be read as a “graphic novel.”
See also
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