Talk:Golden Age of Comic Books

Public domain

Would it be worth a section on public domain characters and titles? [1] (Emperor 03:08, 24 August 2007 (UTC))

I've removed the "Legacy/public domain" section since, among other things, it's a poorly constructed mishmash with grammatical and other issues that lumps modern-day uses of old characters together with new characters inspired by old characters, the latter of which is simply homage and another issue entirely.

Second, this section is off-topic: The article is about a particular industry's historical era, and not whatever-happened-to updates on particular superheroes. Why go into the modern-day uses of public domain characters and not other characters? (Note: Comic-book public-domain characters are a topic not specific to the Golden Age; 1950s or even '60s characters from defunct companies may be PD.)

Third, and this goes across all of WPC, many articles make references to PD characters without concrete evidence this is so, or even, in many cases, a simple citation. Corporate attorneys have difficulty determining whether a character is in the public domain (trademarks are a little easy), and we bandy about the term based on ... what? Certainly, a publisher may in good faith publish comics with characters he or she believes to be in the public domain, but which actually are not. (This has happened many times with home-video releases of obscure movies, for example.)

That third issue is only a sidebar. The first two speak more directly against its inclusion in an article title "Golden Age of Comic Books" — a bare-bones article, I must say, that needs an enormous amount of research and beefing up of pertinent areas. --Tenebrae 16:34, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:StrangeTales114 detail.jpg

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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:21, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Article collaboration

This article, about an important period in the history of American comic books, starts out with a strong intro, and then just meanders with received wisdom and no concrete references. It's too significant a topic to leave fallow. Most of the scholarship on the Golden Age of Comics probably appears in books rather than websites, judging from a quick Google search. Many of my books are in storage; a few are not. I'd like to ask my fellow editors to dig out their own and help bring this important article up to speed. With thanks, --Tenebrae (talk) 15:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Comics B-Class Assesment required

This article needs the B-Class checklist filled in to remain a B-Class article for the Comics WikiProject. If the checklist is not filled in by 7th August this article will be re-assessed as C-Class. The checklist should be filled out referencing the guidance given at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/B-Class criteria. For further details please contact the Comics WikiProject. Comics-awb (talk) 16:38, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

C-Class rated for Comics Project

As this B-Class article has yet to receive a review, it has been rated as C-Class. If you disagree and would like to request an assesment, please visit Wikipedia:WikiProject_Comics/Assessment#Requesting_an_assessment and list the article. Hiding T 14:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Sources

This article is important to the project so we need to push it on to a B and beyond. If you have any good sources (that you aren't going to add now) then drop them in here and someone will look them over and see what they can do.

For starters:

• [2] CNN news report on an exhibition about Golden Age Comics.

As I find more I'll add it in. Once we get it to B I'll do a more intensive search and dump the resources here so we can push on to a GA. (Emperor (talk) 22:19, 18 March 2009 (UTC))

Non-RS for "Atomic Age of Comics" claim

None of the five ostensible citations that the period between the Golden Age and the Silver Age was called the Atomic Age hold up.

Aside from the fact that no contemporaneous sources use that term -- whereas comics themselves referred to the Golden Age and the Silver Age, for example, no comics sources in the surrounding eras use the term "Atomic Age of Comics" -- these five cites fall short:

• The National Association of Comics Art Educators is a dead link to a redlink organization that seems to have been composed primarily of its founder.
• Archives Hub: "Comic Book Collection", University of the Arts. UK refers to "Atomic Age" of comics in the same breath it refers to the "Marvel Age of Comics", which is a marketing term and not a historical era, severely undermining this source's credibility as a comics authority.
• Comic Book Predigrees is an amateur site devoted to the comic-book retailing trade, designed to help sell "pedigreed" collections, and not the work of recognized scholars or historians.
• Christopher, Tom, "Atomic Age Comics", TomChristopher.com, is just a letter-to-the-editor — one fan's opinion; and re:
• Overstreet, Robert M. Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide 38th Edition (New York: 2008) p. 1026: While I can't at the moment find my copy of Overstreet, this by itself isn't definitive -- who in Overstreet is making this claim? Is it a scholar or historian, or someone involved in marketing and retail, for whom a trendy name (as real-estate people give to neighborhoods) is a way to help sell something and has nothing to do with scholarly or academic analysis.

The bottom line is that to in essence create a whole new era, the bar is set very high in terms of documentation and widespread general agreement among the field's scholars and historians. That consensus widely exists for Golden Age and Silver Age. A few scattered mentions by questionable or non-reliable sources is hardly enough documentation to stake a claim for a brand new era. --Tenebrae (talk) 03:21, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Overstreet himself and many of the other vendors and collectors refer to an Atom Age in the 38th edition of the Price Guide. In the glossary, he lists Atom Age comics as those published from 1946-56. Atom-age Combat was the title of a comic book that came out in the 1950's. 75.119.233.41 (talk) 11:48, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

A single price guide using a term that lacks objective provenance in books and professional articles by comics historians isn't really definitive enough to use as the foundation of an encyclopedic claim. The term "Atomic Age of Comics" is not in any sort of standard use like "Golden Age," "Silver Age" and"Bronze Age." --Tenebrae (talk) 15:05, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

There are a bunch of articles in the front of Overstreet where quite a few collectors/vendors refer to an Atom Age. John Haines for example notes that Atomic Comics #1 came out in 1946, and Atomic War #1 in 1952. Maybe as a compromise we could put quotes around "Atom Age." 192.171.47.21 (talk) 13:47, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Superman and Atom Man

The article makes an offhand remark to the effect that Superman fought Atom-Man in the TV series. Having seen every episode of Adventures of Superman, I for one recall no such villain. Atom-Man appeared in the second Superman movie serial, not the TV show. I am going to go ahead and make this edit, but if someone has a source that contradicts my recollection, please let me know. 71.77.52.3 (talk) 07:58, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Not sure why, but ClueBot reverted that edit. Could someone with a user account make that edit for me? I'm quite certain it is accurate. Thanks. 71.77.52.3 (talk) 08:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

It wasn't ClueBot that reverted it, it was me. However, having read your comment above I have restored the edit. With no explanation the edit looked like vandalism. It is always a good idea to give an edit summary to indicate what you are doing. JamesBWatson (talk) 08:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Kefauver hearings

Could the Kefauver hearings mark something of a bright line between the Golden Age and subsequent ones? These attempted to blame comics as the main cause of juvenile delinquency and resulted in lots of self-censorship by the industry, some actual censorship by authorities, and the eventual adoption of the Comics Code as a sort of ongoing self-censorship. 75.246.142.16 (talk) 23:54, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Seems to me they came later in the 1950s. Most historians seem to find the Golden Age ended when comic-book sales (the thing that made the age golden) nosedived and when superheroes went out of fashion. --Tenebrae (talk) 21:25, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

In The Power of Comics, Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith argue that 1954 was the peak for the comics industry in terms of the number of titles offered, and that publishers like EC that did not touch superheroes were fueling the growth. The introduction of the Comics Code does seem to be the main reason that EC stopped publishing most of its titles. They also write that 1957 was the peak year for Atlas, and it was mainly the bankruptcy of their distributor in that year that forced them to cut back on the number of titles they offered. Superheroes going out of favour happened a bit earlier maybe around 1949-1950, but humour, crime and horror all expanded after that. 192.171.47.21 (talk) 13:29, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Putting this Age in Context

Perhaps we could add something somewhere, maybe just a sentence, about what came before it? I came to this page first and it was not clear that I should click on ”American comic book” to get to an earlier history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bossk-Office (talk • contribs) 16:24, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Heh, I find it funny. I'm coming here for a similar reason, but from the other angle. I find it odd that there's not 'Comic Books in the 1950s' entry in Wikipedia. If one is to follow this article's synopsis, Comics had a Golden Age, there was an 'interregnum', then there's a link to The Silver Age of Comics.

I may find it odd that this article doesn't really want to broach the 50s, or make a separate entry for comics in the 50s, but I'm not surprised. Many comic book philosophers are only focused on superhero comics. There were very few in the 1950s, and even less that stuck, so this decade is set aside as a Dark Ages for comics. One quick glance at what EC was doing in the Science Fiction and Horror genre, though, should make anyone take a few steps back.

I'm not here to flame other authors for what they think is important. And I'll be honest, I'm not the sort of guy who writes Wikipedia entries, so I'm not your man for the job. But it seems to me that if Wikipedia has the space for all the characters in the Final Fantasy series, it can make some room for a treatment on comic books in the 1950s. Whether that belongs in The Golden Age, or is it's own section, I'll let others decide.

Jmgariepy (talk) 09:43, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Overstreet's classification has a Pioneer Age running from the 1500s to 1828, a Victorian Age 1828 to 1883, a Platinum Age 1883 to 1938, a Golden Age 1938 to 1945, a Atom Age 1946 to 1956, a Silver Age 1956 to 1970, a Bronze Age 1970 to 1984, a Copper Age 1984 to 1992, and a Modern Age 1992 to the present. Dongord 192.171.47.21 (talk) 13:18, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

One price guide's made-up names for eras, which have been adopted by virtually no, if any, comics historian, is a fringe claim under both Wikipedia guidelines and general real life. This article already suffers from a multitude of tagged issues. We should not be adding WP:FRINGE or WP:SYNTH to it.--Tenebrae (talk) 17:00, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

There is a series of historical overview articles in the various Overstreet guides by Robert Lee Beerbohm and Richard D. Olsen Ph.D. where they outline their periodization scheme. They actually refer to 1946-1956 as the Atomic/Romance age, but it seems most of the vendors and collectors as well as Overstreet himself just use Atom Age. I agree completely that there are problems with this article which we need to improve upon. I've been adding more detail. Let's see what we can do. Dongord 184.175.19.129 (talk) 17:39, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks — this article could use your and any other knowledgable editor's help.

However many vendors and collectors purportedly use the term for that the era — and for years now at the New York Comic Con, I've never seen a retailer use that term — it's still fringe unless there's a consensus among published, authoritative sources. Fortunately or unfortunately, that's the way Wikipedia works. --Tenebrae (talk) 01:27, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

I mentioned this on the American Comic Books entry talk page, but I'll put it here as well. In The Encyclopedia of Comic Books and Graphic Novels, (2010 ISBN 978-0-313-35746-6 edited by M. Keith Booker), there is an article on ages of comic books by Tim Bryant, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Buffalo who teaches about Alan Moore's Watchmen in one of his courses. He writes that historians refer to Golden, Silver, Bronze and Modern (or Iron) Ages, and that the era before "the rise of the superhero in the 1930's is often referred to as the Platinum Age. ... Some commentators label the period between the mid-1940's and the mid-1950's as the Atomic Age because of comics writers' preoccupation with nuclear proliferation and the burgeoning arms race."(p.12-13) Dongord (talk) 13:19, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, Don. I did see that. As I said there: "So he's saying that historians' consensus is Golden, Silver, Bronze and Modern (or Iron) Ages, and that some uncited, unspecified commentators — who may be fans posting on forums and other non-WP:RS sources; he doesn't specify, so we don't know — are making a fringe claim of an era that a consensus of historians doesn't include. That's exactly what I'm I've been saying." --Tenebrae (talk) 23:49, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

In his A Complete History of American Comic Books, Shirrel Rhoades, former publisher at Marvel, lists the Overstreet/Gemstone classification scheme including Atom Age 1946-56, and writes "Since Gemstone is the publisher of the authoritative Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, we're obligated to take these suggestions seriously. ... And while we agree that the Atom Age defines a specific period of genre diversification, we'll leave it as a subset of the Golden Age." p. 5-6. Incidentally, Ron Goulart in Over 50 Years of American Comic Books writes "Comics collectors and fans got their bible in 1970, when Robert M. Overstreet published the first edition of his Comic Book Price Guide." p.316. I should also note that the History of American comics entry on Wikipedia already includes Atom Age citing Rhoades.Dongord (talk) 05:35, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

It's still all going back to one source — and Shirrel Rhoades, who is not a historian, considers the Golden Age lasting through 1956?? That's as fringe as it gets. No serious comic-book historian believes the Golden Age lasted through 1956. Please see the content guideline WP:FRINGE.

And at this point, if you'd like to call for a formal Request for Comment from other editors, it would bring in more than just the two of us speaking. I do have a feeling most editors would not break up the Golden, Silver, Bronze eras with a claim in a price guide, which has an agenda of creating "eras" to help enhance the value of the products it covers. --Tenebrae (talk) 17:16, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

As for what's truly missing from both this article, the one on the Silver Age, and most on US comics during those two ages, is the fact that Funny Animal comics, most of all Disney and Carl Barks (even though the latter was mostly not known by name back then) were the truly dominant forces on the US market. Carl Barks comics from Dell and Western alone far outsold the combined output of DC, Marvel, and any other superhero comics from the 1940s all through c. 1970. That's why I feel all the mentioned articles are written entirely slanted and biased, giving undue weight to one singular, tiny genre at the time. It took until the Bronze Age of the 70s for superhero comics to actually get ahead of Funny Animal comics in terms of sales.

Being an inclusionist, I don't think all this well-researched material you've piled up should really be deleted for good, but at this excessive detail, it really belongs in its own articles dedicated specifically to superhero comics. --87.180.222.141 (talk) 03:18, 14 February 2015 (UTC)