Going by cover dates, my Silver Age reread is now up to the summer of 1970 (though I still have some earlier stuff to catch up on). We’ve seen at least two characters take a leap into their Bronze Age forms. Batman has moved from Wayne Manor into a Gotham City penthouse, plus he’s frequently being drawn by Neal Adams.
Green Lantern is now sharing a magazine with Green Arrow and learning valuable life lessons (and yes, Neal Adams is strutting his stuff again).
Wonder Woman, newly depowered, has either launched into the Bronze Age or at least transitioned away from the Silver Age (something discussed in the comments here).
In many other books, there’s no sense of anything changing. Flash, for example has changed its style — Carmine Infantino gone, Frank Robbins briefly taking over the writing — but the stories don’t feel like a radical break except in quality. Likewise Denny O’Neil’s writing on Justice League of America, for all his vaunted skill at characterization, feels more like a let-down from Gardner Fox than anything as groundbreaking as Green Lantern/Green Arrow.
Over in Aquaman we have Steve Skeates writing a wild interdimensional adventure for Arthur Curry and a cool new artist named Jim Aparo at work. If I’d been reading the book back then, would that have made me feel anything had changed or would I have thought “I like these guys” and nothing more?
And by the way isn’t it amazing Aquaman, a B-list character in the Silver Age, got the services of Ramona Fradon, followed by Nick Cardy, followed by new hotshot Jim Aparo? There are A-listers that don’t get that lucky.
Other books show no change at all. Superman and Action Comics aren’t that different from what I’d have been reading a couple of years earlier. While Supergirl has moved over to Adventure Comics, her stories aren’t that different from what we saw when she was a backup to her cousin. It helps that at two stories per issue they still read like short backup stories rather than anything longer and more ambitious.
Over at Marvel, there’s little sign we’re on the brink of a new age. The books I looked at recently from June, 1970, aren’t that different from what we’d have seen in 1969 or 1968. But then, why should they be? While the end of the 1960s had both DC and Marvel stressed out, and both companies raising prices, Marvel’s still the rising star with greater critical acclaim. They had no way to know how much Jack Kirby going and horror comics and Conan coming would change them.
Unsurprisingly, some of the change was occurring at the margins, rather than in books starring Spider-Man or Superman. Deadman was different from anything we’d seen before, though of course the series hadn’t succeeded. Joe Orlando’s reboot of House of Mystery showed even before the Comics Code loosened up that there was money in horror anthologies with spooky hosts.
From what I remember, I didn’t see HOM or the anthologies following in its wake as a new age dawning, just a bunch of new books that didn’t interest me (and still don’t — though as I’ve said before, their success shows Orlando made a good call). And while DC was willing to try all sorts of new things, they didn’t catch fire any more than Deadman did. The Secret Six were different from anything else on the spinner rack, but a book that dies after seven issues is rarely a game-changer.
As Peter Cohen’s excellent History in Three Keys says, the significant events identified by historians after the fact rarely matches up with participants’ lived experience. Nobody who experienced the end of WW I foresaw they’d started a sequence of events that would lead to WW II. Likewise, I’m sure nobody who agreed to fire Gardner Fox imagined that bringing Denny O’Neil on board to write Justice League of America would lead to the wildly political run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow.
I have little memory of the comics of the next couple of years. That makes it fun looking back at the changes, even when I don’t like them. I know bigger ones are ahead and I’m looking forward to experiencing them.
Art top to bottom by Neal Adams (x2), Mike Sekowsky, Ross Andru, Jim Aparo, John Romita, Jack Sparling, Frank Springer
I remember ‘conventional wisdom’ being that the Bronze Age started with either Green Lantern/Green Arrow or the Death of Gwen Stacy– but I didn’t realize those are like 3 years apart! So there could be some interesting growing pains in the interim.
I’m looking forward to what’s ahead too.
I stand by what I said three years ago about Marvel. There is also the fact – which usually doesn’t get noted in conversations like this – that Warren’s b&w magazines, Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella and even the short-lived Blazing Combat, sort of foreshadowed the tonal shift that would eventually take hold in 4-color spinner rack fare.
But yeah, as with anything, the transition was fluid and very open to interpretation (and yeah, nobody at the time was likely perceiving anything happening across the board).
While I only read a little Warren back in the day (and not in this period) I suspect you’re right.
So, with the silver age wrapping up are you going to go on to the bronze age?
This reread will run until March of 1972 (cover-dated) as that’s when I began reading lots of comics again (the beginning of muy personal Bronze Age I guess). I hadn’t planned to go further but I’m finding it more tempting as I approach the cut-off date.
So we’ll see.