A world without superheroes: The birth of the Silver Age
Intellectually, I’ve known for years that between the Golden Age ending and the debut of Barry Allen in Showcase #4, superheroes were mostly dead in the water. My recent rereading …
Tag: DC Comics
After the Crisis: Comic Books on DC’s Post-Crisis Earth
Crisis on Infinite Earths not only upended DC’s continuity, it upended the Earth-One and Earth Two comic-book industries. In the aftermath of the multiverse merging, comics changed radically and ended …
Finding Elseworlds on the small screen
The Elseworlds (or ‘imaginary story’) concept is a tried and tested formula in comics, but it also exists in other media, although nobody calls it that. In particular, it has frequently appeared in (mainly American) serial television productions since the 1960s at least.
When Arkham Asylum was comedy gold: The Joker, Clown Prince of Crime
Until I reread the 1975-6 The Joker series (now collected in the Joker: Clown Prince of Crime TPB) I’d forgotten that Arkham Asylum was once a fun place to be …
And your writers shall see visions: writing superheroes in the DC Multiverse
When Flash #123 established Jay Garrick was as real as Barry Allen it changed the direction of the DC universe. It also established that at least some comic-book writers in …
Earth-Two’s comic book industry after World War II
Earth-Two’s Golden Age of comics probably looked a lot like ours, as I argued in the first part of this series. The Silver Age? Not so much. However I’ve less …
The Golden Age of Comics as Experienced By Earth-Two Comics Readers
It was early 1938 on Earth-Two when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster transformed their world’s comics books forever. Like our own Siegel and Shuster, they were established comics creators, working …