A Quick Review of Comics History
The Golden Age of American comic books (1934-1954) begins with the first original-content, serialized comic magazines, but really kicks-off with Superman and the explosion of superheroes after 1938. Will Eisner was the great formal innovator of this era. In the early ‘50s, EC Comics reigned supreme with well-written and drawn humor (Mad) and horror (Tales from the Crypt). But ‘50s-era conservative censorship crushed the Golden Age with the adoption of the Comics Code in 1954.
The Silver Age renaissance (1956-1971) began in the late-50’s when DC Comics started creating a new line of sci-fi superheroes and in the early-60’s when Marvel started creating more emotionally complex characters in multi-issue story arcs with running “soap-opera” subplots. Most of the iconic DC and Marvel superheroes originate during this fertile rebirth of creativity. On the downside: the comics are structurally wonky for modern readers: way over-narrated and with pacing that’s often jarring (the average scene-length is no more than 3 or 4 panels). The other side of the Silver Age coin was the rise of counterculture comiX about sex, Leftist politics, dirty jokes, drugs, satire, and autobiographical stories.
The Bronze Age (1971-1989): Post-Watergate, stories had grown (relatively) more grown-up, grimmer, sophisticated, complex, and politically relevant, and in ‘71 the Comic Code was redrafted and liberalized. Batman, Warlock, Daredevil, the Punisher, and Wolverine all moved in a significantly darker, more violent, grittier, and psychologically complex direction. The Bronze Age also included many fantastic non-superhero books like Contract with God, American Splendor, Heavy Metal, Cerebus, Moonshadow, American Flagg!, and Elfquest. 1986 alone gave us Maus, The Dark Knight Returns, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Watchmen. The death of Gwen Stacy in ‘73 got bookended by the death of Batman’s Robin in 1989.
And then… the sad, declining Iron Age (1990-c.2006). Marvel and DC became obsessed with schlocky gimmicks that gave a temporary boost in sales but didn’t create new readers. The Image artists came out with a flashy, sexy, hyperactive style that was aimed at “giving 14 year-old boys what they want” (said McFarlane): huge guns, massive testosterone-fueled muscles, explosions, blood, swords, lots of clenched teeth, and lots and lots and lots of T&A. Another problem that plagued superhero comics of the ‘90s was that the continuity of the stories, which was so cool in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, had finally become so long and complex that potential new readers couldn’t understand what the hell was going on. The market collapsed, and Marvel even went bankrupt.
Dr. McCloud’s Diagnosis
In 2000, Scott McCloud released Reinventing Comics, in which he applied the taxonomic skills of an uber-geek to diagnose the basic problems that had placed American comics in such an awful place, and explained what was needed to get out of it. We needed to stop making (primarily) poorly written crap only for 14 year-old boys and expand the territory by “tailoring comics to a much broader audience, incorporating a more diverse spectrum of styles and subject matter.”
The first necessity was a reform in the physical form and delivery of comics. Even by 2000, magazine racks were going extinct, and the only place you could sell the 24-page monthly comic magazines was in geek-oriented comic specialty shops… which most people never go into (and were also going extinct because of our favorite boogieman: late-stage capitalism). Even if you put out books that would appeal to a wider range of readers, readers would never find them. McCloud (correctly) predicts the solution would be found in a combination of online web-comics and graphic novels that could be sold in actual, mainstream, for-everybody, normie bookstores. Today, every bookstore and library has a good sized graphic novel section! The school library where I work is probably 25% graphic novels!
So here’s a purely personal tangent: I LOVED going to our local comic/gaming shops back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when I was a teen. They were beloved “third places.” Over the course of the ‘90s that changed completely. (1) As mentioned above, the quality of the comics themselves dropped a lot… and also I was growing up and my taste was maturing and broadening. (2) In the two different cities where I lived in the ‘90s there were no less than four separate scandals of pervy comic shop owners diddling tween/teen boys. (Actually, one was diddling his step-daughter.) The last comic shop I was left with was a filthy hole run by a creepy troll-man (who would probably also diddle kids if he weren't so utterly repellent and smelled like urine). In 2000, I switched over to a mail order subscription service… until 2004 when I just quit buying new comics. (Until about c.2014 when things got better again. Stay tuned…)
The second requirement from Scott McCloud was three, connected and much-needed, reforms: gender balance, minority representation, and diversity of genre. “Despite all my griping,” McCloud wrote, “I actually like superheros! For me, superheroes are like those chocolate pies with whipped cream on top of that Oreo cookie crust… you know the ones, right? They taste great – but who wants to eat nothing but chocolate pies for the rest of their lives!?” Comics had to break out of the ultra-niche, superhero ghetto, and that meant diversifying!
Superheroes Rebound!
American serialized comics actually picked themselves up a lot in the second decade of the 21st century from where they’d been left in the pits of the Iron Age, and the biggest factor was – drumroll – diversity!
In 2000, Marvel rebooted their comics with the “Ultimates” universe, which included a black, motherfuck’n Nick Fury. It was a small step, but it planted a seed that would finally spring forth in the 2010s. The real icebreaker came in 2011 with a black-latino Spider-man (and the best Spider-man run since Conway’s black-symbiote suit period from ‘84-’90, the Spidy I grew-up with). In 2016, we got Riri Williams (Iron-heart), a black girl taking over from Tony Stark. Meanwhile, in 2012, Bobby Drake (Iceman) came out as gay. In 2013, Deadpool was confirmed as pansexual. 2014 brought us Spider-Gwen, who (while still not out) has always been coded as trans (and the queer coding was subtly present in 2023’s Across the Spider-verse film). Lots of other LGBT characters followed: Wanda’s twins Wikken & Speed, Huckling, America Chavez, Korg, Rictor, Karma, Shatterstar, Rachael Summers (Phoenix), and Valkyrie; and Loki became a gender-fluid pansexual much like he is in the actual, ancient Norse myths.
Just as important – and I mean that – Marvel started hiring more diverse writers. In 2013, two Muslim women, Sana Amanat and G. Willow Wilson, created Muslim, female, Pakistani-American hero Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel). Ta-Nehisi Coates’ critically acclaimed run on Black Panther (2016-’18) set the stage for the blockbuster MCU film. Those two runs on Ms. Marvel and Black Panther were arguably the best superhero books of the last 20 years.
After some delay, the always more conservative DC is trying to catch-up. (But to be fair to DC’s diversity, the beloved Latino Blue Beetle appeared back in 2006.) Bart Allen’s Impulse finally came out as gay in 2018 – and in the same month in 2022 both Jon Kent (Lois & Clark’s teenaged son) and the Tim Drake Robin came out as bi. It’s worth noting that a lot of these “out of the closet” revelations aren’t retcons. There were some hints of gay subtext, for instance, between Impulse and Robin back in the ‘90s… for those who had the eyes to see. And Chris Clarmont was hinting at queerness all through his epic ‘80s X-Men run – which only makes sense, since the whole mutant thing was largely his metaphor for queerness… and the whole X-story can be read as Xavier and Magneto making their breakup everyone else’s problem too.
Now, I know that, in addition to the hordes of screaming child-nazis in toxic fandom (who can just fuck off), there are also those “reasonable” conservative voices calmly asking, “But just ‘forcing’ diversity doesn’t make better stories, does it?” Yes. Yes, it does. If it’s done at all well (hence the importance of having diverse writers) then having more diverse characters represented in popular culture absolutely makes it better. Yes. How is this even a debate? Our stories should reflect us, not just the privileged 30% “majority” of straight, cis, white, gentile males – and even that privileged crowd should be interested in reading about the other 70% of the people they share a country with.
(Side note: I will never forget the day I learned that there are more trans people in America than natural redheads. From our pop culture, you would never have guessed that. Representation matters.)
Rise of the Graphic Novel!!!
While serialized superhero comics have gotten a lot better over the last ten years, the real glory of late has been the explosion of many, many high quality graphic novels and their penetration of mainstream, normie reading culture. If there is a fourth age of comics following the Golden, Silver, Bronze, and Iron ages, it would have to be the “Graphic Novel Age.”
One could go back to Maus, of course, but I think the real turning point was when The Sandman (which ran monthly from 1989-’96) started getting collected into trade paperbacks sold in mainstream, normie bookstores (starting in ‘95) and those volumes made way more money than the sales of the 20-page comic magazines ever did. Ten years after Maus, Dark Knight Returns, and Watchmen (all in ’86), Gaiman’s collected Sandman became the fourth graphic novel to make the NY Times Bestseller List.
Since The Sandman, more attention has been focused toward graphic novels written for a general audience and sold in mainstream bookstores (like Will Eisner and Scott McCloud always wanted). Many truly great graphic novels appeared in those bookstores in the late ‘90s and early 2000s: From Hell, Stuck Rubber Baby, Cages, A Jew in Communist Prague, Hicksville, Understanding Comics, Ghost World, Bone, Pedro and Me, Road to Perdition, and (notably) Persepolis (which Newsweek ranked as #5 on its list of the 10 best books of the ‘00s decade – not comic books, just books)… and significantly, none of those are superhero books!
Along with 2000’s Persepolis, we leveled-up again with 2003’s Blankets (which actually topped Time magazine’s ‘best comics of all time’ list) and 2006’s Fun Home (which was another NY Times Bestseller). All three books were critically and commercially successful, and, I would say, they were the books that really cemented graphic novels as “real literature” for regular people. Persepolis (which is often taught in high schools now) is the memoir of a rebellious girl growing up in the Ayatollahs Iran. Blankets is a coming-of-age autobiography that tells the story of Craig Thompson's childhood in an Evangelical Christian family and his first teenaged love. Fun Home is also autobiographical and finds Alison Bechdel discovering her own queer sexuality while struggling with the maybe-suicide of her closeted-gay father. Since this one-two-three punch of Persepolis, Blankets and Fun Home (all required reading – I mean it!) there’s been too many great graphic novels to name. But, of course, I’ll toss out a few…
Let’s continue with the category of memoir. There’s Rosalie Lightning, by Tom Hart: a heartbreaking memoir about the author processing the untimely death of his young daughter. Then there’s March, the inspirational 3 volume memoir of the great civil rights leader and statesman John Lewis. George Taki’s They Called Us Enemy, in which the later-Star Trek star tells the story of his childhood in a Japanese-American concentration camp. March and They Called Us Enemy tell us the history we didn’t learn in school – and if the GOP has its way, it will soon be illegal to teach in schools. Speaking of… Banned Book Club by Hyun Sook tells the dramatic true story of political division, fear-mongering, anti-intellectualism, and the death of democratic institutions in South Korea’s Fifth Republic – a story which is terrifyingly relevant for Americans in 2024 watching the same thing happen throughout our country.
Moving away from memoir and into semi-true stories, we have Pride of Baghdad, the powerful, based-on-a-true-story of a traumatized pride of lions who escaped from the Baghdad zoo during the Iraq War and must try to survive in the war-torn city. Also in the anti-war category: Grass, by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim (which appeared on 2019 best books of the year lists from The New York Times and The Guardian) tells the tragic story of a Korean girl who was forced into sexual slavery for by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War.
In the purly fictional category, there’s Wendy, Master of Art by Walter Scott, a satirical romp through the university MFA and contemporary fine art world that explores polyamory, the complexities of gender identity, sex work, drug use, and more. One Story by Gipi uses side-by-side dual narratives (a middle-aged writer whose wife leaves him and his great-grandfather, a soldier in WWI) to explore how the choices made by our ancestors can reverberate down through generations.
And yes, none of those are superhero books, and most of them are either by or about POC or LGBT people – like, all of them except for One Story and Blankets… and Pride of Baghdad, which is about lions… but they are African lions. They are books about more than the 30% of us written for more than the 1% of us who would enter a comic shop, just like Scott McCloud prescribed. About damn time!
Today, I’m back to reading new comics again, but superheroes are only maybe 20% of my comic diet. I still like them, but they’re the chocolate pie. Mostly, I read memoirs, historical-fiction, literary fiction, some true-crime, assorted non-fiction “docucomics”, and some (non-superhero) sci-fi/fantasy… in other words: my comic reading habits resemble my prose reading habits or my TV/movie-watching habits: a little of everything. Which is how it always should have been! Because comics is a medium, not a genre. There’s good stuff for everyone now. I feel extremely good about the state and quality of comics in America these days; it’s really now a proper golden age, and I’m loving it!