Talk:Bronze Age of Comic Books

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To make the article consistent in all its parts Amazing Spider-Man 96-98, discussed in Origins should appear as key issues. The licensing of Conan was a new development at Marvel, it led to further licensing as well as movie adaptations. Therefore one of the key characteristics of the Bronze age was the introduction of other media in comics' content (film, music, pulp novels). --Leocomix 16:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Minority super-heroes

I removed characters for the following reasons: Warpath appeared as a villain late in the Bronze Age and was already a carbon copy of Thunderbird who is rightly mentioned. So he cannot be described as typical of the Bronze Age. The trend of featuring minorities/international characters in groups started with New X-Men, was copied in New Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, in Teen Titans, then in New Mutants, then in Hellions (where Warpath appeared). So he is not more characteristic of this trend than, say, Mirage. Sunfire was a Japanese, not a minority character and first appeared as a villain in late 1969. He is not part of the trend of minority super-heroes. Karma also first appeared as an opponent in Marvel Team-up. Now, if someone wants to put Mirage and Karma in the list, fine, but by the time of the New Mutants, minority characters was an established fact.--Leocomix 17:59, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Key issues, what defines an age

I removed several of the X-Men issues. Things like 2nd appearance of New X-Men, first appearance of Wolverine are not issues that defined the bronze age. The appearance of Wolverine in Hulk has nothing to do with the character's later prominence. The character evolved so much in th eearly years that Claremont had to rewrite/retcon the early X-Men stories when they were reprinted in Classic X-Men. As created in Hulk by Len Wein and Herb Trimpe he was supposed to be a High Evolutionary evolved wolverine. Because that was the origin used for Spider-Woman, Claremont chose to create (or rather hint at) a new one. The character as he exists now is due to developments created progressively by Cockrum (redesign of costume, physical appearance), Claremont (shrouded origin, relationship with Sabretooth), Byrne (hairy look on arms and chest), Miller (samurai background). As a difference, Punisher and Elektra have remained essentially the same. If we want to add X-Men issues, we should think more in terms of innovations. Giant-Size X-Men introduced the first international team. The death of Phoenix rocked the world of comics as it was unexpected (and was not the end planned by Claremont and Byrne). The death of Thunderbird was the first planned death of a team founding member. Up to now no main character had been created to die.

Actually, the article had been written too much from the viewpoint of what is now prominent. That is why I included Disappearing genres (from earlier ages) and included trends introduced during the Bronze Age but that didn't last. This also makes it easy to decide whether the Bronze Age finished or not. In the Bronze Age, the shared universe was consolidated. Thomas, Englehart and others introduced Golden Age super-heroes, cow-boys, teenage romance characters and Atlas monsters in the Marvel Universe while DC continued buying other companies. Crisis on infinite earths is both a consolidation and a creation of a new shared universe A characteristic of the Age following is the creation of new shared super-hero universes: Eclipse, Marvel's New Universe, 2099 universe, Image, Awesome, Wildstorm, Dark Horse super-hero universe, Malibu universe, Heroes Reborn, Ultimate, MC2 universe, Bill Black's AC comics, America's Best Comics, Topps comics, Albion and this goes to DC which has now a multiverse. Therefore the creation of the New Universe in 1986 is a better cut-off point for Marvel.