Mordo: I don't think it ever made it into the lexicon as it doesn't seem to exist outside of Overstreet and, as I've pointed out, it hasn't been used consistently by Overstreet either. My guess is that whoever did the 1998 compilation found some reference to "Atom Age" and included it... and it was promptly ignored by most and used be a few. I'm sure if Overstreet "promoted" it more it would come into use, but currently it doesn't appear to be used and I would recommend demoting it to a period within the Golden Age or removing it altogether since nobody appears to use it. I was just checking over a few mail order catalogs I have from several dealers and none of them have an "Atom Age" section... all of the so-called "Atom Age" books are listed in either their Golden Age section or Silver Age section. Now I'm getting curious as to who started this "Atom Age" business... Arnold, can't you figure out who did the 1998 OPG work and get us an answer?

"Arnold, can't you figure out who did the 1998 OPG work and get us an answer?"

Um, yeah, it was us. Pretty much the same people working here today were the team working in '98 too, except I was just Managing Editor back then and Benn Ray was Editor.

As for the "funny books" thing, to be honest I have never before heard anyone use this term as anything other than a disparaging term for comics. I never knew that some of you had some kind of definition that distinguishes "funny books" from "comic books" but I definitely see most of the Victorian/Platinum material as directly preceding the comics we now know today. In terms of the medium, there is a clear evolution from one to the other.

The modern "funny books" you refer to are a completely different animal to me. I have never in my life viewed newspaper reprint strip books from today as comics in any sense, and certainly not remotely akin to the comics of yesteryear that also happened to recycle newspaper material but not at all in the same bookshelf mass market format that I know from Bloon County and other books. This is a completely new idea to me, I just can't see them as the same thing at all.

Of course there's always been a tendency to strongly divide the world of the newspaper cartoon strip and the comic. Just look at how newspaper strip people have always been feted and revered while comic book creators have been maligned or ignored. Worlds apart - and yet they were so close once.

Arnold

I have to say it's very interesting, sounds logical, and is just an area of comics history about which I am woefully ill informed. it does indeed sound like something worth more exploration in the future to establish these different substrands of comic book and "funny book" development. I don't think you'll see much in that way in the Price Guide any time soon, but I know *I'm* fascinated by what you've described.

Slow day -- so I'm poking around at m-w.com checking on words: Illustration: a picture or diagram that helps make something clear or attractive Picture: a design or representation made by various means (as painting, drawing, or photography) Drawing: the art or technique of representing an object or outlining a figure, plan, or sketch by means of lines Cartoon: a drawing intended as satire, caricature, or humor. Comic Strip: a group of cartoons in narrative sequence Comic Book or Comicbook: a magazine containing sequences of comic strips Magazine: a periodical containing miscellaneous pieces (as articles, stories, poems) often illustrated I wonder if I can submit this as a logical proof that "funny books" are not comicbooks?

giffle: I think that we are deeper agreement about this topic then might at first be apparent. The traditional metallic Age designations are flawed in talking about the comicbook industry, in historic, quantitative terms. As I've said before, much of the terminology used in describing comics comes from a collector's mentality and is qualitative. The term "Golden Age" itself is problematic. Whenever it was first coined in reference to a period of comics (late 60's, early 70's? I'd like to know), it was used as much or more as an evaluative label as a descriptive term for an era- in other words, comics from before 1955 were considered somehow better or more desirable than their contemporary counterparts of the 60s and 70s. The foundation of our current system of eras is footed on this opinion- Silver, Bronze, Platinum all follow the initial judgment of "Gold" as the pinnacle. A wholesale revision of the language and references used to discuss the historical periods of the industry would be very interesting and I'd love to see anything you've produced thus far. That said, however, I think that we do need to address or own history as a collecting community as well. In the short term, entirely abandoning the language we've developed over the past 35+ years might not be helpful in advancing the discussion. For me, the inclusion of the "Atom Age" is interesting not for the questions it answers, but for those it raises. _douglas

*sorry* for not turning off bold

"The term "Golden Age" itself is problematic. Whenever it was first coined in reference to a period of comics (late 60's, early 70's? I'd like to know), it was used as much or more as an evaluative label as a descriptive term for an era- in other words, comics from before 1955 were considered somehow better or more desirable than their contemporary counterparts of the 60s and 70s." That's why i don't think the metallic ages should be continued after Bronze. In the Olympics there's the Gold, Silver, and Bronze medals. I assume that's where the idea for the Silver and Bronze ages came from. After bronze it really becomes ridiculous. (Apologies to Arnold Blumberg. I know he likes the metallic idea.) Copper Age? It denotes cheapness like Copper pennies. Do we really want to name an age after something worthless like a penny? I realize that '80s comics and up are mostly sold for pennies, but the term is still relative to the Gold, Silver, and Bronze ages that are still respected even though the terms are seemingly descending in importance. Another age of comics that i feel is inappropriately named, is the "Platinum Age". When it comes to music, if an album is good it goes Gold, and if it's great it goes Platinum. Doea anyone think that the Platinum Age is better than the Golden Age? I think that since the Victorian Age and Atom Age are already established as non-metallic ages, we don't necessarily have to be so metal oriented in our mindset when naming the ages. So, with that in mind, here's what i think the ages could be named... Victorian Age 1800-1938 Golden Age 1938-1946 Atom Age 1946-1961 Silver Age 1961-1970 (Since Showcase #4 is considered a weak age starter, i think Fantastic Four #1 is the logical choice. That would fit better, since Marvel's monster books are more like Atom Age comics than Silver Age, because Atomic energy produced numerous monsters back then in the movies and comics.) FF #1 also fits as the start of a theme that starts the next two ages, which is "maturing" comics. Fantastic Four #1 featured the first "human" non-cookie cutter superheroes, followed by Green Lantern/Green Arrow #76 in 1970, which is the first comic to deal with socially relevant events of the time, followed by Dark Knight #1 and Watchmen #1 in 1986, which changed the future of comics, also. Bronze Age 1970-1981 (I think Green antern #76 is the popular choice among collectors, so i'll go with that. The year 1970 fits good as a start point.) Independent Age 1981-1986 (I think an age could be injected here since Captain Victory #1 is a comics changing event in the sense that it opened the door for creators to become more "independent" from the "big two" Marvel and DC. After that book came out, there was an avalanche of independent comics, and by 1986, the comics were starting to have the creator's names on the covers of the comics for the first time ever.) Gritt 'n Glitter Age 1986-2000 ("Grim 'n Gritty" comics begin, followed by "gimmick covers". Could also be called the "Gritty Glittery Age" Modern Age (or possibly the Retro Redo Age) (Starts with Ultimate Spider-Man #1. Old ideas done all over again.)

(Ok, so Archeology doesn't actually use these terms in ranking, they name ages based on tools created using certain materials... so they have Stone Age, Copper Age, Bronze Age, etc.)

bubblegumcards: Excellent discovery. That pushes the verified date for use in the comic-world by several years prior to the first OPG.

---

Poking around at m-w.com again... the general definitions given for the golden age and silver age are the following: golden age (1555): a period of great happiness, prosperity, and achievement silver age (1565): an historical period of achievement secondary to that of a golden age I have no problems with the use of the Platinum, Golden, Silver, Bronze, Copper, and Chrome metallic metaphor/ranking of comicbook "ages", my problems center mostly around what are comicbooks (for me they are the periodical format used widely starting in 1933) and what events should we be using as the "convenient dividing lines" between the ages that best represent the industry as a whole (even though I accept the spectrum as a more realistic representation).

seanb4bid: Good question. Based on the following view: 1933--1955 Golden Age (pre-code) 1955--1971 Silver Age (1954 code) 1971--1989 Bronze Age (1971 code) 1989-today Copper Age (1989 code) Using a CCA-milestone timeline we would still have the "Chrome Age" to expand into as the "post-code" period approaches (or if we use Chrome before then I'd suggest "Iron Age" as it tends to be the last metallic Age mentioned on most scales). Sadly I think we may be entering into an era where the comicbook (periodical) is coming to an end as we know it so additional ages may be a moot point of discussion. It seems like more and more material is being released into trade paperback format sooner from the initial release time of the periodical version. And it probably will not be long before the economics of publishing force all companies into releasing material in trade paperback form as their initial, if not only, format. At which point comicbooks will have merged back into the Cartoon Strip tree of book formats and the Age of comicbooks (periodicals) will have come to an end. And if Marvel could figure out a good dist. system and copy-protection for their Flash-based virtual comics there may come a time when subscriptions are filled via e-mail and we are dealing strictly with multi-media files in our virtual collections (or maybe we just get CDs/DVDs instead). At which point we will be in a new "Epoch" of Cartoons with the death of print.

If comic book periodicals become extinct, assuming we strictly define them as periodicals, and not the odd format books such as current TPBs or the tabloids and paperbacks that existed before 1933, then I am fine with the current trend (or fad) of giving them metallic names. At least then you have a beginning point, the Platinum Age (encompassing the 1933-1938 books) and an end point. Chrome, tin, iron, lead, or any other metal or off-shoot will suffice as a name. However, if comics are also thought to include the TPBs, graphic novels, and Calvin and Hobbes style paperbacks of today, as well as the various formats that existed prior to 1933, then comics, in my opinion, they will continue to live on well into the 21st Century and hopefully beyond. Our definition of what a comic book is will just once again change as it dramatically did in 1933. If the latter is the case, then I would like to see some variety and imagination applied to the naming of the past ages and future ages. I like the term Atom Age for reasons expressed in previous posts, and the term Modern Age is a good one we should not abandon as well. With Modern Ages, their boundaries will just have to re-adjust with the times. An age name reflecting the realism, maturity, and grittiness of the post-Bronze period would be nice, though not an absolute requirement. Copper, in my opinion, sounds too bland. Bronze, for that matter, is bland too, but that's already an old fait accompli, so I would not want to advocate re-writing history. "Feature creep," as gifflefunk named it, is an interesting notion. I don't know if all of those books listed in the Victorian and Platinum Ages are truly comic books. If those are comics, then, as gifflefunk noted, so are the humor paperbacks (with the internal comic strip format) we see in bookstores like Borders. I have trouble with that, and frankly, although I really enjoy the TPB and graphic novel format, I don't know if I see them as comic books either. To me they are books, period. The only thing they share with traditional comics, besides an internal format without advertising, is an overlapping market that buys both types of books. Although I agree with Arnold that today's comics evolved from the pre-1933 odd format 'comic' books, Bradford W. Wright in his book Comic Book Nation: the Transformation of Youth Culture in America briefly asserts that comics owed much to the pulp magazines of the day, which in term had roots in the dime novels of the 1860's. And, of course, as sensational as they were, we know pulps were certainly not comics. --- Computerized comics are interesting. I think it can work as an entertainment medium in the internet, CDs, and PDAs, but I don't see it doing anything to further comic collecting as a hobby. It'll probably be the domain of future enthusiasts whereas current collectors and enthusiasts will have mixed feelings.

Holy cow!! You guys are thinking too hard!! Assign ages according to the CCA? Devise a "rainbow" of history? They're comics!! 22 pages of four color fun!! The crux of the issue is that everyone wants to distinguish between 1950/60's books and 1970/80's. THAT'S ALL!! So pick a 1969/1970 book! Jimmy Olsen 133, House of Secrets 92, Green Lantern 76, Conan 1, Savage Tales 1... whatever! You guys are taking the fun out of it!! You can suspend your belief to read men in tights leaping tall buildings, but you have to take this as serious as you do? Come on!! And why try to designate any ages past bronze right now? History is written about the PAST!!! not the PRESENT!!! If you can look back and, in all your wisdom, analyze the impacts that Action 1 had on the comic industry differently than it would have been done in the past then give the current market a break and let it ripen for a decade or two!! (THAT's why Showcase 4 is significant. Who cares what it did then? It's its rippling impacts that matter most!!) Nobody in North America blinked when Ferdinand was assassinated at the time but decades later it was agreed that that event was the linchpin that set into motion WW1!!