What are those Ages of Comics?

Ever wonder what it means when you see a comic book referenced as Golden Age or Bronze Age? I'll try to give a simple explanation.

The collecting of comics and the Comic Book Industry is a huge business. Doing a simple search on Google for “Comics Online” gives you over 52,000,000 pages. When you visit an online site, many times you will see a comic book referenced as from some sort of Age. Typical references will be Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, and Modern Age. These Ages refer to time frames and specific eras that comic books were published in.

Collectors and historians do not always agree on exact dates of these ages but a pretty standard formula is something like this:

Golden Age of comics is the timeframe of 1938 to 1945

Atomic Age of comics were published between 1945 and 1955

Silver Age of comics began in 1956 and ran to 1972

Bronze Age of comics includes comics from 1973 to 1985

Modern Age of comics began around 1986 and includes the present.

There were significant issues or events that usually closed one Age and began the next one.

I would like to concentrate on the history of the Golden Age of Comics in this column. Most collectors and historians agree that the Golden Age of Comics began in 1938 with the debut of Superman in Action Comics #1 published by DC Comics. During the next few years popular superheroes were introduced like Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, and Aquaman to name a few.

Notable talents of the age were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster who created Superman, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon who created Captain America, Stan Lee who co-created Spiderman and many others.

Many fans mark the end of the Golden Age as 1945 when the popularity shifted to gritty crime and horror related comics. Many describe the next 10 years as the Atomic Age of comics.

We offer a nice selection of comics from each of these great ages of comics in our online shop. Stop by and see if you can find your favorite old comic book character.

Our website for comic books is located at: PAPER TRAIL BOOK CAFE