Over the last few years, I've regularly noticed fellow fans accusing various people at DC of deliberately trying to make the modern DCU revert back to the Silver Age, or words to that effect. I usually found myself scratching my head while muttering, "Gee, whenever I buy a new comic book or TPB collection of a recent arc from DC, I don't get the feeling that they're selling me the Silver Age approach all over again!"
I finally decided that the key problem -- and I've said this before, in other threads -- is that different fans assume, without clearly stating their assumptions, a wide range of answers to the underlying question: "What were the most important distinguishing characteristics of DC's Silver Age?"
If we could reach a general consensus on the correct answer to that question, it would become much easier to figure out whether or not it's "reasonably accurate" to claim that DC has put things in reverse and is frantically dragging its storytelling approach back into Silver Age territory all over again . . . at least in the "most important" respects. Once we all agreed on what the necessary ingredients of a new "Silver Age" ought to look like, then we could at least share a common foundation for the debate as we moved on to loudly disagree about whether or not the aforementioned "second Silver Age" could be a good thing if it happened. Unfortunately, we don't even come close to agreeing on exactly what "reverting back to the Silver Age" means in theory, much less whether or not it's already gradually happening in practice, which makes it very easy for us to simply frustrate and confuse each other as we use the same words ("Silver Age") to mean very different things!
To me, the answer to that question about the Silver Age's key characteristics would start out along these lines:
1. Stories that almost always had a beginning, a middle, and an ending, all in the same issue. And even if a story was serialized in three or four installments, you were never slapped in the face with Big Crossover Events which supposedly "required" you to buy several titles in the same month in order to get "one complete story."
2. Lack of graphic bloodshed. People punched each other, and sometimes people got killed, but it was done in a "sanitary" way without blood splashed all over the page. (This had a lot to do with the rules of the Comics Code Authority.)
3. Old-fashioned rules of moral conduct for people calling themselves "superheroes" -- you didn't see DC superheroes discovering yet another "long-lost illegitimate child" a couple of times a year; nor having one-night stands. (You didn't get any rape scenes, either.)
4. By and large, new stories were not specifically written to appeal first and foremost to a core audience of "diehard fans who have memorized decades of continuity about their favorite characters!"
To expand upon that last point:
Julius Schwartz said in his autobiography that when he pushed for a new-and-improved Flash (Barry Allen, who is often credited with launching DC's Silver Age when he debuted), the conventional wisdom at DC was that the average regular reader of their comics only stayed faithful to the medium for about 4 years. Then, as he got older, he'd move on to other interests, but that was okay because his little brother (or the kid next door, or whomever) would be starting to get interested in comic books at about that time, so the sales figures would stay at satisfactory levels from year to year if the storytelling just stayed reasonably entertaining.
I have seen other sources agree that this was, in fact, the prevailing attitude throughout the 50s and 60s (at Marvel as well as DC, I gather). Accordingly, writers and editors didn't lose much sleep over whether or not a plot twist in a new story would contradict some point which had been mentioned just once in a previous story published 10 or 20 years earlier! Even if they knew it did create a contradiction, they weren't terribly worried about getting a flood of mail from angry fans threatening to cancel their subscriptions because of this! The fanbase was presumed to be far too fluid, with a high turnover rate, for there to be any great need to constantly pander to people who remembered the way things used to be, many long years ago! (Likewise, no one was in the habit of writing stories which required you to know lots of things from previous decades of the hero's adventures in order to appreciate what was happening to him this time around!)
So those four items are crucial factors in what I envision when someone mentions "Silver Age comics" to me.
Has DC recently been "turning back the clock" in any of those four departments? Not that I've noticed! When I look at the stuff they've churned out so far in the first decade of the 21st Century, I really don't find myself thinking: "Gosh, these stories would have worked perfectly in the Silver Age!"
Then I get jarred when I occasionally see other fans complaining that this is exactly what the big movers and shakers at DC are trying to force upon us! Which, of course, has prompted me to do some pondering about what those fans mean by "Silver Age" and what I mean by "Silver Age" . . .
As near as I can tell, some of the people who complain about the Silver Age being regurgitated, right before our very eyes, in DC's recent comics, seem to assume that it goes without saying that the strongest distinguishing characteristics of the Silver Age included such points as who was the regular Green Lantern of that era, who was the regular Supergirl of that era, et cetera.
So they would say:
"Hal Jordan was the Silver Age Green Lantern, and Hal is back as the main Green Lantern of Earth in his own title now -- therefore DC is reverting back to the Silver Age! Kara Zor-El was the Silver Age Supergirl, and a rebooted Kara Zor-El is now the star of her own Supergirl title -- therefore DC is reverting back to the Silver Age! Barry Allen was the Silver Age Flash, and now he's returned to a regular role in the modern continuity (with Final Crisis as the handy excuse for bringing him back) -- therefore DC is reverting back to the Silver Age!"
And so on, and so forth.
None of which persuades me! For instance, I don't see the new Kara Zor-El as being fundamentally the same character as the Kara of the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. And as it now stands, I hardly care whether or not Hal, as opposed to some other GL, is the current star of a "Green Lantern" title set on and around Earth at this exact moment. And I have no idea how long Barry Allen is going to stick around as "The Flash." Whether Hal and Barry, or a couple of other guys, are currently wearing certain costumes and using certain aliases strikes me as pretty trivial, if you want the truth! After all, Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne never cease to be "Superman" and "Batman" for very long, but I don't take that simple fact as "proof" that the editors and writers of their respective titles are Permanently Stuck in a Silver Age Approach! (Nor a Golden Age Approach, for that matter.)
Most of the above is something I wrote on the spur of the moment, several months ago, in one thread where the whole "they're dragging us back into the Silver Age!" complaint had arisen again.
But now I'm interested in hearing your opinions too, so I can see if we have anything roughly resembling a "consensus": What were the key characteristics of the Silver Age, the first time around? Do you think DC is moving things back to whatever it takes to qualify as "the Silver Age approach all over again?"
I finally decided that the key problem -- and I've said this before, in other threads -- is that different fans assume, without clearly stating their assumptions, a wide range of answers to the underlying question: "What were the most important distinguishing characteristics of DC's Silver Age?"
If we could reach a general consensus on the correct answer to that question, it would become much easier to figure out whether or not it's "reasonably accurate" to claim that DC has put things in reverse and is frantically dragging its storytelling approach back into Silver Age territory all over again . . . at least in the "most important" respects. Once we all agreed on what the necessary ingredients of a new "Silver Age" ought to look like, then we could at least share a common foundation for the debate as we moved on to loudly disagree about whether or not the aforementioned "second Silver Age" could be a good thing if it happened. Unfortunately, we don't even come close to agreeing on exactly what "reverting back to the Silver Age" means in theory, much less whether or not it's already gradually happening in practice, which makes it very easy for us to simply frustrate and confuse each other as we use the same words ("Silver Age") to mean very different things!
To me, the answer to that question about the Silver Age's key characteristics would start out along these lines:
1. Stories that almost always had a beginning, a middle, and an ending, all in the same issue. And even if a story was serialized in three or four installments, you were never slapped in the face with Big Crossover Events which supposedly "required" you to buy several titles in the same month in order to get "one complete story."
2. Lack of graphic bloodshed. People punched each other, and sometimes people got killed, but it was done in a "sanitary" way without blood splashed all over the page. (This had a lot to do with the rules of the Comics Code Authority.)
3. Old-fashioned rules of moral conduct for people calling themselves "superheroes" -- you didn't see DC superheroes discovering yet another "long-lost illegitimate child" a couple of times a year; nor having one-night stands. (You didn't get any rape scenes, either.)
4. By and large, new stories were not specifically written to appeal first and foremost to a core audience of "diehard fans who have memorized decades of continuity about their favorite characters!"
To expand upon that last point:
Julius Schwartz said in his autobiography that when he pushed for a new-and-improved Flash (Barry Allen, who is often credited with launching DC's Silver Age when he debuted), the conventional wisdom at DC was that the average regular reader of their comics only stayed faithful to the medium for about 4 years. Then, as he got older, he'd move on to other interests, but that was okay because his little brother (or the kid next door, or whomever) would be starting to get interested in comic books at about that time, so the sales figures would stay at satisfactory levels from year to year if the storytelling just stayed reasonably entertaining.
I have seen other sources agree that this was, in fact, the prevailing attitude throughout the 50s and 60s (at Marvel as well as DC, I gather). Accordingly, writers and editors didn't lose much sleep over whether or not a plot twist in a new story would contradict some point which had been mentioned just once in a previous story published 10 or 20 years earlier! Even if they knew it did create a contradiction, they weren't terribly worried about getting a flood of mail from angry fans threatening to cancel their subscriptions because of this! The fanbase was presumed to be far too fluid, with a high turnover rate, for there to be any great need to constantly pander to people who remembered the way things used to be, many long years ago! (Likewise, no one was in the habit of writing stories which required you to know lots of things from previous decades of the hero's adventures in order to appreciate what was happening to him this time around!)
So those four items are crucial factors in what I envision when someone mentions "Silver Age comics" to me.
Has DC recently been "turning back the clock" in any of those four departments? Not that I've noticed! When I look at the stuff they've churned out so far in the first decade of the 21st Century, I really don't find myself thinking: "Gosh, these stories would have worked perfectly in the Silver Age!"
Then I get jarred when I occasionally see other fans complaining that this is exactly what the big movers and shakers at DC are trying to force upon us! Which, of course, has prompted me to do some pondering about what those fans mean by "Silver Age" and what I mean by "Silver Age" . . .
As near as I can tell, some of the people who complain about the Silver Age being regurgitated, right before our very eyes, in DC's recent comics, seem to assume that it goes without saying that the strongest distinguishing characteristics of the Silver Age included such points as who was the regular Green Lantern of that era, who was the regular Supergirl of that era, et cetera.
So they would say:
"Hal Jordan was the Silver Age Green Lantern, and Hal is back as the main Green Lantern of Earth in his own title now -- therefore DC is reverting back to the Silver Age! Kara Zor-El was the Silver Age Supergirl, and a rebooted Kara Zor-El is now the star of her own Supergirl title -- therefore DC is reverting back to the Silver Age! Barry Allen was the Silver Age Flash, and now he's returned to a regular role in the modern continuity (with Final Crisis as the handy excuse for bringing him back) -- therefore DC is reverting back to the Silver Age!"
And so on, and so forth.
None of which persuades me! For instance, I don't see the new Kara Zor-El as being fundamentally the same character as the Kara of the 60s, 70s, and early 80s. And as it now stands, I hardly care whether or not Hal, as opposed to some other GL, is the current star of a "Green Lantern" title set on and around Earth at this exact moment. And I have no idea how long Barry Allen is going to stick around as "The Flash." Whether Hal and Barry, or a couple of other guys, are currently wearing certain costumes and using certain aliases strikes me as pretty trivial, if you want the truth! After all, Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne never cease to be "Superman" and "Batman" for very long, but I don't take that simple fact as "proof" that the editors and writers of their respective titles are Permanently Stuck in a Silver Age Approach! (Nor a Golden Age Approach, for that matter.)
Most of the above is something I wrote on the spur of the moment, several months ago, in one thread where the whole "they're dragging us back into the Silver Age!" complaint had arisen again.
But now I'm interested in hearing your opinions too, so I can see if we have anything roughly resembling a "consensus": What were the key characteristics of the Silver Age, the first time around? Do you think DC is moving things back to whatever it takes to qualify as "the Silver Age approach all over again?"
![[A]](https://superherohype-data.community.forum/avatars/l/70/70800.jpg?1270390582){kind=avatar}
At least, I'm assuming that's who he's talking about...
