Generally the current era of comics is defined as having begun in the mid 80’s with the publication of Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and Crisis on Infinite Earths, and continuing on till today. But I feel lumping together these 26 or so years of comics together to defeat the purpose of defining an era. After all the purpose of these rough classifications is to represent the look, feel, tone, and content of the mainstream comics of the time period.
However when looking over this “era” we see large differences between the comics of right now and the comics of say the 90’s. In fact among the comic fandom the late 80’s and 90’s are often considered separate from current comics despite being part of the same era. As such I propose that the period from 1986 through the 90’s be labeled a separate era from now, either the popular “dark” age or the iron age to keep with the metal theme.
The problem we run into is with defining when this era ends. For Marvel I feel 1998 may be a good point, most series reset their numbering, and from there most of the series feel essentially “current”. However I admit that I’m not familiar with either D.C. or Image comics, especially those of the 90’s. So I ask my fellow comic fans, when did the “dark” age end for the different companies?
I’ll bump by stating that I’m not a comic fan…the medium just does nothing for me…but as with just about everything else there is ONE that I really liked, Drew Hayes’ “Poison Elves”. I think it qualifies as dark
It might be considered a bit “late”, but I think whem Marvel split off and had a totally separate “Ultimate” universe might be considered a stopping point. That Ultimate universe is darker than the normal, 616, universe.
And around the same time, the new “Astonishing X-Men” comic series came out, which put an end to the stupid “X-Treme X-Men!” with the black leather, and was harking back to the 60’s/70’s era, especially with the costumes.
But that era did end. Sandman was a great series, but it’s not really what most comics were at the time. The 90’s was the decade of the X-Treme Blood 'N Gutz anti-hero, for a period comics attempted to move as far away from the child friendly silver and bronze ages as possible, sometimes that resulted in amazing and meaningful comics like Watchmen or Sandman. More often it resulted in series that attempted the dark and gritty feeling of series like that, but forgot pesky things like story or dialogue to make them good.
What was that 2008? Quite a bit late if you ask me.
I think I’d push the beginning of mainstream “dark” comics a bit earlier than the OP’s examples (which are roughly 1985-86). Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil (1981-83) is what I’d put as the start.
I’d actually suggest the early 90s as the end of the dark era. The anti-heroes of the 1990s may have run around shooting people, etc., but they didn’t have the same level of depressing stories, drug abuse, etc., that the 80s did.
I’m not seeing how Crisis on Infinite Earths is part of the “dark era”. To me, it’s part of the pre-dark era. But I have said before that I consider The Elementals to be an early example of the dark era. I think Bill Willingham should be placed alongside Alan Moore and Frank Miller as one of the creators of the modern comic book dark era.
But getting back to the OP’s question, I’m not really sure we’re out of the dark era. It may have faded to a certain extent but that’s not surprising in a twenty-five year old movement. But I look at writers like Brian Michael Bendis, Warren Ellis, and Mark Millar and they all seem to be working in the dark era tradition. Somebody like Kurt Busiek, who isn’t part of the dark era school, isn’t really created a post-dark school as much as he’s going back to a pre-dark school.
Crisis is considered by many to be the beginning of the modern/dark era since it marks the end of “old” DC and the beginning of “modern” DC. Most of the new versions of heroes were much darker and grittier than their silver age origins. It’s also one of the first company crossovers (Secret Wars was first, but Crisis is closer to what most think of as a crossover) which are of course a driving force of modern comics.
The reason I’m suggesting that the “era” is over is simply because of how distinct it is from the comics of now, or even 10 years ago. The late 80’s and 90’s have a very distinct feel to them, and although the current comics are heavily influenced by this era, I feel that there is a distinct enough difference that we can separate them as different eras.
I disagree on both of these. Obviously it’s a subjective thing. But I feel Crisis on Infinite Earths was an attempt by DC to clean up its accumulated continuity - but as such it was looking backwards. Crisis on Infinite Earths was about fixing and preserving the past not abandoning that past and moving on to something different. I’d make the comparison to Marvels Ultimate line, where they explicitly just started everything over from zero and made no attempt to connect it to past Marvel continuity.
And speaking of which, if I’m reading old comic books, I can tell the stuff that’s written in 1982 from stuff that’s written in 1992. There was the big divide in the mid-eighties that you referred to. But if I’m reading stuff that’s written in 2012, I can’t necessarily differentiate it from stuff written in 1992 or 2002. I look at recent stuff like Ultimate X-Men or Authority or Powers or End League or Avengers Academy and I think there’s nothing here I couldn’t have seen being written twenty years ago.
I partially agree with your first point, I mentioned Crisis in the OP mostly since it’s more commonly noted as the end of the bronze age than the other two, even though I feel Watchmen is a far more important work.
On your second point, I suppose it depends entirely on the person reading it as well as what exactly they’re reading. In my personal experience and opinion (so a big YMMV on this) some 90’s material and some later material is almost indistinguishable in terms of feel. But on the other hand there’s a butt load of 90’s comics that has a very distinct look and feel. I’m talking stuff like Heroes Reborn or Newmen, and I think that a lot of mainstream comics from that era have at least some of that feel in them, enough that I can often notice it.
