Comics are referred to by Age. We’ve had the Golden Age and the Silver Age.
What would the next Age be? Has this Age already occured and is nameless, or is this Age yet to be conjured up by future generations?
Perhaps the RetCon Age? 
I’ve seen reference to the “Dark Age,” named from Batman’s “The Dark Knight Returns” in 1986. It seems to be the current mode of superhero (last I looked): moody, haunted, just this side of psychotic, etc.
The '70s were often referred to as the Bronze Age. When Jack Kirby left Marvel in 1970, most fans and critics agree that event ended the Silver Age.
Depending on who you ask and what they like or dislike, either the '80s (with Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns) or the early '90s (with gimmicks, speculators, market saturation, and the rise of “style over substance”) are known as the Dark Age.
I’d say comics are better today than they have been since the mid-'80s, but nobody has named the present era yet.
I vote for Peter David’s nomination of “Mess Age.”
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Because a lot of comics in this period are defined by the social messages they were making.
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Because a lot of “heroes” in this period were admired for how big of a body-count mess they left in their wake.
Technically, I believe it goes as follows:
Platinum Age (1897 - 1937)
Golden Age (1938 - 1955)
Silver Age (1956 - 1969)
Bronze Age (1970 - 1979)
Modern Age (1980 - Present)
Don’t know what the Modern Age will eventually “become”, but here’s another vote for “Mess Age”. I stopped collecting years ago.
The terms Golden Age and Silver Age refer specifically to trends in superhero comics.
The start of the Golden Age is unanimously agreed to be Action Comics #1 and the first appearance of Superman. The superhero explosion that resulted lasted through the war years, but superheroes began to fall out of favor after the war. Hard to pinpoint an exact ending date, but a common consense is 1947, when All-Star Comics (the home of comics first superteam, the Justice Society of America) became All-Star Western.
The near-universal agreed on starting point for the the Silver Age is Showcase #4 in 1956, the first appearance of Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash (Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash had been in limbo since that final issue of All-Star Comics 9 years ealier.) After a decade when crime, horror, westerns, romances, and funny animals (everything but superheroes) had been the dominant genres, superheroes came back with a vengeance.
When the Silver Age ends is a matter of contention. By the late 60s, there had been a few sea changes in in the comics world.
-A new generation of creators started coming into prominence. The big name writers, artists, and editors of the Silver Age (Kirby, Lee, Schwartz, Kane, Infnatino, Kubert, Anderson, Swan, Ditko, Wesienger, Fox, Broome, etc.) were industry veterans and almost all of them had worked on the suerhero comics of the Golden Age. For years, the field had been something of a closed shop, with very little room for newcomers to break in. However, two things happened in the late 60s that paved the way for a new generation of creators (O’Neill, Adams, Thomas, Windsor-Smith, etc.), who had grown up as fans of comic books, to break in.
- Marvel expanded their line, almost doubling the number of titles they published.
- DC gave a bunch of its veterans pink slips after they banded together and asked for health care and retirement benefits.
-Superhero comics began to slump. With the growing popularity of Marvel and the smash success of the Batman TV show, everyone jumped on the superhero bandwagon in the 60s. Even Dell and Harvey. However, after the cancellation of Batman in '68, the wheels began to fall off. 2nd-tier publishers that had relied on superhero lines (Charlton, Mighty, Tower) either retooled or went under. Publishers thinking that this was the late 40s all over again began diversifying their lines, casting about for the next big thing.
-Comic readers were staying with their hobby longer. The conventional wisdom was that you had a comic book reader for 3-5 years and they would gravitate away from comics around age 12. But by the late 60s, it was’t unusual to find comic readers on college campuses and Stan Lee was a popular lecturer on the univeristy circuit. Stories began to get more intricate and include more complex themes. A relaxing of the Comics Code in the early 70s allowed for stories dealing with issues such as drug addiction and revival of the horror genre.
All that being said, there are quite a few proposed ending points for the Silver Age. I can’t give exact dates for these events, though.
-Jack Kirby leaves Marvel for DC. 'Nuff Said.
-Green Lantern/Green Arrow #76. The space-faring Green Lantern acqired a new co-star, a young new creative team (O’Neill/Adams), and a new direction based more on dealing with social problems than supervillains. Thus enters relevance.
-The death of Gwen Stacy in Amazing Spider-Man. The end of innocence.
-Conan #1. The biggest success of the 70s titles (until new X-Men). Symbolic of the search for success outside of superheroes, and the increasing violence and sex allowed under the code.
Some people consider 1986 (Crisis on Infinite Earths, Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns) to be the end of the Silver Age. Ridiculous IMHO, since this makes the Silver Age 30 years long and there are far too many changes and shifts in the industry over that time for thematic consistency.