Silver Age Comics
THERE was a time when superheroes looked as though they might disappear altogether. After the extraordinary popularity of costumed crime-fighters during the 1930s and 1940s, public tastes changed. By the early 1950s, readers in the United States were increasingly turning towards horror, westerns, romance, crime and science fiction, while many of the caped heroes who had flourished during the Second World War slipped quietly from the newsstands.
Then, in 1956, a man in a bright red costume started running.
His name was The Flash, and his arrival helped begin one of the most imaginative periods in popular culture: the Silver Age of Comic Books.
Comic historians usually date the Silver Age from the mid-1950s until around 1970, although — as with most cultural eras — there is no universally agreed finishing line. Its most commonly accepted starting point is Showcase #4, published by DC Comics in 1956, which introduced scientist Barry Allen as an entirely new version of the Flash.
The original Flash, Jay Garrick, had been a hero of the 1940s. Barry Allen had a new identity, a streamlined costume and an origin rooted firmly in the Atomic Age: a laboratory accident involving lightning and chemicals gave him fantastic speed.
It was an inspired idea. Rather than simply bringing old characters back, DC began reinventing them for a generation fascinated by rockets, atoms, space travel and the possibilities of science.
Green Lantern returned not as the magically powered Alan Scott of the 1940s but as test pilot Hal Jordan, recruited into an enormous intergalactic Green Lantern Corps. Other characters including the Atom and Hawkman received similarly modern makeovers.
Behind much of this revival was editor Julius Schwartz, who recognised that science fiction could provide superheroes with a new vocabulary for a new age.
The heroes soon began meeting one another. In 1960, The Brave and the Bold #28 introduced the Justice League of America, bringing together characters including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman and Martian Manhunter. The idea of a shared fictional universe, in which heroes might visit one another’s adventures and join forces against spectacular threats, became increasingly important.
And then Marvel entered the picture.
In 1961, writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby launched Fantastic Four #1. Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm acquired extraordinary powers after exposure to cosmic rays, but these were superheroes with a difference. They argued. They became jealous. They worried about money, relationships and their appearance. Ben Grimm — the Thing — did not necessarily consider his transformation a blessing at all.
The Fantastic Four helped establish what became known as the Marvel Age of Comics, and the characters who followed would transform the industry.
In 1962 came perhaps the most important superhero creation of the entire Silver Age. Spider-Man, created by Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15. Beneath the mask was Peter Parker, an awkward teenager whose problems did not disappear simply because he could climb walls. He worried about school, money, girls and his elderly Aunt May while struggling with the consequences of his own decisions.
Superheroes had previously included teenage sidekicks. Spider-Man was different: the teenager was the hero.
Readers responded. Peter Parker might possess extraordinary abilities, but he frequently felt remarkably ordinary. That combination would help turn Spider-Man into one of the most internationally recognisable fictional characters ever created.
Marvel’s extraordinary run continued. The Hulk appeared in 1962, followed by Thor, Iron Man, Doctor Strange, The Avengers and The X-Men. Daredevil arrived in 1964. In 1966, Lee and Kirby introduced Black Panther in Fantastic Four #52, the king and protector of the technologically advanced African nation of Wakanda.
The Silver Age became a playground of enormous ideas.
Heroes travelled between dimensions, shrank to microscopic size, journeyed through time and encountered alien civilisations. Entire planets could be threatened between breakfast and dinner. Marvel introduced Galactus, a cosmic being capable of consuming worlds, together with his enigmatic herald the Silver Surfer. DC explored parallel Earths and alternative versions of its heroes, ideas that helped establish the concept of the comic-book multiverse decades before the word became familiar to cinema audiences.
One particularly important moment came with The Flash #123 in 1961. In the story commonly known as ‘Flash of Two Worlds’, Barry Allen encountered Jay Garrick — the 1940s Flash — on another Earth. Instead of discarding its earlier heroes, DC had found a wonderfully comic-book solution: both generations could exist, simply on different Earths.
Suddenly, almost anything was possible.
Silver Age comics also possessed a visual identity that remains instantly recognisable. Covers screamed for attention with enormous lettering, astonishing predicaments and questions that seemed impossible to ignore. Could Superman really reveal his secret identity? Why was Batman wearing a completely different costume? Had the Fantastic Four turned against one another? Was Spider-Man trapped with no possible means of escape?
The answer was usually inside — and that was precisely the point.
Yet the exuberance of the Silver Age existed partly because comics were operating under unusually restrictive conditions. Public anxiety about juvenile delinquency and comic-book content during the 1950s contributed to the creation of the Comics Code Authority, whose rules greatly limited subjects such as horror, crime, sexuality and violence. Publishers therefore found increasingly inventive ways of creating excitement within those boundaries. The result was an era filled with science-fiction concepts, spectacular supervillains and wildly imaginative situations.
Look back from the 21st Century and not everything has aged equally well. Women and minority characters were often given limited roles, while some depictions reflected racial and cultural stereotypes of their period. The industry was overwhelmingly dominated by male creators and executives. Part of appreciating comic-book history is recognising both its extraordinary creativity and the society from which it emerged.
Nor was the Silver Age a worldwide label in quite the same way. It refers primarily to the history of the American comic-book industry. Britain, continental Europe, Japan and other parts of the world were developing their own distinctive comic traditions at the same time. British readers had The Beano, The Dandy and Eagle; Franco-Belgian comics produced characters such as Tintin, Asterix and the Smurfs; while Japanese manga was developing on an enormous scale.
What made the American Silver Age global was what happened afterwards.
The characters created or reinvented during these years escaped from the printed page. Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Barry Allen’s Flash and Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern became television stars, toys, games, cartoons and eventually the foundations of billion-dollar international film franchises.
A child discovering Spider-Man in Mumbai, Cardiff, Sydney, São Paulo or Tokyo today is therefore encountering the descendant of an idea first printed on inexpensive paper more than sixty years ago.
By around 1970, comics were beginning to change again. Stories gradually became darker and more socially conscious, restrictions weakened, horror returned and a new generation of writers and artists emerged. Historians generally describe the period that followed as the Bronze Age of Comics.
But the Silver Age never really disappeared.
Every time superheroes meet in a shared universe, every time a film introduces another parallel reality, every time Peter Parker worries about ordinary life while possessing extraordinary powers, and every time a group of wildly different characters join together to save the world, echoes of the Silver Age are there.
The comics themselves could be colourful, strange, occasionally ridiculous and wonderfully optimistic. Their creators worked with ink, paper, tight deadlines and seemingly limitless imagination.
What they produced was something much bigger.
They created much of the modern superhero universe — and the whole world is still exploring it.