The secret of the Silver Age [Comic Trivia]
Thomas Sr. (Captain Collector)Last updated: 9 May 2019 approx. 2 min read
With the comic Showcase #4 from September 1956, featuring the first appearance of the “Silver Age” Flash, the ominous Silver Age of the superheroes begins. At least that is how many people in the comic scene accept it from today’s perspective.
Silver Age of comics
But around 5 more years would pass before Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, with their brilliant move, sent their Fantastic Four into the throng of superhero universes. And that changed everything. Nothing was the same afterwards. This first issue of the F4 is likewise regarded by many fans as the beginning of the Silver Age, at least as far as Marvel Comics are concerned. Marvel’s First Family, as the four are affectionately called, shook up the comic scene enormously.
But until that point, at rival DC Comics long-known and long-proven superhero veterans such as Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and other revived and redefined comic characters of the 1940s romped in bright colours on the magazine racks. Do not forget: back then there were no comic shops yet (for a long time!). And the fastest of them all was and is the Flash!
When was the Silver Age?
And how long did the Silver Age actually last? Quite simply: it was over at around 1970. So if you keep as a rule of thumb that the Silver Age stands for the 1960s, you are not wrong. The rest is in the detail. All this dividing into different eras always happens in hindsight anyway, to give a better overview. Back then nobody talked about collecting comics from the Silver Age.
The term goes back to a reader’s letter in a comic from 1966, in which the writer enthused about the new upswing of superhero comics and spoke of the “Silver Sixties”. The first successful superhero wave of the 1940s, the Golden Age, was over after all. So after gold, “silver” had to follow. Within a very short time the term became “Silver Age”. The rest is history.
Did you know that DC stands for Detective Comics? It is merely an abbreviation, but it soon stood as a synonym for the publisher National Periodicals, where Superman and Batman appeared.
Captain Collector’s subtle superhero trivia
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