After the Bronze Age of comics came the Copper Age, which are the bestest (to me).

Here is a thread to talk about when superhero comics left behind their pathetically childlike sense of adventure, and embraced the glorious darkness that better suits the superhero archetype, while also luxuriating in the comforting complexity of the characters' labyrinthine continuity.

What years are the copper age? I don’t think I read many super hero comics in that era.

I think they refer specifically to the Liefeld books published between 1990 and 1997.

I'd peg it at around 1984 to 1997, give or take.

You heard it here first — Doot is into pegging.

I think it should be the publication of Watchmen (1986) to the beginning of the Marvel Knights line (maybe 1998 or 1999).

My thinking is only a few meters away from yours. I chose '84 since it's roughly the start of Moore's Swamp Thing run, and 1997 because it's kind of halfway between Marvel's bankruptcy and the start of Marvel Knights leading to the company quasi-reinventing itself.

DC was on fire in ‘84-‘86. I read a lot of their super hero books those years. I read the Cap, Iron Man, FF and Thor books that came out of Heroes Return for a bit. I barely remember them now, but I recall Claremont getting Sue Storm some martial arts training and her learning to make invisible ninja weapons? I remember the art was generally really good, but not digging the lettering or colours, or the way they uglied up the cover art with shitty logos, texts and banners.

I wouldn't know how to find the exact quote, but one of Byrne's repeated rants on his site is when he talks about how there was a fleeting moment when everything was perfectly assigned at Marvel: Stern and Buscema on Avengers; Miller on DD; Simonson on Thor; Claremont on X-Men; and himself on FF, of course, second only to Lee and Kirby, in all modesty. He talks about how it was a great moment that unfortunately didn't last long. I was curious to see just how long it lasted, so I looked into it. First thing I realized is that he must be referring to the "Born Again" phase when he includes Miller on DD, because the original Miller run of Daredevil has no overlap with Simonson being on Thor. So, that made it easy to pin down, because "Born Again" was only seven issues ... although Miller is credited as a co-writer on one issue before "Born." So that makes it an eight-month span. Ignoring deceptive cover dates and looking at the actual months of the comics' release, we're looking at:

September of 1985 -- DD 226, written by O'Neil and Miller

to

April of 1986 -- DD 233 final issue of Miller and Mazz's "Born Again"

Oddly enough this puts Byrne's mini-second-Golden Age right smack in the era of "Secret Wars II," which is like one of the worst pieces of sh*t ever. But, despite that, there was some good stuff coming out in these eight months. To Byrne's list of good creator/character matches (he doesn't always include Claremont on X-Men 'cause sometimes he's being a bitch when he goes on this rant, but sometimes he does!) ... I would also add: Mark Gruenwald on Captain America. Cap's being so square-jawed, patriotic and flawless makes him almost like a DC character, and Byrne always said Gruenwald would have been a better fit for DC (he was a dear, DEAR friend, but still ...). So Gruenwald on Cap fits very well. Also this was when Jim Owsley became editor on the Spider-titles for a bit, and was getting Peter David to write some Spidey comics. Byrne would never include that on his list, but I will include it here. Also at the same time as "Born Again," Byrne wrote and drew Hulk for six months. Byrne's writing sucks but his art is a good fit for Hulk, so let's throw that in the mix as well. So during this eight month period you had ...

Miller and Mazz on DD (issues 226-233)
Byrne on FF (issues 285-292)
Byrne on Hulk (only six months, issues 314-319)
Claremont and Romita Jr. on X-Men (issues 200-207, plus some annuals and specials by CC and drawn by Paul Smith and Art Adams)
Stern, Buscema and Palmer on Avengers (issues 262-269)
Simonson on Thor (issues 362-369)
Mark Gruenwald and Paul Neary on Captain America (issues 312-320) (according to Mike's Amazing World, nine issues shipped over this eight-month span)
Jim Owsley editing the Spider-Man titles ("Amazing" was by DeFalco -- PUKE -- but on Spec and Web there was work by Peter David, Marc Silvestri, and Kyle Baker, plus Ows himself)

Was this the peak of Shooter's work as editor in chief, getting this lineup all happening at the same time, month after month for 2/3 of a year?

I have a whole thread about Claremont's FF!

Yeah, with "Heroes Reborn" and "Heroes Return" it was the first time a lot of classic long-running series were canceled and then re-started with new Number Ones, which is another reason I thought it made a good cutoff point. It definitely marked the start of a new gimmick that has never gone away, the "cancellation-followed-by-immediate-relaunch" gambit.

All about Sue Storm's invisible sais.

(IfyouknowwhatImean)

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=113641

When was Waid’s FF? I really liked that.

Would Marvel's brief flirtation with new looks for its frontline characters -- black Spider-Man, grey Hulk, armoured Thor, silver/red Iron Man -- be considered the end of the Bronze Age or the beginning of the Copper Age?

That’s a good idea.

Definitely during the Quesada/Jemas reign, which I think has to be considered post-Copper Age, by any standard.

Black Spidey was 1984, Grey Hulk was 1986. So it's all circling around that same area. (My favorite, Pineapple Thing, was not until '87 or '88.)

But Black Spidey was the start of the trend, and that corresponds very closely with Alan Moore's Swamp Thing revamp. So ... there ya go.

There.

Ya go.

I think Steve Rogers put on his black suit and became "The Captain" in '87.)

(Iron Man and Thor, I gots no idea.)

FF #60-#70, #500-#524.
2002 - 2005

Add Crisis on Infinite Earths ran from April 1985 to March 1986
Watchmen Sept 1986-Aug 1987
Dark Knight Returns - February - June 1986
Secret Wars was earlier, but aside from Shooter imposing Editorial fiat on books (FF / Spider-Man), I don't know if it really impacted what Marvel was doing. But the exodus to DC was huge.

So, IMO, the birth of the Copper Age, if that's what we're going to go with, is somewhere in the first calendar quarter of 1986. Marvel's last gasp from the great bronze age creators you listed crumbled, the Dark Knight set the tone for the future, and Crisis ended (ha ha, he laughed) the Multiverse in DC Comics. I could even propose that the Bronze Age died with Barry Allen in Crisis 8, and the Copper Age was born a couple months later with DKR # 1.

I read a lot of the relaunches at DC,but I was never a WW or Superman fan, and the relaunches didn't change that. Batman went dark, although the movie finally got me to tie into his books, that was years later. I hated that Crisis killed the All-Star Squadron, and the JSA, It wrecked the Legion for almost all time (Waid's run excepted). And while I do get that Crisis and the relaunch did help reinvigorate DC, even as a young teenager, I could tell that DC was going to reuse strategy this again in future, to diminishing returns.

I wasn't reading anything but the X-titles at Marvel, so I'm not sure at the time how good their other books were. I did read the runs you list well after the fact, and they were great, but most of those ended in 1986

I think the next two superhero "eras" are more easy to define, as
Image Launched in April, 1992
and The Ultimates launched in March, 2002

and that's really where I stopped paying attention to eras, as everything since then just strikes me as a long slow decline into tail swallowing irrelevancy.

I'll be quite curious to see what I missed in the second half of the 80s that don't touch on the artists you list, and the birth of Vertigo.

This makes sense for me. That's as solid a demarcation point as any other (probably more so).

I don't consider Image an entirely new era -- going by what you saw, that would mean the Copper Age lasts only 6 years, from '86-'92. If Image means the launch of a new era, then I'd probably just have Watchmen and Crisis as the climax of the Bronze Age and start a Copper / Image Age in 1991 with the release of McFarlane's Spider-Man #1 -- or maybe even earlier, with ASM #300 (Venom) in 1989 and New Mutants #87 (Cable) in 1990.

Aa far as the Ultimates -- it's in a new era, but that era probably started when Quesada and Palmiotti launched Marvel Knights and ushered in a newer, more modern approach to comics with some of the indie stars they recruited to Marvel, including Kevin Smith, Brian Bendis, David Mack, etc. If you're going with the style of writing in the Ultimates, I'd say you'd still have to go back earlier to Warren Ellis on StormWatch, The Authority, and Planetary. All that stuff is in the late 90s -- Ellis on StormWatch in 1996, Marvel Knights launches 1998, and The Authority and Planetary launches in 1999.

You've also got some other events in that timeframe that foreshadow the approach to come in the new millenium of leaving the mainstream 80s / Image approach behind. You've got the trend towards going darker, more violent, and more shocking with the Warren Ellis WildStorm material, Garth Ennis Preacher, Kevin Smith Daredevil, etc. and then you've got the "reconstruction" efforts that lean into brighter, more optimistic heroes with a healthy helping of meta-fiction in Grant Morrison's JLA relaunch (1996), the Heroes Return relaunch in 1997 (Waid Cap, Busiek Iron Man and Avengers), and Alan Moore's Tom Strong / ABC line in 1999. (Though some of this approach is seen in Robinson's Starman relaunch in 1994, as comics is starting to move away from the Image sensibilities.)

We can certainly keep talkin' about start and end dates if we like, but the point of my starting the thread was just a place to talk about comics from the era if we feel like it, since we have one for the Bronze Age. Copper is the stuff I personally feel the most connection too and/or nostalgia for, the sweet spot being 84 to 89.

Also I wanted a place to bring up that Byrne post about the "brief shining moment" era he mentions, which turns out to be late 85 to early 86, and ask if anyone agrees that it is a peak point of the Shooter era. Or does Secret Wars 2 cast too dark a shadow on it?