The history of American comic books is often sliced chronically into "ages' based on industry events that shaped them. Most historians believe in at least three common ages - Golden, Silver, and Bronze - with some slight changes here and there. After the Bronze Age, most believe we entered the Modern Age, but there's little agreement on whether or not that has ended. From our perspective, today's comics are very different from those we read in 2000. More importantly, an incredibly long timeline for the Modern Age makes stat tracking kind of awkward. As such, we have adopted our own set of comic ages on the League of Comic Geeks. They are as follows:

Before evolving into what we know of the American comic book today, many comics were originally created to be released within daily newspapers. During this time, many of the early comic book creators honed their skills and crafted the common components of comics such as speech/word balloons, multi-panel layouts, and more. Given the scarcity of the printings of the Platinum Age, League of Comic Geeks does not display this particular age for stat tracking.  

The release and success of Action Comics #1 was a pivotal point for the comic book industry. The debut of Superman created a superhero craze and significant sales growth market-wide as other publishers hoped to capitalize on its success.

For many comic book readers, the Silver Age was the birth and boom for many of the most iconic characters in comic books even today. Looking back on this era, it was a visionary time for comics, though naïve in its hope for the future. As such, comics also felt lighter, adventurous, but suited for younger readers. This is in large part due to the creation of the Comics Code Authority, regulating violence within comics.

Shifting into the 1970s, distribution of comic books began to focus more on the direct market as specialty shops took a larger portion of business with increased cover prices and catalog volume. By 1971, the Comics Code Authority relaxed their rules to allow stories to leverage topics of sex, drug use, and violence. As we saw with The Amazing Spider-Man #122, shocking deaths became a major component to storytelling. Then with "Demon in a Bottle" within Iron Man in 1979 dealing with alcoholism. Up until 1985, the industry only started to scratch the surface with stories exploring the reality and failings of humankind.

In 1986, comic books took a notably even darker tone starting with the release of The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen. There was also a greater emphasis on meta commentary, deconstructive stories, gritty and dystopian re-envisioning of the worlds they lived in. Then, in the 90s, this emphasis propelled many anti-hero characters to the forefront. Publishers and creators fought to appeal to a younger audience once again with new trends - cool anti-hero characters, high-stakes story arcs, and more. Readers had a wealth of titles to choose from.

In 2000, the Certified Guaranty Company (CGC) was born and influenced the popularization of "slabbing" valuable comics in plastic. The industry found significant opportunity in mining its back issues and capitalizing on speculation within the collectors' market. This pivot popularized releasing constant #1s to entice readers and simultaneously speculators. The "Plastic Age" as we'll call it, saw many reboots and relaunches to cater to this audience. Meanwhile, in film, the Marvel Cinematic Universe dominated the box office. This comic book movie boom led to many creators and new businesses seeing opportunity in developing projects to sell intellectual property, pushing the industry to an even higher volume of titles on shelves.

When the world was disrupted by a pandemic, many entertainment industries began to leverage digital solutions to create and distribute their products. Comic publishers shifted some of their catalog to digital and creators started Substacks to monetize content, while retailers struggled with the burdens of lockdown. Throughout, comic creators and readers dealt with the lack of social interaction by spending more time on social media platforms. In some ways, this brought creators and readers closer together. Yet, it also created more division. With society at each other's throats over lockdowns, politics, diversity, identity and other hot topics - it was only natural for creators to weave these topics into stories. After all, the medium has always had its finger on the pulse of what's going on in the world. The digital and social media emphasis within the industry makes this the "Pixel Age" in our opinion.

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In researching better suited comic ages for the League of Comic Geeks, we found a number of sources that helped inspire this new set of comic ages. If you're curious about how others slice the timeline of comics, check them out!