Bronze Age of Comic Books - End of The Bronze Age

End of The Bronze Age

The end of the Bronze Age is debated, and some do not believe it ended at all. Like the beginning, the exact date is uncertain, and not every single comic book may be said to have exited the Bronze Age at exactly the same date.

One commonly used ending point for the Bronze Age is the 1985-1986 time frame. As with the Silver Age, the end of the Bronze Age relates to a number of trends and events that happened at around the same time. At this point, DC Comics completed its special event, Crisis on Infinite Earths which marked the revitalization of the company's product line to become a serious market challenger to Marvel again. This time frame also includes the company's release of the highly acclaimed works, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, which redefined the superhero genre and inspired years of "grim and gritty" comic books.

At Marvel Comics, the commonly used milestone marking the end of the Bronze Age is Secret Wars, although this could be extended to 1986 which saw the cancellation of Defenders and Power Man and Iron Fist, as well as the launch of the New Universe and X-Factor (extension of the X-Men franchise).

After the Bronze Age came the Modern Age of Comic Books, alternatively referred to as the Dark Age of Comic Books. According to Shawn O'Rourke of PopMatters, the shift from the previous ages involved a "deconstructive and dystopian re-envisioning of iconic characters and the worlds that they live in", as typified by Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen (1986–1987). Other features that define the era are an increase in adult oriented content, the rise of the X-Men as Marvel Comics' "dominant intellectual property", and a reorganization in the industry's distribution system. These changes would also lead to the appearance of new independent comic book publishers in the early 1990s - such as Image Comics, with titles like Spawn and Savage Dragon which also boasted a darker, sarcastic and more mature approach to superhero storylines.