73 Years In Comics Part I: Golden & Silver Age

by Denis Hundhausen

Please note: This is part 1 of 3, dealing with the years 1939-1973. Part Two will be published August 24th, Part Three on September 1st. Once all three parts are published, the article will be avaiable for download. A german version is to follow.

Introduction

Mainstream superhero comics have a long history – going all the way back to 1939. A lot of things can happen in 73 years: many events in the outside world, many changes in fashion, music and art and many political decisions may trigger certain reflections in comic book. And, comic books themselves may trigger changes in said fashions, arts and general taste. Comic books with their sequential character are published monthly or even weekly, thus allowing them to react to recent events shortly after.

This article is an attempt to be a timeline of important events, critically acclaimed storylines and important buisness decisions in comic books, trying to determine all those changes comics have gone through, to find certain trigger events or starting as well as ending points for eras.

Imitation as reminiscence (engl.)

by Denis Hundhausen

Please note: This is the slightly altered translated version of the german article I published here a few weeks back. The original can be found here. Unfortunately the image captions couldn't be altered and remain  german (translations below image).

Introduction

It is no secret that comic artists sometimes honor the geniusses of their genre with their own work. One may often find references to famous covers, artwork or scenes in or on recent comic panels or covers[1].
But as of late there was a certain kind of phenomenon to be seen: Flashbacks within a story as imitations of another artist's style to set the flashback in a certain time.
This works as follows: Every comic artist of course has a certain style of his own, some of which gave distinction to an whole era of comics or are a representative for such an era (examples to follow).
If the recent comic artists wishes to make clear that the flashback takes place in a certain era, he can achieve this effect by imitating the style of this era's most prominent artist.
How exactly this works and if this phenomenon only works on the level of image (or the story level as well) will be topic of this essay - on the example of Stormwatch #44[1]. Please note that I will be referring to the German issue of "Stormwatch". Hence, the number of the issue in the foot notes and list of illustrations is "Stormwatch #5" and not #44, since it was published in Germany by that issue number.