History of American Comics: Home

The history of American comics is, in many ways, the history of America in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Art reflects the culture that creates it and American comics have, for better and for worse, grown and regressed as a medium in response to the spirit of the times. As such, when we look at comics, we can map changes in how comics were published and the stories they told to various real world events, such as minority representation improving as the Civil Rights movement gained ground politically. 

For this reason, American comic history is usually examined as a series of ages. However, historians are just as prone to argument as comic book readers and there is as much disagreement over the names of the ages and what events started and ended the ages as there is over who would win in a fight; Captain America or Batman?

For the purposes of this guide and the accompanying videoes, the ages are defined as follows.
 

  1894-1938: The Platinum Age 
  1938-1956: The Golden Age
  1956-1970: The Silver Age
  1970-1986: The Bronze Age
  1986-2000: The Dark Age
  2000-2011: The Renaissance
  2011-Present: The Modern Age 

Pile Of Comics by Unknown. Released Free of Copyrights under Creative Commons.

Special thanks to Harvey Moreno of The Multiverse Comics, Collectibles & Games for agreeing to be interviewed as part of this project.