Talk:Silver Age of Comic Books/GA1

GA Review
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This article is under review. ShaShaJackson (talk) 03:52, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm having trouble interpreting these results... BOZ (talk) 04:40, 1 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment: I'm just doing a drive-by comment here, having stumbled across this GA nom by way of the reviewer's talk page, so this comment shouldn't be taken to be part of the actual review or an objection under the GA criteria or anything. :-) In any case, I had a quick look at the citations in the article and was left with the impression that they were all mostly from various web sites and such. I wonder, can any relevant sources be found from academic (peer-reviewed) journals or books published on university presses? At least the definition of the term Silver Age of Comic Books would benefit from citation to a more traditional reliable source. For instance, I know there's a Journal of Popular Culture that would seem a good bet for this kind of thing. Anyways, best of luck on your GA nom; I'm sure the reviewer will be along shortly to flesh out his review. --Xover (talk) 05:51, 2 February 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed my checklist reference at the top. It seems to have confused one reader! For me, the article is demonstrating some well written prose. At "History:Beginning" I'm wondering if a " belongs at the end of the very last sentence. Noticed another typo and lost track of it. I suggest taking this article to a member at the Comics Project for copyedit before pursuing GA status. Agree with Xover on reliable sources. Remove the article from the nomination list, consult  reliable sources, rewrite the lead as you mentioned you planned to do, have a Comics Project member copyedit the entire article, give it a thorough reading to satisfy yourself everything is shipshape, and renominate. This is an important topic and needs the very best and the most thorough attention. Good luck!ShaShaJackson (talk) 09:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Pete Coogan and others discuss the ages at this web-link: http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/public/default.asp?t=1&m=1&c=34&s=265&ai=44354&arch=y&ssd=10/18/2003%2012:01:00%20PM Coogan is an academically published author in the field, so this stuff is somewhat reliable. His book Superhero: The Secret Origin of a Genre revises his dissertation from which the link I just gave uses an extract from. A couple of articles of interest from the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMIC ART are:

Lewis, A. David. "One for the Ages: Barbara Gordon and the (Il-)Logic of Comic Book Age-Dating." *IJOCA*. v5 n2, Fall 2003. 296 - 3111.

Woo, Benjamin. "An Age-Old Problem: Problematics of Comic Book Historiography." *IJOCA*. v10 n1, Spring 2008.

From what I know, they take the view that it's hard to quantify these definitions though. Woo pretty much demolishes their use, I think. I think the V&A has these, I don't know about State-side readers, anyone with library access or at uni? Phil Sandifer might be able to help here. I'd also note that some view the silver age as ending with to Kirby leaving Marvel for DC, while others point to Crisis and Secret Wars, so that perhaps needs to be sourced and added. I appreciate the latter has implications for a bronze age, but like I say, there are issues with these terms. But it depends how you look at it. It tends to be the maturity of art and writing. Might be worth a little summary of how the silver age affected other genres, it's worth remembering war comics were resurgent as well, but romance comics were pretty much killed off. Per the NPOV policy, we need to reflect all that a little better, if you ask me. I think the article is in good nick, to be honest, but it needs a little re-balancing. It certainly details the fan origins of the term extremely well. The earliest occurrence of the term in print is currently thought to be in the fanzine Rocket's-Blast Comicollector #73, July 1970, where it was included in a list of terms used by collectors, so it was currency before that. Hiding T 13:54, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Couple of quotes from Les Daniels: "Comic book fans from the baby boomer generation believe that the late 1950s and early 1960s constituted a Silver Age ... an era of superheroes defined ... in terms of such characters. Genres such as comedy and romance would gradually be phased out ... comics became highly specialized." and "The primary architect of the Silver Age (was DC) editor Julius Schwartz". Daniels, Les Sixty Years of the World's Favourite Comic Book Heroes (Virgin Books) Hiding T 14:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, here's a link which describes the death of Gwen Stacey as the end of the silver age. Haven't time to add it to the article now. . There's a feeling that these ages transition into one another, rather than that there is onw defining moment, but I can't source anything right now to support that. Hiding T 14:51, 4 February 2009 (UTC) One last thing, could we get a point about the artistic and authorial shifts into the lead? I have copyedited the article, fixed the two issue I found. Hiding T 14:53, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Given the sources about whether there are comic ages would it be worth having an overview articles "Ages in comic books" or "History of comics" or some such, looking at whether it is legitimate, and what people consider the start and end. It is valid information and seems best suited to an overview article. (Emperor (talk) 15:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC))
 * Certainly an overview would be a good idea. If I ever get access to the articles I'll see what seems most useful where.  I think, given the comments above, it would be nice to add cites to them in this article as well, just to beef it up as it were and to meet WP:NPOV. The general scholarly view is that these terms exist, and they're useful enough for a variety of reasons, and there's no real issue with them which doesn't apply to any other term, such as "the dark ages", "the renaissance" or "post-modernism".  The problem is, I can't cite a paper or book on that, just email conversation, which is useless. If I can find the paper Trina Robbins wrote, that might help, but I think that was specific to the Golden Age.  She was going to define it along the lines we've sourced here, and she'd probably pass the unwritten rule about reliable sources. Hiding T 09:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Have found a university published work which defines Silver Age. Hope that now means this article can be a GA. Hiding T 14:52, 5 February 2009 (UTC)