The Iron Age of Comics

We’ve seen several different tellings of Batman’s origin in comics, movies, and TV since Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s 1987 masterpiece four-issue “Year One” arc (Batman #404-407), but many fans still consider this the definitive version of who he is and how he came to be. This episode takes a look at why this story is so highly regarded, and what distinguishes it from the other post-Crisis revamps we’ve talked about so far...

If you were reading comics in the ‘90s, you probably also read Wizard: a glossy magazine offering irreverent commentary along with news, interviews, and the latest up-to-date price guides. To many fans, Wizard was all the hilarity and fun of comic book culture wrapped between two covers and sealed in a polybag; to others, it was a symbol of everything wrong with the industry...

March having a fifth Wednesday in it throws off our usual "every other week" release schedule, but you can't get rid of us that easily! We pop in for a quick look ahead at the next three months of episodes, plus a promise to get to reading the five-star reviews you've so graciously been leaving us. All this plus a John Byrne joke to tide you over until our next full episode.

While many of DC’s other heavy hitters were massively revamped in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Green Lantern Hal Jordan received a comparatively modest tune-up to his origin story. But Emerald Dawn’s attempts to retrofit a Silver Age icon with personality flaws met with resistance from many diehard fans...

Spider-Man went through a lot of changes in the Iron Age, but not even the Clone Saga had as big an impact as getting married to Mary Jane Watson. What began as a multimedia PR stunt became a development that Marvel eventually felt it had to retcon out of existence entirely with “One More Day...

When DC decided its flagship character needed a top-to-bottom reboot for the post-Crisis era, they turned to superstar writer-artist John Byrne. The six-issue origin series The Man of Steel introduced a streamlined, modernized, and arguably “Marvelized” Superman, but many fans felt that it threw the baby out with the bathwater...

In 1992, Todd McFarlane and his fellow Marvel superstar creators jumped ship to found Image, creating a major independent alternative to the comics industry’s “Big Two.” In this episode, we examine how McFarlane’s most popular creation, the grim ‘n’ gritty supernatural vigilante called Spawn, became not just a sales phenomenon, but also an existential threat to the traditional way of superheroes throughout the Iron Age...

While DC was breaking new ground with the Crisis/Dark Knight/Watchmen trifecta, Marvel entered a paradigm shift of its own with the rise of superstar artists like Jim Lee. Under Lee’s creative direction, 1991’s X-Men #1 became the best-selling single comic book of all time - a record it still holds - but in the process drove away Chris Claremont, the writer who'd made the X-Men a phenomenon in the first place in his initial 17-year run...

From 1985 to 1987, DC released three groundbreaking series that kicked off the Iron Age and changed comics forever: Crisis on Infinite Earths by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez, The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, and Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. We’ll eventually do a deep dive on each one in turn, but our debut episode takes a high-level look at these three books as a collective phenomenon and examines the impact they had on the next 15 years of comics up through to today.

Have we really been living in "The Modern Age of Comics" for over three and a half decades now? Or can we identify a distinct historical age for the first 15 years or so? This introductory episode contains an overview of the so-called ages of (American superhero) comics, a mission statement for the podcast, and a chance to get to know your hosts better. (Think of it as our own exclusive Issue #0...