Any objections?

You can as far as i'm concerned.

I don't object.

What's the Atom Age?

You've never heard of Atom and Eve?

It was an experiment, but since no one ever posts in Atom we may as well combine them.

I am ok with it.

Good. Cause it kinda already happened.

Well probably a bit late but I think Atom Age deserves its own place. And yes, I have not been around but that is changing. So I may as well express myself.

If folks have to ask what Atom Age is, well, why even comment on it? There is little relationship between Atom Age and Golden Age.

GA was highlighted by superheroes. Yes, as in any age there were funny animlas, sci-fi, crime, romance, war, western and adventure. But the headliners were superheroes.

In the Atom Age most superhero books were dead. Horror was at the forefront along with more sophisticated sci-fi.

It was the Atom Age horror more than any other influence that created the Comics Code via the 1955 Senate Sub Committee hearing on the Impact of Comic Books on Juvenile Delinquincy.

And even after the Comics Code was in place, and some pre-code horror publishers went under, sci-fi and "fantasy" books still flourished. DC was one of the very few publishers sticking to superheroes through all of this.

The only relationship Gold Age has to Atom Age is that both can be seen as "old". Hell, why not just dump Platinum Age in the mix as well?

Why cater to uninformed opinion? (OK - that last bit may be seen as inflammatory!)

Hm, now we don't have an age for books from 1945 to 1956. If we're doing away with the Atom age, we need to extend the Golden age.

As a bit of background, the reason we did it was there was almost zero traffic in the Atom Age forum. There was some great content posted there, but then crickets in response.

So, the thinking was we could get better exposure for that material by including it with Golden Age.

And idealy call it something like Gold Age/Atom Age - 1938 to 1956

My comment was a quip about the traffic/visability to the section more so than a real question. However, I often ask myself "why even comment on it?", but it's usually after the fact and many days later.

For the record, which I failed to add earlier, I too think it should stay seperate from the GA. There is a "Chromium Age" listed also and both make this forum rather unique.

How about calling it... Books of the Golden Atom?

How about "Tales Of The Gold Monkey"? (my god, does anyone remember that show?

I do Loved that show...

Me, too.

I remember it also. And speaking of monkeys, remember in the 60's when DC would put some form of an ape on a cover becouse they would sell more copies?

I also think that Atom should be separate, but in reality, with no one visiting that section of the forum, there wasn't much point in keeping it apart from GA.

Mike

Ironically, this thread is getting more posts than the entire Atom Age section ever did!

As the Wise One said: "You miss that of which you were deprived only after said deprivation deprives you of that."

Perhaps, we made a mistake in removing the Atom age. Maybe Steve could bring it back. Last I checked, we had room for it. Maybe Pov could then start a thread to educate people about the Atom age.

But again, if POV is one of the only people there posting, does it really change anything? I think it make perfect sense to have them combined and simply adjust the title as POV suggested earlier: Golden Age & Atomic Age. For my part, I've always seen the Atomic Age as a subset of the greater Golden Age which paved the way for the Silver Age in a similar way that we use the same term Renaissance literature to include the Italian Renaissance (which began around the first decade of the 1300s) as well as the English Renaissance (which didn't end up happening until the early 1500s). Very different branches of literature that look and behave differently, but they still fall under this umbrella term. Same applies for the first half and second half of the Golden Age of comics.

I define the ages by the popularity of super-heroes:

Golden Age = Super-Heroes
Atom Age = Non-Super-Hero
Silver Age = Super-Heroes
Bronze Age = Non-Super-Hero
Copper Age = Super-Heroes
Modern Age = Non-Super-Hero

Super-Heroes are, of course, always present in each age, but their relative popularity goes up and down. We are probably now in the greatest age for non-super hero comics (especially in graphic novels which seem to be almost all non-SH). I was thinking that the super-hero movie craze of the last few years might start a resurgence in super-hero comics, but have started to believe they are finished for good. With kids pretty much excluded from the comic market except for the Archies in the supermarket check out line, the sequential art medium is moving to adults = graphic novels with adult themes.

Mike

On this I must disagree as regards comic books. I cannot speak for the Renaissance except to say that, as an Italian, we were always ahead of the curve!

But I will be elaborating on the whole Atom Age thang soon. It is intriquing. And I am perfectly happy seeing Gold Age/Atom Age 1938-1955 as a heading.

Here's the problem as I see it: Run a survey of comic shop owners and common collectors about which they know about--Golden Age and Atomic Age. I think you'll find most will recognize GA far more often than AA. Now, I'm not necessarily saying we need to pander to the masses, but we also want to employ terminology that most people will understand.

It's for this reason that we can refer to Dante's "Inferno" and Shakespeare as both Renaissance. If I was to run around referring to specific literary periods that only Literature specialists used, it might make me sound like I was "particularly knowledgeable" about a niche field, but I'd probably lose a few people in the process. I know that for much of the literary work done on comics, there are few of the academics who make the distinction--though they do point out the shift in comics' focus by the end of WWII up until the early SA. I DO understand, however, that comic scholars and comic collectors are not necessarily the same thing and therefore don't necessarily have to use the same language. I also know some academics like to differentiate themselves from others by redefining boundaries of previous concepts (for whatever reasons).

But at the end of the day, it's as others pointed out: That forum simply wasn't getting much traffic and it kind of looks silly to have a bunch of forums and only a few being used. It makes more sense to have a smaller number of forums that are tightly organized and better populated.

(And POV, as you know, I'm not picking a fight Just having morning coffee and chatting a bit)

Are you nuts?! Anyone that knows me from CGC boards knows I can be tenacious in online "discussions", with my opponent often conceding by my simply wearing them down. Yes, a hollow victory at times.

But a hollow victory is still preferable over a dense defeat.

Whie I disagree with the idea that the Atom Age is under the Gold Age umbrella, I really do see no reason the two can be combined, with the title giving equal billing to both ages. As has been pointed out, given the apparent lack of traffic in an Atom Age specific forum, the combined forums may attract and perhaps introduce more folk to the AA.