User blog comment:Nausiated/The Golden Age of Comics? It wasn't that golden../@comment-821340-20110406010336/@comment-61022-20110406225838

I'm also going to agree with M1Shawn about what made heroes then in the 1930's, and what makes heroes now.. Or even during the Silver Age during the 1960's through 1970's. The hero dynamic changed a lot. I don't think a lot of it had to do with the advent of the CAC in the 50's either. It was just our definition of the hero changed.

The amount of states that considered capital punishment went down over those two decades. The idea of killing another person became less acceptable. Especially after the late 60's and early 70's with the hippie movement and after Vietnam.

Keep in mind that the writers were targeting their material at the younger generation. So the heroes had to be reflective of that.

You got grittier characters like the Punisher that cropped up in the late 70's and all the mindless gun toting vigilantees that got popular near the end of the 80's and most of the 90's...

I think really, what the problem with the lack of characters being killed off -- especially major characters (unless they are brought back as soon as possible) is that the medium has become too commercial. And that's been the way it's been even before Marvel was bought by Disney.

They're digging around to find ways to revive older characters -- probably because it's cheaper... I think the reviving of a lot of 40's characters in the past few years has as much to do with revitalizing old properties than it had to do with Marvel's 70th anniversary.

As for the constant events that happen. Well I don't really see how that's different than Marvel has done for the past 25-30 years. Since the 80's every summer has had one of those cross-title events.

I think the difference now is that instead of an event *suddenly* happening, they are integrating it by means of story telling by building up to it. It's built up in one title (or several related titles) and then BLAM big cross-over. House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk, Siege -- these are all prime examples. The point of the cross over is to get people interested in other characters. I've noticed that with every major cross over they've used it to spring board new series (Heroes for Hire in Civil War, Incredibly Hercules in World War Hulk, etc. etc.)

It seems more frequent because they have prepared months in advance, and the reading audience knows months in advance that something big is happening from Previews, or Marvel online, or Wizard (if they still print Wizard) I think it seems like these cross-overs happen more frequently, but really I don't think they have.

They've just got "better" at doing it.

To put it in perspective of a new reader for example... I started reading comics in the early 90's. I started reading X-Men because of the Saturday morning cartoon. Right around that time, the X-Cutioners Song was coming out. And blam, I'm all of a sudden interested in reading X-Factor, X-Force, Wolverine etc... Titles I didn't know existed out of just new reader ignorance.

Same thing with Spider-Man. The cartoon came out, and it was the Clone Wars. And I had all these Spider-Man books I wanted to read.

Age of Apocalypse happened... Then Onslaught happened, then Heroes Reborn... Then Heroes Return... There was a trickle down with all these events, all of a sudden there were more interesting characters for me to read about that I knew nothing about to begin with.

Take that wonderment, and place that with someone who has been reading... lets say, Spider-Man, right before Secret Invasion... Blam, they are introduced to an entire universe of characters.

And that's simply commercialization. Really as an older reader, I just wait for the trade paperbacks. I'm patient, I can wait. I'll read the entire story in one shot, and I'll be happy. It's more economic. I'm not in it for the resale anymore (which to me is laughable if anyone is still collecting for that reason, because it'll never be worth anything in their life time, but I digress that's a rant for another day)