THE 100 COOLEST THINGS OF THE LAST 100 YEARS

THE 100 COOLEST THINGS OF THE LAST 100 YEARS

By Barry Dutter

1) McDonald’s French Fries. If I could only have one food to eat for the rest of my life, that would be it.

2) The episodes of the SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN where he fought Bigfoot and the Fembots.

3) The sound that Speed Racer’s car made when it would jump through the air.

4) No list of cool things would be complete without a mention of the Fonz, but I should specify here that it a very specific era of Fonzie we are talking about: after he stopped wearing the windbreaker and before he put on those water skis and performed a life-threatening stunt over a certain pointy-finned fish.

5) The Batmobile from the 1966 Batman TV series. Coolest car ever!

6) In 1984, when Mr. T’s team lost the tug of war in the BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS, everyone assumed he would flip out and go berserk. Instead, he accepted defeat like a true warrior, saying simply, “Mr. T don’t make no excuses. The better team won.” I always thought he displayed a quiet dignity that we could all learn from.


7) Saturday morning cartoons were great, but I always had a soft spot for the Saturday morning live action shows like LAND OF THE LOST, BIG JOHN, LITTLE JOHN, FAR-OUT SPACE NUTS, SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS, and H.R. PUFNSTUFF.

8) Greatest children’s movie of all time: WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. Gene Wilder’s performance in the title role was sheer genius.

9) THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW. The best show HBO ever put on the air.

10) Any comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

11) The special effects in THE MATRIX definitely took things to the next level.

12) The early films of James Cameron, especially TERMINATOR 1 and 2 and ALIENS.

13) The rise of grunge music in the early 90s helped slam the door on bubble gum pop for almost a decade and produced some timeless bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

14) One-hit wonders of the 70s. Who could forget such classic tunes as “Sky High” by Jigsaw, or “Brother Louie” by Stories, or “Rock On” by David Essex or…

15) Southern rock of the 70s, especially anything by .38 Special, Llynyrd Skynyrd, Little River Band, and the Atlanta Rhythm Section.

16) New Wave Music of the 80s, especially the Police, the Cars, the Cure, Depeche Mode, and New Order.


17) Saturday Night Live: The first two seasons with the original Not Ready For Prime-Time players: Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtain, etc.

18) SCTV, the TV series. It was never as popular as SNL, but it was often  funnier.

19) The British Invasion of the 60s, starting with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and including such bands as the Troggs, the Animals, the Zombies, and the Hollies.

20) Freakies Cereal. Sure, it was the latest in a long line of Cap’n Crunch rip-offs, but it had great commercials and very cool toy prizes inside each box.

21) Jack Nicholson in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. The best performance by any actor, ever!

22) The spy craze of the 60s, led by good ol’ 007 himself, James Bond.

23) Teen sex comedies of the 80s, especially RISKY BUSINESS, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, LAST AMERICAN VERSION, and HEAVEN HELP US.

24) SEINFELD. The best sitcom of the 90s, and perhaps the most beloved of all time.

25) The movie DESTROY ALL MONSTERS.  Talk about an all-star cast: Godzilla (and his son), Rodan, King Ghidorah, Anguirus and Gorosaurus. Great actors, all.

26) IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD MAD WORLD. The film is slow in parts and probably too long by about an hour, but you will never find a funnier group of people in one movie. Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Milton Berhle, Sid Caesar, Ethyl Merman, Dick Shawn…

27) The Monkees TV series. I watched it as a kid, and I always wished I could grow up to be one of the Monkees -- live in a beach house, drive a cool car, chase girls, get chased by monsters and mobsters -- and lip synch songs, too!

28) Farrah Fawcett’s immortal “lion’s mane” hairstyle from the 1970s -- the greatest hairstyle of any woman, ever!

29) Wacky Packages trading cards. Sure, the gum tasted like cardboard, but the cards were hilarious.

30) MAD Magazine, especially in the late 60s/early 70s, when it had its last great creative burst.

31) The SIMPSONS (the first five seasons), FAMILY GUY, BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD and SOUTH PARK. Cartoons for kids of all ages.

32) The theme song from the cartoon COURAGEOUS CAT AND MINUTE MOUSE. Coolest theme song ever?

33) Wouldja believe GET SMART with Don Adams.

34) The Internet. How did we ever find pics of naked celebrities without it?

35) The Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. (Sorry, Victoria’s Secret catalog, but the girls in the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog are way sluttier!)

36) Classic TV commercials of the 70s, especially the ones for STAY ALIVE, BATTLESHIP, CONNECT 4, and CALGON.

37) STAR WARS: the first two movies from 1977 and 1980, before Jar jar and the Ewoks were introduced and it all went so horribly wrong.

38) The PLANET OF THE APES movies from 1969-75. They got worse with each one, but still, for kids in the 70s, they were as good as movies got.

39) GI JOE with the Kung fu grip.

40) The Evel Knieval stunt cycle toy from the 70s. It was even more fun than jumping over Snake River Canyon!

41) The sound made when one Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robot knocks the block off another.

42) Lots of U.S. Presidents have cheated on their wives, but you have to respect JFK for using his presidential power to bang the then-hottest woman in the world, Marilyn Monroe!

43) 48 Hrs. (with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte), the movie that redefined the buddy movie for the 80s generation.

44) The various dances performed by the Peanuts gang in A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS.

45) TV comedy/variety shows of the 70s, including THE SONNY AND CHER SHOW, THE RICH LITTLE SHOW, THE CAPTAIN AND TENILLE SHOW, and TONY ORLANDO AND DAWN.

46) Three great comic strips that all came and went in the 90s: THE FAR SIDE, CALVIN & HOBBES, and BLOOM COUNTY. They are missed. It seems we will never see their likes again.

47) Disneyland’s Space Mountain. Whoever had the idea of putting a rollercoaster inside a mountain was a genius!

48) Scott Baio’s list of conquests has never been topped by any man and probably never will: Nicole Eggert, Pamela Anderson, Heather Locklear, Denise Richards, and God only knows how many Playboy Playmates. Most importantly, he had them all in their prime!

49) STAR TREK 2: THE WRATH OF KHAN. No other STAR TREK movie before or since was ever as good.

50) The comedy stylings of legendary stand-ups like Steve Martin, Chris Rock, and George Carlin.

51) TRILOGY OF TERROR, the TV movie from 1973, featuring that deadly little Tiki Doll!

52) GOODFELLAS -- both the book and the movie. Each one made me want to become a gangster!

53) Any episode of the BRADY BUNCH where the kids sang.

54) Quisp Cereal -- gone too soon.

55) Going into a midnight showing of RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD with low expectations and finding out it was THE BEST ZOMBIE MOVIE OF ALL TIME!!!

56) I remember when Erika Eleniak left Baywatch, there was a lot of concern that the show would never find another girl with the same impact. Then along came Pam Anderson, and sex symbol history was made!

57) Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein (and Dracula… and the Wolfman!).

58) Any Three Stooges short with Curly. (No Shemps!)

59) Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- the funniest movie of all time!

60) Americas complete and total rejection of the Metric System in the early 1970s. It was a classic example of the people of the USA saying, “We don’t care how the rest of the world does it. We don’t care that it’s a more sensible system than the one we have now. We’re not changing for anybody!” 

61) Howard Stern’s move to Sirius satellite radio, which paved the way for his now-uncensored show to become better than ever.

62) The theme song to MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.

63) The old Warner Brothers cartoons where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck used to go head-to-head -- especially the “Duck Season/Rabbit season” classics.

64) 70's R & B music: The Spinners. The O'Jays. The Stylistics. The Honey Combs. Earth Wind & Fire. So many great bands. So many unforgettable songs.

65) The arrival of Pop Rocks and Space Dust on the candy scene in the 1970s were certainly revolutionary.

66) The BUFFALO BILL SHOW with DABNEY COLEMAN. Just one of many great shows that was gone before it’s time -- like THE BEN STILLER SHOW.

67) Hugh Hefner’s life. His whole life, from the time he founded Playboy to the present.

68) CBS’ Saturday Night line-up in 1972: All in the Family, M*A*S*H*, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show. The best TV line-up in the history of television. 

69) No matter how many video games come and go, for me, they will never top MS. PAC-MAN!

70) Classic candies: TART N TINIES, SWEET TARTS, and SPREES!

71) BUBBLE YUM definitely took the concept of chewing gum to the next level.

72) In the days before VCRs, DVRs and DVDs, I will never forget my father waking up my brother and I to watch a late-night showing of WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS when we were kids. The movie kind of sucked, but was more about the anticipation than the event itself.

73) Halle Berry pocketing an extra $500,000 to show her boobs in SWORDFISH is surely a cinematic milestone. That’s $250,000 per breast!

74) The theme song to HAWAII FIVE-O.

75) Angelina Jolie’s lips. ‘Nuff said.

76)  The original DIE HARD. It changed action movies FOREVER!

77) Staying up till midnight to watch the TWILIGHT ZONE five nights a week.

78) KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER -- one of the great lost shows of the 1970s. That show was part of the proud tradition of networks airing spooky shows (like GHOST STORY or THE X FILES) on Friday nights. 

79) THE HOBBIT -- the original book by JRR Tolkien which was much more entertaining than the somewhat bloated LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy that came later.

80) Julie Newmar -- the sexiest Catwoman who ever was and ever will be.

81) Zim-Zam -- perhaps the greatest backyard game of all time.

82) My LANCELOT LINK, SECRET CHIMP lunchbox. Wish I still had it!

83) The Boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ. You have to see it to believe it.

84) The video for “Centerfold” by the J. Geils Band -- the first time that I recall that anyone had the idea of putting sexy, scantily-clad girls in a music video. Truly the J. Geils Band were visionaries.

85) The San Diego Comic Con.

86) The rise of “jiggle TV” in the 1970s, where all the girls had to do was “jump and giggle.” Having such shows as CHARLIE’S ANGELS, THREE’S COMPANY, and WONDER WOMAN made going through puberty much easier!

87) The monster in the 1983 horror movie THE THING.

88) The animated movie MAD MONSTER PARTY. It used to play on TV all the time when I was a kid, and I watched it every time.

89) Singer/songwriters of the 70s, including Billy Joel, James Taylor, Carol King, Paul Simon, and Jackson Brown.

90) Springsteen. Born to Run. (as a guy from New Jersey, I’m required by law to list that one, though I actually enjoy Born in the USA more as an album.)

91) The first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve in 1979. Has any other actor ever played a superhero so well?

92) Coolest kids’ books of all time: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG, and HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON.

93) The disaster movie craze of the 70s: EARTHQUAKE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, AIRPORT, etc etc. These movies generally had all-star casts, great special effect, and cool gimmicks like SENSURROUND!

94) Kim Kardashian’s butt. That is one of the top wonders of the world, comparable to the Great Wall of China or the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

95) 3 classic candy bars: Marathon Bars, Charleston Chews, and Kit Kats.

96) Count Chocula. Coco Puffs. And Cocoa Krispies. The one-two-three punch of classic chocolate-flavored cereals. (Sorry, Cocoa Pebbles, but you just don’t make the cut.)

97) Raquel Welch -- best sex symbol ever?  Yep!

98) New York-style pizza.

99) Marvel super-heroes like Spider-Man and the Hulk -- with their very human flaws and personality quirks, they were always so much more relatable than the one-dimensional DC heroes.

100) The Mighty Heroes cartoon series (1966-67). Their names are legendary: Strong Man. Tornado Man. Cuckoo Man. Rope Man. And who could forget -- Diaper Man!

THE OLD EDDIE MURPHY ATTEMPTS A COMEBACK IN TOWER HEIST -- BUT DOES HE SUCCEED?

By Barry Dutter

Eddie Murphy stopped being funny around the turn of the century, leaving fans to wonder happened. How does a brilliant comic lose his edge? Recently, it looked like Eddie was making an attempt to get his comic mojo back as he shifted from crappy kids movies to an adult comedy.  But did he still have his "raw" edge?
It’s very telling that the trailer for his latest movie, TOWER HEIST shows Eddie being sprung from prison to embark on more misadventures. Long-time film-goers will never forget that Murphy made his movie debut in the classic 48 Hrs, where he played a convict who was released for two days of wild hi-jinx. The implications from the new trailer are obvious: This is Eddie going back to his roots. If you liked Eddie as the fast-talking fowl-mouthed horny convict, he’s back! Or is he?
Murphy’s movie career has been overshadowed by the fact that the first three movies he made are the three that were most beloved by his fans: 48 Hrs., TRADING PLACES and BEVERLY HILLS COP. He has spent most of the past 30 years squandering any good will that his fans may have left for him. I can’t think of any performer since Burt Reynolds who worked so hard to chase away his fans with a string of bad movies, each one worse than  the one before.
Sometimes it seems like Eddie’s number one career goal was to make more bad movies than his idol, Richard Pryor. (I would say Eddie succeeded at that goal.)
Eddie is perhaps the greatest living example of the fact that most comics stop being funny as they get older. No none knows for sure why it happens. Maybe it’s the same reason that rock stars write music that is less and less memorable as they age. Maybe comedy is a young man’s game.
Perhaps as you get older, become more successful, have more happiness, you lose your edge. Maybe your mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be.
Whatever the reason, it’s an indisputable fact that comedians in their forties, fifties and sixties are never as funny as they were when they first burst on the scene in their teens, twenties and thirties. We’ve seen it time and time again. Look at Jim Carrey. Chevy Chase. Bill Murray. Dan Aykroyd. Steve Martin. Even brilliant comics like Rodney Dangerfield and George Carlin were not as creative and laugh-out-loud funny in the latter part of their careers as they were in the beginning.

But perhaps the saddest example of this phenomena is Eddie Murphy. In the early 1980s, Eddie was unquestionably the funniest man alive. Whether it was in his SNL skits, his comedy albums, in movies, or doing his raunchy stand-up routines, there was no one funnier.
He was at the top of his game. His first few movies were blockbusters; each one a major crowd-pleaser.
Over time, Eddie walked away from SNL and turned his back on stand-up, leaving movies as the only outlet for his humor.  And, over time, his movies got less and less funny (and made less and less money).
Some time around the mid-1990s, the worst thing that could ever happen to a  comic happened: Eddie decide to start making family films that his kids could watch.
That was the beginning of the end for the former fowl-mouthed funnyman. From 1998 to 2010, Eddie made a string of primarily kids movies that became blander and less funny as time went on.
Eddie had started his movie career with his best role, that of the slick con man Reggie Hammond. By 2005, he was playing a human spaceship named Dave. (That's an idea so stupid and lame, the old Eddie wouldn't even have bothered making fun of it on SNL!)
By the time he came out with a kids movie called Imagine That in 2009, even families had stopped going to see Eddie Murphy movies. Sure, the Shrek movies still made a lot of money, but let’s face it, kids do not go to see Shrek movies because Eddie Murphy (or Mike Myers) is in them. Kids really don’t care who does the voice of Donkey.
By 2010, it seemed like it might be all over for Eddie as a movie star. Then he pulled a surprising career switch when he decided to go back to his roots and make an edgy comedy, where he would once again play the type of street-hustling convict character that made him famous.
The movie was called TOWER HEIST. It was originally conceived by Murphy as a vehicle for him to team up with all the major black comics of this generation (just as he had teamed up with many of the top black comics and actors of the 1980s when he made the dreadful HARLEM NIGHTS in 1989.)
Due to scheduling conflicts, Eddie was not able to get Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, Martin Lawrence, et al. Instead, he ended up with a mixed-race cast that included Ben Stiller and Matthew Broderick, who is about as pasty and white as a man can be.
Murphy reportedly came up with the basic story for the movie before handing it off to a team of writers.
Anyone who has followed  Murphy’s career knows that the films he conceives and writes himself are usually among his worst (NORBERT, ANOTHER 48 Hrs, VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN, the fore-mentioned HARLEM NIGHTS.) Naturally, hearing that TOWER HEIST was another Murphy brainstorm would lead one to be worried.
And then there’s the fact that Murphy hasn’t been genuinely funny on film since the year 2000, when he made THE NUTTY PROFESSOR 2, and I’m being very generous in calling that so-so sequel funny.
For most of the 90s and 2000s, Murphy had settled into playing parts where he wasn‘t even trying to generate any laughs. Seeing Murphy play a straight man to a bunch of talking animals in not one, but two, DR. DOLITTLE movies was surely a sad sight for any fan.
So it was with some curiosity and some hesitation that I approached Murphy’s comeback vehicle, TOWER HEIST. The previews looked somewhat promising. Murphy flirts with the fat chick from PRECIOUS. Not hilarious, but amusing. Would this movie be a return to the horn-dog Murphy of his early films? I knew I couldn’t get my hopes up too high, though, because TOWER HEIST was a PG movie, not an R like his early ones.
In other words, Murphy was still making a movie his kids could see. It’s just one he wouldn’t have to be as embarrassed about as usual.
I saw TOWER HEIST and found it disappointing. Murphy plays only a surprisingly small role. He appears in a few brief scenes at the beginning of the movie, then he disappears for a long stretch, and then he’s in the last 45 minutes or so. So I would hardly call this a starring role for him.
Still, many great comics have successfully stolen movies with much smaller parts over the years.
The question is, did Murphy deliver that old magic in his small role?
The answer is: not really.
For starters, the script is all over the place. What starts out being a heist movie tries to get clever when the gang realizes they will have to steal something other than money. They wind up trying to steal a car made out of gold, a dopey “only in the movies” plot device that was taken from an old episode of SPEED RACER.
There are a few double-crosses, and a complicated heist, but ultimately the movie is uninteresting.
As for Murphy-- he’s okay in the movie. In the beginning, you’re so psyched to see him doing something “adult” again that you laugh out of the hope that the old Eddie is back. But as the movie goes on, you see that this is not really the case
This is middle-aged Eddie, the one who has been surrounded by sycophants for the last 30 years and doesn’t really know what’s funny any more. There is a common mistake that unfunny people make in the movies that if you say something loud, that automatically makes it funny.
That’s basically what Murphy is doing here. He says a line loudly, and you laugh because it’s Eddie Murphy, and then you stop and think, “Wait, that wasn’t even a joke. That was just a guy talking loud.”
TOWER HEIST isn’t a total embarrassment -- Murphy probably won’t want to take this one off his resume, the way I’m sure he would love to do with 95% of the movies he has made in the past decade.
But as a comeback movie, there’s not much to it.
I guess I just have to get used to the idea that Murphy will never again be as fresh and funny as he was in 1982.
This was a nice try -- it’s good to see Murphy actually put a little thought into a role instead of just hacking it out. But this was not the comeback movie we thought it would be.
Audiences seem to feel lukewarm about the movie. It started off strong, but word of mouth spread real quick. The movie only made $75 million at the box office, a far cry from Eddie’s 100 million + smash hits of yore.
I guess we should be thankful that Eddie even tried to make a “grown-up” movie for a change. This one was not the home run we all hoped it would be -- more like a base hit. But maybe it has whetted his appetite to being funny again. We will see.
Sadly, I think TOWER HEIST was only a temporary break from the crappy kids movies. Murphy is currently in pre-production for his next movie, an adaptation of the 1970s cartoon show HONG KONG FOOEY.

Phooey, indeed.

THE NEW 52 -- THE MOST RADICAL THING DC HAS DONE SINCE -- THE LAST 5 TIMES THEY DID IT

1. 

   
   
   

   By Barry Dutter

   
   
   
   
   DC Comics has gotten a lot of attention lately for starting their universe over from scratch.
   It has been called a daring development for a company with a  70+ year history, and it would be -- but for the fact that DC has already done this same thing 3 or 4 times before.
   The first time they did it was in 1956, when they introduced all-new versions of many of their most beloved heroes from the Golden Age.
   It was in SHOWCASE #4 that we first met Barry Allen, the new Flash, followed not long after by Hal Jordan as the new Green Lantern.
   Those heroes heralded the dawn of the Silver Age. If you were a fan who grew up reading DC‘s Golden Age books, you were essentially being kicked to the curb to make way for an all-new generation of readers.
   The DC Silver Age heroes had a good long run -- about thirty years, in fact. It was in 1985, during the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, that their time came to an end. The CRISIS was an attempt by DC to simplify their universe, to ditch all the alternate worlds that had popped up over the previous 30 years, and streamline all their heroes onto one cohesive world.
   It was during the CRISIS that Barry Allen died, paving the way for Wally West to become the new Flash. Not long after, Hal Jordan died and was replaced by Kyle Rayner as Green Lantern.
   In 1986, DC made the radical move of hiring Marvel’s most popular artist, John Byrne, to start Superman’s series over with #1. Similarly, Frank Miller was brought in to conceive the story of Batman: Year One. George Perez took the reigns of Wonder Woman, starting her book over at #1, as well.
   Not every DC hero had a new number one in the late 80s, but the majority of the big guns did. (And, in retrospect, Batman probably should have had a new number one to go along with those of  Superman and Wonder Woman.)
   A scant nine years after the crisis, in 1994, DC was ready to do it again, with the publication of ZERO HOUR, a series that reset the clock and brought all the DC heroes back to the beginning of their careers. To commemorate the occasion, DC published #0 issues off all their super-hero comics. (Not number ones, true, but about as close as you can get!)
   
   

   

   Now, just 17 years later, DC has once again relaunched their universe. This is the first time the company has restarted every book in their line over at number one, but in essence, this is the same thing they have done several times before.
   At DC, the feeling has always been, “Our stories are so complicated and our universe so complex, that we need to start over every decade or two just to give new readers a chance to jump aboard and not feel hopelessly lost.”
   Over at Marvel, the opposite is true. Their universe has  continued unabated since 1961. While the Golden Age Marvel stories are pretty much ignored, everything that’s happened since 1961 is technically part of the official canon.
   The Marvel Universe is like a continuous wave, ever sweeping forwards. Everything that has ever happened in every Marvel Comic has been part of the same ongoing saga.
   This means that many of the long-term Marvel heroes have 50-year+ histories, though the characters have only aged a few years, at most, during that time.
   It gets a little ridiculous if you ever try to read the complete history of an iconic Marvel hero like Spider-Man. There is no way any hero could have had hundreds (in some cases, thousands) of adventures in only a few short years. It requires a huge suspension of disbelief, and a willingness to forget most of the stories that have gone before.
   But Marvel readers have always enjoyed learning the fascinating histories of the characters. The depth of those histories is part of what makes the Marvel heroes so interesting.
   One of the biggest strengths of the Marvel Universe has always been its sense of history. (Most of the big Marvel titles have started over at number one at some point, only to return to their original numbering somewhere down the line.) The DC Universe no longer has this history. With this latest relaunch, they seem to have once again discarded all the stories that have gone before.
   I always thought it was odd that DC just seemed to hit the "restart" button every 20 years or so. But the company never shows any remorse. They never seem to feel, it was a mistake. (Though it does seem worth nothing that all the DC heroes who died in the 80s (Barry Allen, Hal Jordan, Oliver Queen) and were replaced by younger heroes were eventually brought back to replace the heroes that had replaced them. I guess the lesson there is that while the original Golden Age heroes are mostly gone and forgotten, the Silver Age DC heroes will just keep popping up no matter how many times you try to replace them.
   Fans remain loyal to DC's heroes -- even if DC doesn't.
   DC has enjoyed great success with the New 52 launch. The question is, how long can it last? First issues  generally sell well, especially for established heroes like Superman and Batman. But we will have to see what happens with numbers 2, 3, 4 and beyond.
   

   

   And if history has taught us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t get too attached to the heroes of the New 52. It’s pretty much a given that at some point, DC will cancel all these tiles and start over again.
   My prediction is that by the year 2020, we’ll be seeing the end of the new 52 and the beginning of a bold new line of DC heroes.
   Maybe their slogan should be: "DC Comics -- you'll love our characters. Just don't get too attached!"
   

   

It’s Time to name the Dark Age -- and let the New Modern Age Begin!

By Barry Dutter

The Modern Age of comics has gone on long enough. I say it's time for a new age in comics.
But what to call the current one -- and how to tell exactly where it began?
Earlier comic ages were easier to identify. The Golden Age obviously began with the publication of Action Comics #1 in 1938. The Silver Age began in1956 with the arrival of the new Flash in Showcase #4.
There is some controversy about the exact beginning of the Bronze Age which came next, but most historians agree it came around 1970. (Certainly the departure of Jack Kirby from Marvel in that year seems like a logical starting point for the era.)
The Copper Age is said to have started in 1984, but I'm not clear what exactly separates comics from the Copper Age with those from the Bronze Age, other than better paper and higher prices.
The story quality of most Copper Age comics was quite low, though the era did produce a handful of titles that are considered high watermarks for the medium: Frank Miller's Daredevil, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, Dark Knight, Batman Year One and Watchmen.
The Modern Age began in 1991, and again, I'm not clear on the difference between a comic from 1990 and 1991 and why they need to be sectioned off into different categories.
It has been 20 years now since the start of the so-called Modern Age, and that is way too long for one era to have lasted. Any comics fan can see that a comic from 2011 looks nothing like a comic from 1991. There have been huge breakthroughs in printing, graphics, paper quality, etc.
Clearly there needs to be marked a definite end to the Modern Age to differentiate books from the 90s from the ones that are published today. In order to make that happen, first we will have to rename the Modern Age, so as not to appear foolish.
Let's face it, it is next to impossible to define any age as it is happening. It makes sense to me to use "Modern Age" as a temporary name for any current era until that era passes and one is able to look back in hindsight and coin a name that truly defines the era.
In the case of the Modern Age, the name that seems to sum it up best is the "Dark Age." Marvel and DC, the industry leaders, took just about all of their characters (even the once-light-hearted Spider-Man) into darker territory. "Grim and Gritty" became by-woods of the day, inspired by the success of Tim Burton's 1989 movie Batman. The era was dominated by anti-heroes like the Punisher (in three monthly books!), Lobo, and Wolverine.

Marvel introduced harder-edged versions of all their major heroes: Captain America (USAgent) Iron Man (War Machine), Thor (Thunderstrike) and yes, good ol' Spidey (Venom).
Over at DC, Batman was injured and replaced with a darker, grittier hero named Azrael. Superman was killed and replaced by 4 different heroes, two of whom turned out to be super-villains (the Cyborg Superman and the Eradicator). Green Lantern, aka Hal Jordan, went insane and turned into a villain named Parallax.
Even Wonder Woman was replaced by Artemis, a bad-ass Amazon who had a much tougher attitude that our fair Diana.

Image Comics launched in the early 1990s, and it seemed that just about every Image hero had claws like Wolverine or carried guns like the Punisher. Marvel, DC and Image seemed to be in a contest to see who could create the most characters` with the words "Dark," "Blood," and "Death" in their names.
Sales reached an all-time high, but story quality reached an all-time low. Of all the thousands of comics that were published in the 90s, you would be hard-pressed to find any that were any good. Truly the 1990s were a very Dark Age indeed. (To any true comics fan, the waste of paper and talent would almost inspire one to call it the Tragic Age, but that name might be too depressing!)

With the arrival of the 2000s, comics began to change. It's difficult to pinpoint any single event that brought about the change. One might point to the arrival of Joe Quesada as Editor-In-Chief of Marvel in the year 2000. Marvel had grown stale and complacent in the 90s, but Quesada brought with him a willingness to try new things and think outside the box when it came to hiring new creators.
The period from 2000 on has proven to be one of the most experimental in the company's history.
Under Quesada's guidance, bold innovations occurred at Marvel, including the “Origin” of Wolverine -- a story that most thought could never be told. Daring new writers were brought in from the worlds of film, TV and books, which was a welcome change from the 90s Marvel trend of hiring whatever editor who happened to be next door to write your books, in the hopes that he might throw you some writing work as well.

Not everything Marvel has done in the 90s has been successful -- in fact, Quesada himself was responsible for one of the most controversial stories, One More Day, in which Spider-Man makes a deal with Mephisto to save the life of Aunt May. This story was almost universally derided by fans, yet Quesada stands behind his work.
One might not like everything Marvel has done under Quesda's reign, but one certainly must give him credit for taking risks.
In September, 2011, DC won big sales and much acclaim for their relaunch of 52 titles with all-new number ones. Some might see that as the perfect spot to mark the beginning of a new age, just as DC's relaunch of their super-hero line in the mid-1950s marked the dawn of the Silver` Age.

But to call 2011 the start of a new age to means ignore everything has happened over the past ten years. Certainly one must give credit to the great strides that were made by all the major companies to make up for the creative nadir that was the 90s. (I'm sure that in 1993, creating a super-hero named "Grunge" seemed like a good idea, but now it seems hopelessly dated.)
Maybe it's a good idea to just give every decade a new name from now on. If so, what would we call 2000 to 2010? The Recovery Age? The Reconstruction? The Age of Rebirth?
It's hard to find one name that sums up all the elements that defined the medium in the 2000s. It was a decade where many exciting new publishers came up like IDW, DDP and Dynamite Entertainment, offering comics that were in many way superior to the output of Marvel and DC.
Perhaps the biggest trend of the decade was companies creating multiple variant covers for just about every comic, but somehow “The Variant Age” just doesn't quite seem to say it all.
Maybe one could follow Marvel's lead and refer to it as The Heroic Age, but that seems kind of vague. Besides, in an industry dominated by super-heroes, couldn't any age technically be called the Heroic Age?
I don't have all the answers, but I do think something needs to be done soon. Every time I see a comic from after 1991 defined as “Modern Age,” I find myself thinking that it just doesn't feel right to lump 20 years worth of books into one age. It may be too soon to name the decade from 2000-2010, but at the very least, I think it's time the dreadful 90s got firmly labeled and separated from what came after.
Clearly, the answer is right in front of us. There's no point in denying what has been so obvious for so long. I say, let the Dark Age (1991-99) be named!
Be glad that it's over, but let's acknowledge that it existed. Only by defining this era and branding it thus can we be certain not to make the same mistakes again.