Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga

Detail from the cover of The Magnificent Ms. Marvel #1 (March 13, 2019).

Whatever you may think about the inherent merits of super heroes, without a new genre unique to this new medium, the comic book industry could not have had the financial wherewithal to break free of dependency on the syndicates and become a creative force of its own.

— Fred Van Lente & Ryan Dunlavey, The Comic Book History of Comics

This page gives an overview of superhero comics in the US from the late 1930s to today. Historians of the genre usually organize this material chronologically into "ages" or "eras," the definitions of which are fluid and debated. For the purposes of this guide, the library's holdings have been grouped into five ages: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Dark and Modern.

Detail from the cover of Action Comics #1 (June 1938).

In the first full decade of American comics, the 1940s, the biggest genre consisted of superhero comics. These were essentially aimed at children, but derived from a pulp tradition, and thus often contained political and social overtones.

— Roger Sabin, Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: A History of Comic Art

In June 1938, Action Comics issue #1 hit news stands, featuring the first appearance of Superman. Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman emerged from a melange of influences, including the science fiction pulps of Hugo Gernsback, Philip Wylie's 1930 allegorical novel Gladiator, and the dynamic, superhuman combat of Fleischer Animation Studios' Popeye. The Man of Steel's cowardly, unlikely alter-ego, Clark Kent, was a trope borrowed from previous characters such as the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro and the Shadow.

Superman was an immediate commercial success, and quickly spawned a slew of imitators, including Batman (created by writer Bob Kane and artist Bill Finger), Wonder Woman (created by psychologist William Moulton Marston and artist Harry G. Peters), and Captain America (by co-creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby). This period, which came to be known as the Golden Age of Comics, lasted through WWII into the late 40s, when interest in superhero comics began to wane.

Detail from DC's Showcase #4 (1956).

This era in comics history marked the major revival of comic books following the collapse of EC and the surrender to the Comics Code Authority. Although the first appearance of the Martian Manhunter in Detective #225 was an eye-popping prelude, the Silver Age officially began with Showcase #4. It ended with the final 12-cent issues of comics in 1969.

— Steve Duin & Mike Richardson, Comics: Between the Panels

The Silver Age began with sci-fi inspired re-imaginings of two Golden Age DC characters, the Flash and the Green Lantern. At Marvel, the powerhouse creative team of Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko pioneered many of the publisher's best-known properties, including Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, the X-Men and Iron Man. The Silver Age was characterized by a move towards strange, reality-bending stories; instead of the gangsters, war profiteers and foreign enemies of the Golden Age, superheroes increasingly dealt with extraterrestrial and interdimensional threats.

The Golden Age...was pretty simple...musclemen in costumes, idealized masculine figures. The Charles Atlas hard body...Then came the Silver Age, when superheroes were reinvented and that's when it started to go a bit weird. Strange transformations, multiple realities, dreams, hoaxes. It was like the hard body began to turn soft, the masculine heroes becoming fluid and feminine, always changing shape. All that stuff was like...a prophecy of the arrival of LSD. The comic writers and artist intuited the social transformation in their work.

— Grant Morrison, Flex Mentallo: Man of Muscle Mystery, Issue #2

Comics historians debate exactly when the Silver Age ended and the Bronze Age began, but all would place it sometime in the early 1970s. The following decade saw superhero comics move away from the bizarre sci-fi storylines that had characterized much of the Silver Age and begin to wrestle with more mature, realistic themes. Titles such as Denny O'Neal and Neal Adams' Green Lantern / Green Arrow depicted superheroes grappling with social issues like racism and drug abuse; meanwhile, the loosening of CCA strictures on horror content saw a rebirth of that genre, most notably in DC's Swamp Thing by writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson.

Detail from Hellboy: Box Full of Evil (1999) by Mike Mignola.

The Dark Age...brought back the truly weird and fantastical in levels not even seen in the Silver Age through titles such as Miracleman, Sandman, Flex Mentallo, and Promethea, but also for the first time began deconstructing the superhero genre in works such as Watchmen, followed by a wave of nihilistic antiheroes and cynical storylines.

— Matthew J. Theriault, "We’re Living in the Postmodern Age of Comics"

The next period of superhero comics history, the Dark Age, can be connected to the publication of two of the most influential superhero stories of all time: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen (1987) and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (1986). The high-concept plots, mature (often dark) themes and complex visual storytelling of these works set a new standard for superhero comics; in recent years, however, some critics have begun to reassess Miller's work, particularly following the publication of his title Holy Terror (2011). Miller has defended this graphic novel — which features a Batman-like costumed vigilante going to war against al-Qaeda — as a piece of "naked propaganda," meant to function in the same way as the earliest Captain America stories, which were heavy on fighting Nazis and punching Hitler. However, most critics denounced it as openly anti-Muslim, viciously Islamophobic and crudely violent:

None of this is particularly more “adult” or “sophisticated.” Miller’s works don’t investigate moral problems or examine characters or even ask particularly difficult questions. Instead, Miller's work depicts such investigations as symptoms of a morally bankrupt and indulgent society...When you look underneath the layers of nostalgia and reverence, what you see is the same misogyny, the same asinine paranoia, and the same fascistic belief that power is its own justification.

— Unleash the Fanboy, "Frank Miller Has Always Been a Sexist, Fascist, Racist Prick"

While Miller was an American, Moore and Gibbons were part of the so-called "British Invasion," a group of writers and artists from the UK that also included Brian Bolland, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and Garth Ennis. These creators — many of whom had cut their teeth at 2000 AD, a British sci-fi comics anthology best known for the character Judge Dredd — transformed  the superhero genre, often by taking lesser-known figures like John Constantine, Animal Man, Swamp Thing and The Sandman and updating them for an older audience.

Detail from cover of Black Panther #15 (June 28, 2017).

Starting with Miles [Morales], a character of mixed Black and Hispanic descent, the new and redesigned characters...are almost universally representative of previously marginalized demographics. A brief enumeration of the most prominent examples of this trend would include: The New 52 Alan Scott and New X-Men Bobby Drake as gay; the mantels of Earth-2 Superman and Captain America passing to the Black Val-Zod and Sam Wilson, respectively; the mantels of Captain Marvel and Thor passing to the females Carol Danvers and Jane Foster, respectively; and the mantels of Green Lantern and Ms. Marvel passing to the Muslims Simon Baz and Kamala Khan, respectively.

— Matthew J. Theriault, "We're Living in the Postmodern Age of Comics"

Superhero comics in the 21st century have been largely defined by two parallel developments: an explosion in the popularity of the genre following the massive success of the properties' expansion into alternate media such as movies, shows and video games, and increased diversity and representation among both characters and creators. In his article "We're Living in the Postmodern Age of Comics," Matthew J. Theriault points to Brian Michael Bendis' creation of the character Miles Morales — a 13-year-old biracial teenager who took on the role of Spiderman after the death of Peter Parker — as the start of this trend. Notable titles in the modern age include Black Panther by Ta-Nehesi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze, Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona, and Batman by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo.