Death of Superman: End of Copper?

[Kevin Boyd]

the dropoff on superheroes happened in the 40s when the War ended. no?

and the dropoff in the 50s affected all the horror and mystery stuff, and trickled to the rest. I agree I am speaking from a superhero-centriv view, but dont Gerbers sales charts show a continuous decline of ALL comics from 1954 - 1960? Aside from comics for little kids, I dont think ANYTHING was selling too well at that time as many artists and writers were starving and bailing on comics for advertising, etc.

 

Superheroes (except for Batman and Superman) started to fall off the sales charts by the late 1940's, yes. Most of the existing superhero titles were cancelled or converted into books dealing with other genres (like All Star became All Star Western). So yeah, if you worked for a publisher doing superhero comics you either had to start doing something else or move on. The publishers themselves were casualties as well, if they didn't shift to "something else" besides superheroes they likely went out of business.

 

Martin Goodman fired his staff in the 1950's after the decline of the hero comics because he had a massive inventory of art and stories that he could use to fill his other comic book publications. After a while Stan was able to rebuild the company around a few key players like Kirby and Ditko.

 

EC Comics, from what I've read, were big sellers during the early to middle 1950's until the Comics Code was created and Gaines shut the line down. Much as we focus on Timely/Atlas/Marvel and National/DC, DELL COMICS were the biggest selling comics company in the 1950's and well into the 1960's, sure most of it was kiddie-fare at dell.... but most superhero comics before that were kiddie-fare as well. Archie was a big seller, hence the slew of imitators. In a lot of ways the 1950's are the "golden age" for people who look for comics to be something other than superheroes.

[Aman619]

I dont have all the details in my head, but Atlas was cut to like 8 titles by the end of the decade..... SO things got real bad for awhile before the Silver Age took off.

[Kevin Boyd]

The 1957 Atlas Implosion wasn't due to lack of sales but distribution problems:

 

http://www.ess.comics.org/ess/docvstan.html

The "Atlas Globe" cover symbol may have represented a temporary partnership of Goodman with Kable News Company, Goodman's then distributor, before "Atlas News Company" went completely independent. Hence almost all Goodman published comics during this period are referred to as "Atlas" comics. What's interesting though, is that there are ads found on the inside of some issues from 1951/52 that advertise custom-inscribed cigarette lighters to "the readers of Marvel Comics". This seems to mean that even though the line was "officially" known as Atlas (on the cover) during this time, "un-officially" it was still Marvel Comics on the business end. Goodman's line imploded in Sept/1957 when he dropped "Kable" and took a chance with ANC (American News Company) as a distributor. ANC soon had it's own troubles as Government anti-trust laws led to the dissolving of ANC's distribution arm. Goodman, who had launched scores of new titles had no way to distribute them and the top-heavy company "imploded", leading to mass cancellations of nearly every title and the firing of every employee except Stan Lee. After two months, Goodman was able to secure distribution from DC's subsidiary, Independent News, and Stan got issues out using a backlog of old inventory throughout 1958. The only exception seemed to be the teen and romance titles, three of which had a Nov/57 cover date, and whose bi-monthly schedule did not seem to miss a beat, as opposed to all other titles that exhibited at least a 2-month hiatus.

[Aman619]

interesting facts. I was alluding to their handcuffed limit of only 8 titles, but did not know it came about as a result of the bankrupcy of their distributor..

[bronze johnny]

One of the interesting things to look at with the Death of Superman is that most people believed that Superman died, particularly since the concept of death to DC, unlike Marvel, meant that a character was killed off for good (Barry Allen and Supergirl). The birth of Superman in 1938 started the superhero genre and Golden Age. It was a major event that changed comics forever. Think about the death of the ComicBookDom's greatest creation and also remember that Superman saved the superhero genre during the "Dark Ages" of the 1950s. Up until his death, Superman had always been with us. No matter what happens in ComicBookDom, there was always Superman to count on. But when he died (albeit for a short period of time), for the first time, Superman was not there to be counted on.

 

(Remember the hype. I remember seeing the news about it on the major network news casts. Everyone was talking about it. It was an incredible event!)

 

While many other superheroes have died before Superman did, none of their deaths were as significant. Superman and death were antithetical to one another. Sure, Kryptonite was his weakness, but we knew it could never kill him.

 

 

Think about this for a moment:

 

 

When Superman died, did we not in a certain way re-define the superhero by saying that even the Greatest Superhero in ComicBookDom can die?

 

Could the Super in Superhero now mean something different?

 

Before Superman's death, some things were off limits. But since then, it's been open season on everything.

 

The end of an age perhaps? The end of Copper?

 

Sincerely,

 

BronzeJohnny

[Aman619]

slow down cowboy!!!! When DC "killed" Superman, it only meant that comics publishers would (or could) not stop at anything in order to get a short-term boost in sales!!! It was only surprising they didnt think of it sooner... But, it was practically inevitable at that point as the "ultimate gimmick" in DCs arsenal of sales boosters..

[rjpb]

I thought the 90s were the chromium die-cut hologram variant cover age. Or just chrome age for short.

[valiantman]

I thought the 90s were the chromium die-cut hologram variant cover age. Or just chrome age for short.

 

... which would mean that the 2000s will become the

pretend the 3rd print is a limited edition and stories that are really 40 years old are "Ultimate" this time age.

[gifflefunk]

Age threads:

 

The Comic Book Ages (eBay):

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=400027188&start=0

 

Next Age? (CGC board)

http://boards.collectors-society.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=439935&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

 

THE BATTLE OF THE AGES! (CBG Forum)

http://www.cbgxtra.com/default.aspx?tabid=42&view=topic&forumid=16&postid=275&tpage=1

[shrunkenhead]

slow down cowboy!!!! When DC "killed" Superman, it only meant that comics publishers would (or could) not stop at anything in order to get a short-term boost in sales!!! It was only surprising they didnt think of it sooner... But, it was practically inevitable at that point as the "ultimate gimmick" in DCs arsenal of sales boosters..

 

Well, yeah, I certainly agree with you Aman...but I think the death of superman drew people who never bought a comc in their life into the LCS, and they never came back afterwards. One of my good college buddies asked me the other day if "Superman was still dead and is my book worth anything," because it was the only comic he ever bought.