AV Club has Bronze ones

So the excellent Gateways to Geekery series over at the AV Club has again turned to comics with Noel Murray wading in to offer advice on dipping your toes into "Bronze Age comics," defining the age roughly as 1970-1986 which to me covers a lot more ground than is strictly representative of a movement or even a collection of movements but hey: I don't work for the AV Club.

That said, I have a bit of a problem with this article. Typical GtoG articles explore some small node of subculture within subculture, like semi-obscure musical movements or esoteric literary fare. This is an article on comics from 1970-1986. That's superhero comics, non-superhero comics, alt comix, the dawn of the grim-n-gritty trend, the rise of the direct market, creators' rights and major independent press, the relaxing of the Comics Code Authority, the often-more-graphic "graphic magazine" market, etc. Previously, they've featured articles on EC Comics and Love and Rockets which were on-message: niche within niche, somewhat daunting, here's where to start. Their article on superhero comics meant dealing with a much more expansive subject but they handled themselves fine; it's hard to argue with All-Star Superman, after all.

It's not that the article badly written, either, as Noel hits the nail on the head in pinning down the problem with far too many comics of the era as trying to be far too serious. There's telling a serious story and there's telling a wild, ridiculous or borderline insane story and being way too serious about it, and it's a problem comics struggle with still today. But there's a lot going on in the period he's covering that isn't adequately addressed.

Nor do I approve of his conclusions. Manhunter may be a good place to start reading Bronze Age books as it's a blast, but it's also inherently a place to stop reading. There's just so little of it. About 3 normal issues' worth or so, if I recall. That's not much more help than saying a good way to break into 17 years of comics is to read this one issue of this one book, bro. Now to the author's credit from there he expands on a list of possible next steps, listing some books that are indeed some of the best from the era, but hardly logical signposts for the people first venturing into this catalog who need hand-holding; there's not much "if-then" here. If you like Manhunter then you might like ElfQuest? Sure, yeah, maybe...If you like ElfQuest then you might like Heavy Metal? I guess so?

It just seems like an off installment, is all. It's hard to expect much from an article trying to pin down A) a period still considered somewhat nebulous and much-debated by comics nerds B) with unending variation in genre, tone, style, subject, and content C) for the sake of someone who has decided to jump into comics feet-first at one of the most tumultuous times in their history. And the advice we come away with is "Try this one story, then maybe consider reading Howard the Duck or Tomb of Dracula?" I like Walt Simonson and all but ATTENTION AMERICA: JUST GO STRAIGHT TO READING TOMB OF DRACULA GUYS. IT IS AWESOME. Assuming you're just a dude trying to read some comic you can bypass a lot of concerns about social relevance and genre booms by hitting one book that is not only at the crux of a lot of the major developments of the period to the point of being considered emblematic of them and a quintessential Bronze Age book, it also takes almost no foreknowledge going into the title (Heard of Dracula? Good.), the title itself stays relatively self-contained, and the art is awesome. Plus, man, I tell you, Dracula gets up to some crazy shit.

Dracula more or less wins this one.
Next issue is "The Wildest Party."
Dracula is so awesome.

Seriously though, read the article. It mentions some good comics. It's just not a much better sampling than you'd get from asking around on a message board. Props to Murray for the Astro City shout-out, though. Respect.