Silver Age Comic Books
| The Silver Age of Comic Book Art |
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| Retail Price: $29.95 |
| Amazon Price: $13.39 |
Do you find yourself bored after reading modern comic books? Do you want to collect comics but don’t know what to buy or feel that modern books will never appreciate in value? Silver Age comic books could be the answer!
This website is a resource for American comic books released from 1955 to 1970 – the Silver Age of Comics. We have tried to list all the resources and information that will make you a smarter purchaser of comics.
History of the Silver Age of Comic Books
The Silver Age of Comic Books was a period of time from about 1955 to 1970 when superhero comics became popular and had a renaissance. It was named the Silver Age of Comic Books or the “Silver Age” to contrast it to the Golden Age of Comic Books – the 1930s and 1940s – when superheroes were first created.
American comics were invented in the 1930s. Some early books featured Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Captain America, Green Lantern, and Hawkman. In the 1930s and early 1940s – these superhero comics were very popular – especially among children. Millions of millions of books were sold through the local Five and Dimes.
This “golden age” of comic books started winding down after World War 2, as books about horror, crime, and romance started becoming more popular than the superhero books. Why America’s change in tastes happened, was anybody’s guess, but what that meant was that very few superhero comics were still being published. In the 1940s, there were virtually hundreds of different superhero comic books on the stands. In the early 1950s, there were only three - Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.
Faced with a lack of demand for superhero comics, publishers switched to printing other types of comics – romance, crime, funny animal, and horror. This strategy, however, had problems of its own. Some people found the horror and crime comics to be objectionable and a cause of juvenile delinquency. A psychiatrist named Fredrick Wertham wrote a book called “Seduction of the Innocent” which claimed that comics were corrupting children.
The publishers responded by self policing; they created a Comics Code Authority. As a result, superhero books started making a come back. Basically, the publishers realized that very few people would object to superhero comics and as a result replaced their horror, crime, and romance lines with superhero books. The silver age had begun!
Do you have further questions about the Silver Age of Comic Books?
This website aims at being a resource for everything related to Superhero Silver Age comics. It is a work in progress in that we are continually posting new answers to commonly asked questions (under View Answers), new videos, and new links to other websites that might be able to answer your questions. We also have a store that sells silver age graphic novels, supplies, and action figures. If you’d like us to add anything or think that we are missing something from this resource website, please email us at info@silveragecomicbooks.org.
Collecting Silver Age Comic Books for Fun and Profit
If this website has made you interested in collecting silver age comic books for fun, we’re glad! We consider the Silver Age a time period when the best written comics were published. Nothing that has come before or after can really compare to it!
To become a knowledgeable fan, we recommend that you read as many silver age back issues that you can. Also, read Silver Age histories to learn who the writers, authors, and editors were. Basically, learn as much as you can about this brilliant age in comics.
And, if you’d like to take this new found knowledge and make money with it, you can do that as well! Many fans, including the author of this website, have become dealers of silver age books, after many years of collecting.
I had a mentor – an aging comic book store owner who was getting ready to retire – that helped me figure out how to make money selling comics. He took me under his wing and shared the secrets of comic specialty store retailing. He helped me answer these questions:
- Where do you buy vintage comics?
- How much should it cost to buy them?
- Which books will go up in value year after year?
- How do you sell vintage comic books?
- How easy is it to sell comic books at trade shows? On the internet?
- What types of books should I buy?
- What types of books should I not buy?
It took me a couple of years working with this comic shop owner until I felt that I knew the answers to these questions. It took a while but I finally started making some good money selling comic books.
Do you have a mentor that can help you?
If you don’t, I would recommend purchasing this set of 5 lessons which will teach you the proper way to make money selling comic books. Through this course you will learn all the secrets and techniques that professional dealers use to make money from vintage comics. It is the best system that we have found to get up to speed quickly and become an expert in comic book retailing.