Does anyone know who the "governing" body is that decides such things? Is it Overstreet, the Publishers, a mix...what?
I know they(whoever 'they' are) only fairly recently got together (5-7yrs ago) and agreed to finally label a Bronze Age. And that end point is still at times debated but most seem content with '70-'85.
Golden Age: 1930-1955 (sub age Atomic within)
Silver Age: 1956 - 1970
Bronze Age: 1970 - 1985 (sub age Copper within)
Modern Age 1986 -->Present
The Modern Age comprises to date 32 years. That's more than the Golden Age and frankly the GA might be too large and I feel that's why the Silver and Bronze Ages are more in line with a timeframe comprising, loosely, a Generation marking point.
The most frequent 'next' Age I see usually mentioned is Dark Age for a variety of reasons:
- Rise of Anti-Heroes(Punisher, Lobo)
- Marvel files for Bankruptcy
- Classic Heroes broken down(Death of Superman, Batmans Back Broken, Hal Joran-->Parallax, Diana demoted from WW, Peter Parker may not be Peter Parker Clone Saga
- Rise of Image Comics
One end for a proposed Dark Age would be Marvel's Heroes Reborn in 1997. The Age would be the shortest at 11yrs. Thus setting the Modern Age a '97--->Present
Another I see is DC's Identity Crisis in 2004, which has some Dark subject matter itself before the company seemed to course correct a bit itself. That would set Modern Age as 2005--> Present and is just slightly pre-Civil War at Marvel. This would make for a longer Dark Age at about 18yrs.
Thoughts or Answers as to who decides this and when they might meet again?