https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Age_of_Comic_BooksEven though I started reading Silver Age books well after it was officially over, I somewhat experienced it firsthand through reprints from 1972 forward in 52-page, 100-page and LIMITED COLLECTORS' EDITION issues. And despite being 10 years old, I could still discern a clear difference in storytelling style in these mostly backup reprint stories. There was an innocence, playfulness and whimsy to these stories. Whether Infantino Flash, Elongated Man backups from DETECTIVE or FLASH issues, or new backups that carried on in that tradition, the heroism of Adam Strange (reprinted in 1969-1974 in STRANGE ADVENTURES 218-244, after Neal Adams' Deadman was discontinued from that title) as well as scattered Adam Strange reprints in ACTION and other 100-pagers). Or the low-testosterone nobility of the crew in the Haunted Tank (G.I.COMBAT) or Enemy Ace (STAR SPANGLED WAR), there is an optimism and warmth to these stories that still gives them enduring appeal.
In BATMAN when I started reading in 1972, O'Neil was scripting Batman with a globe-spanning grandeur on a par with the James Bond films, with the introduction of R'as Al Ghul and Talia. Or Batman fighting crime gangs and street criminals, comparable to 1939-1940 Batman stories (before Robin), or 1970's detective dramas on TV.
Even in a somewhat Dickens-esque Christmas story in Batman 239 (1971), the sympathetic impoverished criminal father of a little girl violently tries to strangle Batman to death with a string of Christmas lights. In the backups, Mike Friedrich has Robin on a commune, looking for a cop killer hippie, hiding among other peace-love-and-granola hippie radicals.
Green Lantern and Green Arrow in their title got in shouting matches over political issues I didn't quite understand at that point. But still, this was not even 10 years after the Silver Age, in 1972-1975, was still a universe away in style from the Silver Age stories that were reprinted alongside them.
I look back at the time I got into comics as a very ideal time. The 1970's material (or "Bronze Age", if you must) among some of the best written and illustrated, by the likes of O'Neil, Adams, Novick, Giordano, and Aparo, Wein, Wrightson, Englehart, Rogers, Thomas, Windsor-Smith, Kaluta, Goodwin, Simonson and others.
But where I also had exposure simultaneously through abundant reprints to the accumulated work of the two previous Golden and Silver Age eras.
I see the Silver Age as a more refined version of the best elements of the Golden Age, with the rougher elements phased out, focusing on a reverent and very pleasant heroism, where violence may have occurred, but in a world where problems seemed to be solved most by intelligence and wit rather than slugfests. Flash, Elongated Man, the "new look" Batman, to name a few, exemplified that.
