The Golden Age (comics)
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- For the era in comic book history see Golden Age of Comic Books.
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The Golden Age is a 1993 four-issue comic book limited series by writer James Robinson and artist Paul Smith. It concerns the Golden Age DC Comics superheroes entering the 1950s and facing the advent of McCarthyism.
[edit] Synopsis
The series opens showing how various Golden Age heroes have adjusted to life after World War II. The members of the Justice Society of America and All-Star Squadron have retired. Tex Thompson, formerly the Americommando, has returned from Europe a war hero, and has used his fame to start a political career, resulting in him being elected a Senator. He then recruits several former heroes to create a new group of heroes for the 1950s. The group includes Robotman, who is losing his sense of human ethics, the Atom and Johnny Thunder, who are both looking for somewhere to belong and Dan the Dyna-Mite (Dan Dunbar), who is lost after the death of his mentor TNT. Thompson oversees various experiments on Dunbar which change him into the incredibly powerful Dynaman.
Other retired heroes are suffering from their own problems. The McCarthy hearings have resulted in Green Lantern being blacklisted due to his job as the head of a media corporation. Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle were married and eventually divorced. Quick is now a television reporter while Belle is dating journalist John Law (formerly the Tarantula). Starman has suffered a nervous breakdown after realizing that his research into cosmic energy helped in the development of the atom bomb. Captain Triumph has retired and is trying to lead a normal life, even though his brother's ghost is urging him to become a hero again. Hourman is fighting, and suffering, from a drug addiction caused by the Miraclo pill that gave him his powers.
The hero Manhunter, who has also returned from Europe, is suffering from memory loss and being hunted by strange men. He meets up with Thompson's former sidekick Fatman and hides out while coming to terms with his demons. Eventually he hooks up with Quick, who with the help of Hawkman helps Manhunter regain his memories. Those memories reveal a dark secret which Thompson is hiding and lead to a clash of heroes in Washington, DC at the end of the story.
[edit] Notes
The Golden Age takes place outside normal DC universe continuity and is labelled as an "Elseworlds". Despite this writer James Robinson incorporated elements of the series into his Starman series, most notably Ted Knight (Starman)'s nervous breakdown.
The series was collected as a trade paperback graphic novel (ISBN 1-4012-0711-1).
The possibility of a sequel miniseries, tentativily titled The Silver Age, was sporadically mentioned by James Robinson and some DC editors in the late 1990s. However, no series has yet materialised, although Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier deals with Silver Age themes in a similar manner.
