The popularity of heroes boomed again with the dawn of the Silver Age, when DC re-introduced a new age of comics with their new Flash. Barry Allen was joined by "new" old superheroes: Hal Jordan, Ray Palmer, Katar Hol, and many others. Their names, Green Lantern, Atom, Hawkman, recalled their Golden Age counterparts, but their costumes and origins were radically different and firmly root in the 1950's. The new Flash was a police scientist, Atom was a physicist, Green Lantern a test pilot, and Hawkman an interstellar policeman. There was greater emphasis on science fictional elements, reflecting the world outside of comics.

The Silver Age also saw a greater emphasis on real world problems, especially towards its end. Where Golden Age heroes fought generic Nazis and problems on the homefront, Silver Age comics turned inward with more personal problems. Both sets of problems were obviously reflections of the times. The trend began with Marvel, and DC followed with classic stories, such as the Green Lantern Green Arrow stories of the late sixties and early seventies.

Now the comic world has firmly entered its third age. The Onyx Age of comics, with an emphasis on bleakness, dark characters, heroes little better than the violent criminals they hunt down.

The Onyx Age started with DC and the Flash and Death, in Crisis on Infinite Earths #8. This was the issue that saw the death of Barry Allen, whose origin in Showcase began the Silver Age. It is appropriate that the Onyx Age begins with a death, since by and large today's most popular books involve death. Death is important for motivation, for plot development, and she's darn cute too.

Since Crisis, we have seen a re-vamping of every major character, from Superman on down. Of course, just as in the transition from Gold to Silver, many things in the Onyx Age remain the same. Clark Kent is still Superman and Bruce Wayne is still Batman, but we are now on our third Robin. Several characters, like Aquaman and Supergirl, have had their origins drastically re-written. We can easily see how our own favorites have changed since the Silver Age. My own favorite comic, the Legion, has been restarted so many times I've lost track.

The Onyx Age is in part a result of the timelessness of comic books. DC had over 50 years of history, dozens of established alternate realities, and an equal number of potential futures. Something needed to be done to consolidate the past. Fans want a consistent history; it is unfair to readers to suddenly change the past of a character because of sloppy research, and when done for no reason at all, it can be the mark of a bad writer.

DC is not alone. Marvel has an even more complicated future history and because it tried to link its characters more firmly to our reality, Marvel has even more continuity problems and explanations for them.

Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose, wrote "The Myth of Superman" first published in English in 1972, during the Silver Age, but also recalled the comics that Eco had read as a child. This article examined some of the sources for the convoluted nature of time and continuity in comics. Many things about Superman have changed since Eco's article, and it is precisely for reasons Eco discusses that Superman and so many other characters have changed.

For Eco, comics are a new mythology and the superhero is a new type of god in that mythology. The very notion of the Golden and Silver Age is taken from Greek Mythology. In Greek mythology, the world began in an age of plenty and eternal summer, the Golden Age, then fell to the Silver Age, and ultimately the Iron Age, the age where we live, an age of war and troubles. The Onyx Age already had been coined by others for the current dark age of comics.

Like traditional myths, the stories take place outside of real time. Time passes in the story from page to page and panel to panel, but rarely does time pass from story line to story line. As I right this, Christmas is just around the corner and many of the comics coming out now have a Christmas theme. The same theme they have every year. Every year, the characters are anchored in time. This comic takes place in December. And next year, like last year, there will be another Christmas story. But the characters won't have gotten a year older. Perry White will not move one year closer to retirement. The Teen Titans will still be in their teens.

This is the great paradox of comics and the reason DC has had to revamp its continuity over the past decade: time passes and no one ever grows older. Characters who are barely in the thirties have histories going back fifty years. Marvel has had a harder time with their continuity than DC because they very consciously tried to link their characters to their reader by having time pass. But only about five years have passed in the Marvel Universe since the early Sixties. The only thing that has saved them from major continuity problems has been the relatively short publishing history, approximately 35 years of modern stories compared to Superman who will soon be celebrating his sixtieth birthday.

DC, in its new unified universe, has had to account for the Golden Age heroes who are still alive and looking younger than they should if they started before World War Two. As I understand it from the Official History of the DC Universe put out shortly after Crisis, the Golden Age heroes spent time in limbo, and then reappeared on the scene a few years before the present. Some heroes, like Jay Garrick and Alan Scott have retarded the aging process by nature of the abilities, allowing them to play a more active role.

The second reason for the changes we have seen since Crisis and Zero Hour are a function of the story telling aspects of comics. It is difficult for good writers, and I think the writing in general has gotten more sophisticated as the comic book audience has gotten more sophisticated in general, to write stories where people have marvelous adventures, and yet nothing changes. This can be frustrating for a writer, because character integrity and constancy must be put ahead of major character development. It is rare for any writer to spend more than five years or so on a single character, although there are some exceptions. I think that part of the reason is that after awhile, if they are good writers, they get bored because their stories are constrained by the nature of the character. Not to mention the corporate influence, which exerts a certain amount of pressure on the writer.

But every so often, the comic universe is radically re-written. We are in the third of these re-births at the moment. In a time of re-birth, characters can have radical permanent changes made to their backgrounds. Superman was re-vamped by John Byrne, the Legion recently finished a several year re-write that tied in to Zero Hour. Batman is back with a new costume and we are on our third Robin. Meanwhile, Marvel is making similar changes in its characters, and hints indicate that next year will see even more changes.

I think this is a needed part of comic book reality. It keeps the characters fresh, the writers involved and most importantly it gives fans what they want: everything is the same, just different. I think that every 20 years or so, comic companies should restart their universes from the beginning. This would allow writers to make minor changes in the characters, or even major ones, while still telling stories about the same basic characters. For example, maybe in twenty years, somebody will decide that Superman needs to be less powerful, but more alien. And what if he married Lois? It would be like every 20 years or so, we get a new Elseworlds universe to play with and explore. Characters could age, because they would just be rejuvenated at the next restart.

Some of these ideas are being picked up in the Onyx Age. Characters are going through transitions and permanent changes that would have been unheard of in the Silver Age. Why not make these revamps planned and plotted and a part of the wonder of comics?