The Golden Age (comics)

For the era in comic book history see Golden Age of Comic Books.

The Golden Age is a 1993 four-issue Elseworlds 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.

Plot

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 (Lance Gallant) 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 the two of them seek the help of Hawkman, who helps Manhunter regain his memories. Those memories reveal a dark secret which Thompson is hiding. During the final days of the war, the villan the Ultra-Humanite, who worked as one of Hitler's scientists at Dachau, transferred his brain into Thompson's body. While Manhunter is recovering his memories, Thompson's aide and lover Joan Dale, the former Miss America discovers his personal diary. Concerned with Thompson and Dunbar's increasingly strange behavior, she enlists former thief Paula Brooks, also known as the Tigress, to pick the lock and open the diary. The two of them along with Gallant (whom Brooks was dating), discovered not only the fact that Thompson was actually the Ultra-Humanite, but also that he had performed another brain swap, that of Adolf Hitler's brain into Dunbar's body. They call Johnny Quick to inform him about the contents of the diary at about the same time Carter Hall calls him about Manhunter's revelations. This sets the stage for an explosive and tragic final showdown in Washington, D.C.

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. Perhaps the most notable element that is out of continuity is the fate of Dan the Dyna-Mite, who in DC continuity became a member of "Old Justice", a team that fought Young Justice. Also, the character of Tarantula has appeared in the pages of Nightwing
• 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.
• It should be noted that Geoff Johns used some elements of this mini series in a JSA story arc, bringing some elements of this story into continuity (Starman helping to develop the atom bomb, the McCarthy hearings black listing the JSA - though a variation of this appeared in the final issue of the Justice Society's run in Adventure Comics in 1979).

Publication

The series was collected as a trade paperback (ISBN 1-4012-0711-1).

See also

• Annotated Analysis "The Golden Age", by page: http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Annotations/Golden%20Age%20Annotations.htm
• List of Elseworlds publications