CGC Golden Age (1938-55)
Comic-book fans and historians widely agree that the Golden Age began no later than 1938 with the debut of Superman in Action Comics #1, published by DC Comics. Some date the start to earlier events in the 1930s: The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide's regular publication The Golden Age Quarterly lists comic books from 1933 onwards (1933 saw the publication of the first comic book in the size that would subsequently define the format); some historians, including Roger Sabin (in Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels: a History of Comic Art), date it to the publication of the first comic books featuring entirely original stories rather than re-prints of comic strips from newspapers (1935), by the company that would become DC Comics. However, Superman, the first comic book superhero, was so popular that superheroes soon dominated the pages of comic books, which characterized the Golden Age.[] Between early 1939 and late 1941, DC and her sister company All-American Comics introduced such popular superheroes as Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, Hawkman, and Aquaman, while Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel Comics, had million-selling titles that featured the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, and Captain America.
Although DC and Timely characters are more famous today, circulation figures suggest that in the 1940s the best selling superhero may have been Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel. According to the article "Thunderstruck" by Ben Morse in Wizard #179 (September 2006): By the mid 1940s, Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel Adventures, starring the original "Shazam!"-shouting hero, sold roughly 1.4 million copies per issue, making it the most widely circulated comic book in America. Captain Marvel's sales soundly trounced Superman's self-titled series andAction Comicsalike.
Quality Comics’ Plastic Man and cartoonist Will Eisner's non-superpowered masked detective The Spirit, originally published in a newspaper insert but reprinted in comic-book form, were also extremely popular.[]
World War II had a significant impact. Comic books, particularly superhero comics, gained immense popularity during the war as cheap, portable, easily read tales of good triumphing over evil. American comic book companies showcased their heroes battling the Axis Powers: covers featuring superheroes punching Nazi leader Adolf Hitler or fighting buck-toothed Japanese soldiers have become icons of the age.
Although the creation of the superhero was the Golden Age's most significant contribution to pop culture, many other genres of comic book appeared on the newsstands side-by-side with Superman and Captain America. The Golden Age included many funny animal, western, romance, and jungle comics. The Steranko History of Comics 2 notes that it was the non-superhero characters of Dell Comics — most notably the licensed Walt Disney animated character comics — that outsold all the supermen of the day. Dell comics, featuring such licensed movie and literary properties Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Roy Rogers, and Tarzan, boasted circulations of over a million copies a month, and Donald Duck writer/artist is considered one of the era's major talents. Another notable and enduring non-superhero property created during the Golden Age was the Archie Comics cast of teen-characters.
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