SUPERHEROES 611
himself shifted from being a nerdy loser high school student to a handsome, successful,
Pulitzer Prize–winning college graduate and professional photo-journalist. African
Americans as both superheroes and supporting characters became more common. Th e
Defenders, proclaimed as a “non-team,” began in 1971, a twist on the pro-social vision
of Julius Schwarz’s Silver Age Justice League. Superman’s powers were reduced with the
creation of the Qward sand-Superman, and Kryptonite was denuded and transformed
into K-iron. Other refi nements included the cosmic stories (Kirby’s Fourth World,
Starlin’s Warlock), and the growth of team books (the X-Men, the Avengers, the JLA,
and the Legion of Super-Heroes all expanded).
Th e Iron Age, which began about 1980, featured a turning inward of the genre, driven
by two industry trends. First, the creative staff s of the companies changed from primar-
ily professional writers and artists who viewed their work as merely one way to make a
living, to fans who specifi cally wanted to work in the comics industry, a trend begun in
the 1960s. Second, as the traditional system of newsstand distribution and sales waned
in the late 1970s, comic book publishers increasingly turned to direct distribution and
comic-book specialty shops because of the higher profi t margin the new system off ered.
Th e primary customers of these stores were self-identifi ed comic-book (especially
superhero) fans, and these fans became the target market for the publishers. With the
producers and consumers largely coming from the same small segment of the popula-
tion and sharing the same cultural and literary interests, the superhero genre turned in
on itself away from the larger social concerns that had driven the genre in the Golden
Age and the interest in relevance in the late Silver Age.
A primary thrust of the Iron Age was the reinvigoration of old, tired concepts. Self-
conscious revivals sprouted everywhere: the Fantastic Four and Superman by John
Byrne; Daredevil and Batman by Frank Miller; Th or by Walter Simonson; Captain
Marvel in Miracleman and the Charlton heroes in Watchmen, both by Alan Moore; the
new Teen Titans by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. Perhaps the greatest example
of reinvigoration in the Iron Age is the Crisis on Infi nite Earths, which combined DC’s
multiple Earths into a single planet with a single unifi ed history and necessitated a
rewriting of the history of the DC multiverse.
In the Iron Age, the superhero’s selfl essness became problematic. Heroes either
moved “up” into governance or “down” out of superhero status. In Wa t c h m e n, Miller’s
Batman: Th e Dark Knight Returns, Miracleman, and Squadron Supreme, superheroes
who had formerly protected society from the machinations of outside evil move into
formal participation in the governance of society. On the “down” side, Iron Man sank
into alcoholism (issues #160–82). Th e Justice League disbanded (issues #258–61); and
in Th e Sensational She-Hulk under John Byrne, She-Hulk drifted completely away from
serious superhero status into fl ippant postmodernism.
Th e Iron Age of superhero comics was marked by the deaths of numerous super-
heroes, perhaps most notably Marvel’s Captain Marvel, whose reconfi guration in the
1970s seems a hallmark of the impetus of the Bronze Age. Batman and Rorschach, the
ostensible heroes of the two central texts of the Iron Age—Th e Dark Knight Returns
