612 SUPERHEROES
and Wa t c h m e n, both die at the end of their series, Batman fi guratively and Rorschach
literally. Superman himself, who had been completely revamped in 1986, was killed in
- Th ese deaths can be seen as emblematic of the exhaustion of the genre. Perhaps
most emblematic of the death of the superhero is the Iron Age’s self-proclaimed great-
est success, Spawn, the corpse as superhero.
Th ere is no consensus on the name of the current age of superhero comics or when
it started. It is sometimes referred to as the Renaissance Age, but the Modern Age is
the most common term, clearly serving as a placeholder until a consensus emerges. It
has no fi rm start date because individual creators responded to the darkness of the Iron
Age at diff erent times and in diff erent ways. An early non-comics indication of this
shift was television’s Batman: Th e Animated Series, begun in 1992, and the subsequent
other Batman, Superman, and Justice League cartoons helmed by Paul Dini and Bruce
Timm. In comics, Kurt Busiek’s a nd Alex Ross’s Marvels (1994), Busiek’s Astro City
series (1995), James Robinson’s Th e Golden Age (1993) and Star Man (1994–2001),
and Ross’s Kingdom Come (1996) all worked to rebuild the conventions of the genre
that had broken down or become burdensome during the Iron Age. At Marvel, the
Renaissance Age fully came in with Joe Quesada’s assumption of the editor-in-chief
position in 2000. Marvel came later to the Renaissance Age because during the Iron
Age it was much more taken up with manipulating the speculator market through
multiple, embossed, or enhanced covers, and empty formulaic stories with cluttered
artwork. One sign of the shift into the Renaissance Age at Marvel is the infl ux of
artists and writers from outside the superhero mainstream, such as Peter B ag ge (Th e
Megalomaniacal Spider-Man), Brian Azzarello and Richard Corben (Banner and
Cage), and James Sturm (Unstable Molecules).
Th e other primary convention of the Modern Age is the event comic. An event
comic is a series that tells a major story in a superhero universe, crosses over from
its primary series into the majority of a company’s titles, and pulls in the majority of
its characters. Event comics go back to the annual summer crossovers of the Justice
League with the Justice Society and other superteams (1963–85). Marvel’s Secret
Wa r s (1984–85) initiated the tradition of the company-wide crossover, which DC also
used in the Crisis on Infi nite Earths (1985). Several other events followed in the 1980s
and 1990s, but gradually they became much more orchestrated campaigns, with each
year’s event series leading to the next year’s series. At DC this integration of connected
annual events has been strongest since Identity Crisis (2004), which led directly into
the series of crisis events: Countdown to Infi nite Crisis (2005), Infi nite Crisis (2005–6),
52 (2006–7), Countdown to Final Crisis (2007–8) and Final Crisis (2008). At Marvel,
the integration of event comics became most evident with Civil War (2006–7) and
the subsequent event series Secret Invasion (2008) and Dark Reign (2008–9), though
Civil War was itself tied to the previous event series Secret War (2004–5), Ave nge rs
Disassembled (2004–5), House of M (2005), and Decimation (2005). Th e main diff er-
ence between Modern Age event comics and those of the past is the way the eff ects of
the events series linger in the storytelling at both companies. Previously with series
