A hall of mirrors II: the Prismatic Age
August 3rd, 2008
“How long would you say Heroic Ages last, Wally?”
– Jay Garrick, the Flash (I)
“Twenty years, according to Jones and Jacobs. The Golden Age lasted until 1955, the Silver Age until 1975, but the Dark Age just ended in ’95. That’s why it’s still too early to say what this new age is going to be called yet.“
– Wally West, the Flash (III)
Flash #134, cover-date Feb 98, script by Mark Millar & Grant Morrison
It always comes back to the Flash, in the end: from a purely DC pantheon angle, it’s easy to see how the missing middle mantle above, Barry Allen, and his death (“outracing the tachyon at the heart of the Anti-Monitor’s anti-matter cannon…[he] became one with the other side of light.” – so impossibly romantic, that) resonate with the term “Dark Age”, certainly as used pejoratively.