Review: The Silver Age of DC Comics, By Paul Levitz

Superman and his “family” from a 1962 annual (© DC Comics)

With superheroes nearly extinct at the start of the 1950s, DC Comics made them central to modern popular culture once more by infusing them with science fiction elements and including ever-more fantastic tales. The results delivered the first-ever “reboot” of Golden Age greats with the Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman as well as the hit television show Batman. The Silver Age of DC Comics chronicles it all, right down to the wacky shenanigans of the small-screen Batman, which made him the embodiment of the camp sensibility of the Sixties.

The author Paul Levitz, who worked as editor/publisher of The Comic Reader, editor of the Batman titles and others, is the writer of more than 300 stories and was a DC Comics executive, finishing his 38-year stint with the company as president and publisher.

Pictured is Superman and his “family” from a 1962 annual.