10 Bronze Age Comics That Changed DC & Marvel Forever

New Gods #1-#11 (February 1971-November 1972)

One of the key markers for the end of the Silver Age and the beginning of the Bronze was the move of Marvel's Jack Kirby (the artist who had collaborated with Stan Lee on the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and many others) to DC in 1970. It was the end of an era at the House Of Ideas and the start of a new one for their Distinguished Competition.

At DC Kirby was given free rein to create whatever characters that he liked, while at Marvel he never had much control over his creations.

Ironically for something that changed the scope of the DC universe what he wanted to do was create a self-contained limited series which would not be tied into the confines of ongoing monthly comics.

With New Gods Kirby fully explored the cosmic epic themes he had began at Marvel. But this time he was able to invent his own mash-up of sci-fi and classical mythology. Kirby pushed aside the Old Gods of Asgard and similar for the New ones of the divided duelling worlds of utopian New Genesis and polluted nightmare Apokolips.

And, while New Gods and its Fourth World characters were never intended to run beyond the early 70s, Kirby tapped into a seam of big mythology that DC fans lapped up and wanted to keep. The New Gods, and Apokolips overlord Darkseid and his Anti-Life Equation in particular, would give DC their biggest of big bads whenever they needed a grand event story afterwards.