legitimate art because they were typically written and drawn by a single person; artists like Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton produced comics described as raw and instinctual. While most comics of the era were pure fantasy, underground comics targeted adults and reflected the counterculture movement of the time, being printed by ad-hoc publishers and distributed in head shops.
End
Artist Neal Adams, whose work with writer Denny O’Neil on Green Lantern/Green Arrow marks one possibility for the end of the Silver Age.
Various events have been identified as marking the end of the Silver Age. One suggestion has been the 1969 publication of the last 12 cent comics, while others have focused on the publishers that were its driving forces: Marvel and DC. According to Will Jacobs, the Silver Age ended in April 1970 when the man who had started it, Julius Schwartz, handed over Green Lantern to Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams in response to reduced sales. John Strausbaugh also connects the end of the Silver Age to Green Lantern. He observes that in 1960, the character embodied the can-do optimism of the era, declaring, “No one in the world suspects that at a moment’s notice I can become mighty Green Lantern with my amazing power ring and invincible green beam! Golly, what a feeling it is!” However, by 1972 Green Lantern had become world weary; “Those days are gone gone forever the days I was confident, certain … I was so young … so sure I couldn’t make a mistake! Young and cocky, that was Green Lantern. Well, I’ve changed. I’m older now … maybe wiser, too … and a lot less happy.” Strausbaugh writes that the Silver Age “went out with that whimper.” Comics scholar Arnold T. Blumberg places the end of the Silver Age in June 1973, when
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