Speaking from a writer's POV, I feel like this is a Golden Age because outfits like Image have cranked the industry's doors open for a minimally-interfered-with and thus wondrously diverse range of material. Several publishers have noticed their success and reacted appropriately.

Okay, this optimism is a rephrasing of what you wrote from a reader's POV. But, believe me, it's refreshing to find a publisher who will judge your proposals on grounds of creative prospects alone, without a trace of Not Invented Here negativity; and I am not sure how much of that readers at large recognise.

But I must disagree with one thing you say:

Does everyone watching Heroes realize they’re watching a comic book?

Hopefully not, since they're watching a TV show, not a comic book. This was an odd statement to drop in the middle of an essay that seems to mostly be pointing out that 'comic books' and 'super-heroes' are not the same thing.

Comic books = medium.
Super-heroes = genre.

Heroes is in the super-hero genre, but in the TV show medium.

The astounding variety of titles from each publisher are leading to things like missed deadlines and out-of-synch crossovers - hopefully the big 2 will practice their universe agriculture a little bit more sustainably...

Another aspect that you didn't mention (although you mentioned that you didn't mention it) is the translation of foreign material. Most of it is from Japan, but we're also getting a lot of European comics, and some from other areas of the globe. The current golden age is definitely not limited to the United States. And while you mention that the creation of children's material is lower than it used to be, kids are reading tons and tons of comics these days; those comics just happen to be from Japan. There's a reason the manga section in bookstores dwarfs the one with American comics: those are the ones that are selling, and mostly to kids.

And another thing to mention, since "comic book culture" has seeped into the culture at large, people are recognizing that comics are cool. It seemed like comics used to be shameful, something only losers took part in, but now everybody seems to like them, if only tangentially through liking superhero movies. And libraries are stocking them quite a bit, which is awesome, since if you want to get into the hobby without spending too much money, you can make use of that resource. I certainly didn't have much choice of comics at the library when I was a kid, but I would be loving it now. In fact, I do love it now, since I often check comics out of the library that I'm not sure I would want to own.

So yeah, I'm totally with you here, Greg. We're in the golden age, and it's only getting better.

Funny thing is, many of the complaints I see aimed at 'modern' comics are bizarrely fitting for 'golden' or 'silver' age comics as well. Modern stories are being dictated by editors who are only after shock value? Yeah, except that Weisinger did it all the time with his bizarre "Jimmy became a gorilla and is about to marry Luthor!" check-out-what-happens-inside covers, and Stan Lee did it with classic covers like "Spider-Man No More!"
Comics use cheesecake to lure their readers in? Yeah, you'd never see this kind of thing in golden-age Phantom Lady comics. Even back then it was common practice to try to boost a book's sales by adding in a cheesecakey lady - Airboy did it with Valkyrie, Blackhawks did it with Lady Blackhawk. From that perspective, Power Girl, WitchBlade and Gen13's Fairchild are legitimate heirs to a proud comics tradition of cheesecake queens.
Modern comics are poorly written and/or drawn by talentless ex-fanboy hacks with no editorial oversight? Yeah, it's not like the good ole days, when Batman would regularly use hypnotism to travel back in time (!!!), Wonder Woman's adventures as a teenager would somehow lead to the appearance of a never-previously-mentioned Wonder Girl in the Teen Titans, and only three or four artists in the whole comics industry could draw anatomically-correct figures.

Honestly... While I appreciate the boundless creativity that gave us the Phantom Zone, the Invisible Plane, the Bottled City of Kandor, Ming the Merciless, the Cosmic Nullifier and so many fantastic concepts... the truth is that most of modern comics' biggest flaws were already present in Golden and Silver age comics.

The past of comics wasn't as glorious as some people think, and the present of comics isn't anywhere as depressing as some people say. But nostalgia is a powerful force, no matter how good the past actually was - because it's too easy to overrate things that we loved when we were younger. Hell, it took me years to acknowledge that Superfriends sucked.

That's an interesting point about "reverse nostalgia." I wouldn't say "my childhood" because I didn't start reading comics until I was 17, but I think that's the reason I'm NOT nostalgic about things prior to the 1980s. I haven't read enough of the old stuff (although I'm getting better!) and I didn't read it when I was but a lad, so it didn't leave this hazy, golden aura around me. That's why I'm more enthusiastic about modern comics than older ones, although I'll stick by my point that modern comics are FAR more sophisticated and interesting than older comics. Again, I haven't read a TON of older comics, but when I do, I'm rarely struck by their maturity as an art form. I guess I just have to read MORE.

And, as I'm not a kid, I'm glad a lot of comics aren't aimed at kids. But that's just my opinion. My two-year-old daughter has already begun digging through the Archie digests at my comic book store, and she loves sitting on the floor paging through them and babbling to herself. If comics are something she wants to read, I'm sure I can find her plenty - both old and new!

I'd like to respond to something MarkAndrew said, while I'm here:

"It’s just that current comics skew to an older audience, while the number of comics aimed at kids has been cut by… I can’t even estimate. I’d wager good money and lots of it it’s at least 90%, though. And while the average quality of kid’s books is higher now, there’s certainly many, many fewer great kids’ comics… Because there’s fewer kid’s comics period."

Why is that a bad thing? If comics is a medium on par with any other creative medium, why do comics have to be aimed at kids specifically? This seems like something a lot of people have an issue with, and I can't really get my head around it.

I mean, I can see how aiming super hero comics at an insular audience of continuity-obsessives may not be the best idea in the long run, but Greg listed a whole bunch of books from other genres that are aimed at wider audiences, and require no knowledge of continuity. I don't get how the fact that they're not written for kids enters into the discussion, I guess.

And that reason is distribution, and the fact that they aimed at a specific (Read: Head Shop) audience.

"These days, you could never read a superhero comic at all and still have a smorgasbord of comics to choose from."

Just like the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties! I'm honestly not seein' more variety in current comics than in the fifties 'an sixties, where you'd have three or four seperate submarine warfare or kid gang or giant monster or Classic Comics type books at a time. And then there's the TRULY Oddball stuff, like Herbie and the Close Shaves of Pauline Peril.

It's just that current comics skew to an older audience, while the number of comics aimed at kids has been cut by... I can't even estimate. I'd wager good money and lots of it it's at least 90%, though. And while the average quality of kid's books is higher now, there's certainly many, many fewer great kids' comics... Because there's fewer kid's comics period.
(And nothing as good as Stanley's Little Lulu. )

Whhiccch gets me to my next point.

Don't get me wrong, you always raise good points in these essays - I'm totally with you re: creator ownership, availability of older materials and online discourse - But it always feels like your writing is colored by a kind of reverse nostalgia. Like everything from your childhood is good... And everything after that.

Which is, don't get me wrong, less annoying that ACTUAL "Everything after 1974-or-whenever is crap" nostalgia.

You know a LOT about your era, but you've never struck me as particularly well versed in the pre-1980 history of comics. Which isn't a PROBLEM, mostly.

Except in posts like this, when you try'n play compare and contrast you come off...

Well, like the example above. Completely dismissing the much, MUCH greater diversity of mainstream comics in the "golden" ages as a bunch of war and romance comics in the fifties. Just completely off base. It's not enough to undermine your whole argument and your basic premise is sound, but it feels like there's a lotta talkin' out yer butt about old comics. You don't HAVE to play compare and contrast, and your pieces would be stronger if you don't.

Oh and I do wanna add. EVERY decent critic I've ever read gives far more good reviews than bad. Just means they're talking about media (mediums?) they love.

So if it sounds like you like everything, you're conveying enthusiasm and optomism. Which means you're a good critic.