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If Showcase had been a monthy and Julie had been allowed to put out three or four monthly Flash books in 1956 we might well have had the full flowering of the silver age three years sooner.
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Perhaps. But it wasn't and he wasn't.

If Goodman had chosen to stick with his superheroes a little longer and had switched to longer story formats and changed the types of villians they fought, then Marvel might have been responsible for the flowering of the Silver Age and it would have occured several years sooner then DC.

History is what it is.


True. The point I was trying to make in response to someone saying that the Silver Age may have begun in 1956 but didn't really get going until 1960 is that the very nature of the Showcase book made it unlikely that any new feature could quickly flower and have a big effect on the industry. When there are EIGHT months between Flash tryout issues because of the way Showcase was set up as an editorial pass around book its gonna take three years to be sure enough of Flash's success to put it out as its own title. And the Silver Age only grew when that happened.

So history could NOT have changed under that system. Flash could have sold 99% and DC would likely have taken just as long to get a revived Flash Comics title out there. From that title's success came Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom, and, eventually, Justice League of America. From JLA's success, came the Fantastic Four...