As, the so-called “Copper Age” basically encompasses my Junior High School through High School years, I find Very Fine / Near Mint to be entirely engrossing with it’s period comic coverage and music and wrestling videos. As much as I am a kid of the 70’s and shamefully look back to ALL that stuff with pure unabated nostalgia (even when so much of it was crap), I have an entirely cynical view of anything that even slightly approached crap during the “copper age.”
That said, what happened in ’92 to make the cut off for this period ’91? I certainly remember getting back to college in the fall of ’92 and noticing a distinct change in the kids on campus, clothing, music, attitudes as if the grown ups were suddenly gone. For the focus of this blog especially–Image Comics hit the comic world like the Thing’s knock out punch-a hit we’re still feeling to this day; and of course no one could really look fondly the same way at Poison or Motley Crue videos after Nirvana came around.
The fact that they specifically state the copper age ended in 1991 coincides perfectly with McFarlane leaving Marvel (left in November of 1991) and starting up Image Comics in 1992. This the period in which I stopped collecting comic books, so I remember the impact of him taking over on Spiderman had on the comic world and the huge backlash of him leaving Marvel quite distinctly. His departure was due to creative differences and him being tired of drawing other peoples characters. Him leaving and successfully starting his own comic company I think inspired a lot of artists to start making their own comics again instead of being “production artists” for other comics. I believe this is why 1991 could be considered a distinct ending of one era and 1992 the start of another.
With regards to the general culture shift that happened on the college campuses and high schools was due to the fact that the big party drug shifted from being cocaine to weed. This, in turn, I believe shifted the music, clothing and attitudes of people quite a bit.