In response to strong demand, DC began publishing more superhero titles including Justice League of America, which prompted Marvel Comics to follow suit beginning with The Fantastic Four #1.

A number of important comics writers and artists contributed to the early part of the era, including writers Stan Lee, Gardner Fox, John Broome, and Robert Kanigher, and artists Curt Swan, Jack Kirby, Gil Kane, Steve Ditko, Mike Sekowsky, Gene Colan, Carmine Infantino, John Buscema, and John Romita Sr. By the end of the Silver Age, a new generation of talent had entered the field, including writers Denny O'Neil, Gary Friedrich, Roy Thomas, and Archie Goodwin, and artists such as Neal Adams, Herb Trimpe, Jim Steranko, and Barry Windsor-Smith.

Silver Age comics have become collectible, with a copy in the best condition known of Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962), the debut of Spider-Man, selling for $1.1 million in 2011.

[3] Comics historian and movie producer Michael Uslan traces the origin of the "Silver Age" term to the letters column of Justice League of America #42 (February 1966), which went on sale December 9, 1965.

[4] Letter-writer Scott Taylor of Westport, Connecticut, wrote: "If you guys keep bringing back the heroes from the [1930s–1940s] Golden Age, people 20 years from now will be calling this decade the Silver Sixties!

Jacobs describes the arrival of Showcase #4 on the newsstands as "begging to be bought", the cover featured an undulating film strip depicting the Flash running so fast that he had escaped from the frame.

[12] The DC artists responsible included Murphy Anderson, Gil Kane, Ramona Fradon, Mike Sekowsky, and Joe Kubert.

[12] Only the characters' names remained the same; their costumes, locales, and identities were altered, and imaginative scientific explanations for their superpowers generally took the place of magic as a modus operandi in their stories.

[15] Schwartz, a lifelong science-fiction fan, was the inspiration for the re-imagined Green Lantern[16]—the Golden Age character, railroad engineer Alan Scott, possessed a ring powered by a magical lantern,[16] but his Silver Age replacement, test pilot Hal Jordan, had a ring powered by an alien battery and created by an intergalactic police force.

[16] In the mid-1960s, DC established that characters appearing in comics published prior to the Silver Age lived on a parallel Earth the company dubbed Earth-Two.

It was a book called The [sic] Justice League of America and it was composed of a team of superheroes", Marvel editor Stan Lee recalled in 1974.

[10] With an innovation that changed the comic-book industry, The Fantastic Four #1 initiated a naturalistic style of superheroes with human failings, fears, and inner demons, who squabbled and worried about the likes of rent-money.

With dynamic artwork by Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and others complementing Lee's colorful, catchy prose, the new style became popular among college students who could identify with the angst and the irreverent nature of the characters such as Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Hulk during a time period of social upheaval and the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s.

[26] Harvey's focus shifted to children from 6 to 12 years of age, especially girls, with characters such as Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and Little Dot.

[26] Although its characters have inspired a number of nostalgic films and ranges of merchandise, Harvey comics of the period are not nearly as sought after in the collectors' market in contrast to DC and Marvel titles.

[29] With the popularity of the Batman television show in 1966, publishers that had specialized in other forms began adding campy superhero titles to their lines.

[28] Gold Key did licensed versions of live-action and animated superhero television shows such as Captain Nice, Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles, and continued the adventures of Walt Disney Pictures' Goofy character in Supergoof.

[6] One commentator has suggested that, "Perhaps one of the reasons underground comics have come to be considered legitimate art is due to the fact that the work of these artists more truly embodies what much of the public believes is true of newspaper strips—that they are written and drawn (i.e., authentically signed by) a single person.

"[32] While a large number of mainstream-comics professionals both wrote and drew their own material during the Silver Age, as many had since the start of American comic books, their work is distinct from what another historian describes as the "raw id on paper" of Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton.

Historian Will Jacobs suggests the Silver Age ended in April 1970 when the man who had started it, Julius Schwartz, handed over Green Lantern—starring one of the first revived heroes of the era—to the new-guard team of Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams in response to reduced sales.

Too many new directions—especially [the sword-and-sorcery trend begun by the character] Conan and monsters [in the wake of the Comics Code allowing vampires, werewolves and the like]—were on firm ground by this time.

[39] In Sanderson's opinion, each comics generation rebels against the previous, and the movement was a response to Crisis on Infinite Earths, which itself was an attack on the Silver Age.

[39] The Silver Age marked a decline in horror, crime, romance, talking animal humor, and Westerns as American-comics genres.

Young children and girls were targeted during the Silver Age by certain publishers; in particular, Harvey Comics attracted this group with titles such as Little Dot.

Roy Lichtenstein, one of the best-known pop art painters, specifically chose individual panels from comic books and repainted the images, modifying them to some extent in the process but including in the painting word and thought balloons and captions as well as enlarged-to-scale color dots imitating the coloring process then used in newsprint comic books.

[50][51] Arlen Schumer, author of The Silver Age of Comic Book Art, singles out Carmine Infantino's Flash as the embodiment of the design of the era: "as sleek and streamlined as the fins Detroit was sporting on all its models".

[6] Other notable pencilers of the era include Curt Swan, Gene Colan, Steve Ditko, Gil Kane, Jack Kirby, Joe Kubert, Don Heck, George Tuska, Dick Ayers, and John Romita Sr. Two artists that changed the comics industry dramatically in the late 1960s were Neal Adams, considered one of his country's greatest draftsmen,[52] and Jim Steranko.

[53] Strausbaugh credits him as one of Marvel's strongest creative forces during the late 1960s, his art owing a large debt to Salvador Dalí.