Comic Book Retrospectives – A Current Indulgence

Ah dammit, I think middle age has finally settled in properly. I've started getting the urge to write retrospective pieces. I finished one today on a certain nineties comics event (which should arrive soon on a certain site), and had a lot of fun writing it. So much so that I suddenly have half a dozen other ideas for further retrospectives.

Is this just middle age talking, or am I actively wanting to revisit stuff that I love?

Probably a bit of both, really. Nineties comics are often derided, and in some cases quite rightly so, but that was the era in which I came of age and the era I remember the most fondly in terms of stuff I was reading. Writing restrospectives is the perfect excuse to revisit things you love, but it does run the risk of discovering that those things weren't as great as you remember. That's an odd feeling, but an interesting one.

It's interesting to observe how your tastes change, how your mind evolves and how the different eras of your life start to seem like chapters.

It's also a nice little reminder of a more simple time in the comics industry. I mean, back in the day we may have had foil embossed covers and characters with ridiculous physical proportions, but we didn't have gigantic crossovers which it was impossible to follow. Sure, there were events, but not quite to the same extent as today's bloated, meandering crossover fodder.

So basically I'm taking from this urge the apparent fact that I'm a bitter and jaded aged geek with a fondness for nostalgia. I don't have a problem with that. Now, where did I put that stack of early WildC.A.T.S. issues and my stash of Malibu comics?