Pierre Speaks: Nostalgia

When mentioning that I love comics from the 70s or 80s, sometimes people will suggest that I love these comics out of "nostalgia".

I can understand that the nostalgia factor might be involved when I read a comic that I read as a kid.

For example, when I read my Flash comic issue 1/2, I remember when I first read it as a kid on the back porch where I lived at the time.

Or when I read the Stern/Byrne/Rubenstein Captain America in my grand-ma's kitchen.

Or when I read the Wolverine TPB at my locker when I started college.

But at some point I pretty much became a back issue reader and started reading comics from the 70s or 80s that I had NEVER READ BEFORE.

When I read the entire Rom the Spacenight series about 18 months ago, I had only read a handfull of those comics. But every pages/issues were filled with good stuff. The strength of the artwork and the stories was impressive even reading it a few decades after the original publication.

Or when I read Jack Kirby's New Gods TPB. The only New Gods comic I ever read by Kirby was the Hunger Dogs GN in the late 80s. But boy each panel was rich with details and powerful artwork that most modern comics do not seem to be able to match.

I could make a list a mile long of comics that I discovered decades after they were first published and that I loved for what they are, not for what they reminded me of.

So I don't buy into the "nostalgia" explanation.

I simply believe that the reason that I became a comic book fan is because I fell in love with a certain type of story told with a good balance of drama and action, with artwork that leaped off the page at the reader.

But those elements seems to be missing from most comics nowadays.

So to find the elements that made me fall in love with comics in the first place, I have little choice but to get comics that use that style. And those were the comics from the 70s and the 80s (although Invincible would be a perfect example of a modern comic as good as those comics from a few decades ago). So I like those comics not out of some misplaced nostalgia factor, but because they have the elements that I look for in a good story.

I hope this makes sense.

Until next time.