I hated when my dad would say that something was "better back in my day."
Comics, movies, music, cartoons. He claimed it was all better when he was growing up. I wanted the media of my generation to hold up. I wanted my comics, movies, music, and cartoons to be the best but when my father said it was better when he was a kid, I believed him.
I was the youngest of three children with an eleven year spread between us. As a result my parents were older than any of my friends' parents. Their youth seemed so long ago but I was still able to expose myself to a lot of their youthful interests as a kid growing up in the 1990s. Cartoon Network didn't have original programming but I was able to absorb plenty of Looney Tunes, Droopy, and Popeye. My parents still played their old records around the house granting my childhood self a diverse set of musical interests ranging from Howlin Wolf to Tom Lehrer. Turner Classic Movies aired Marx Brothers and Three Stooges films on Saturdays. I felt alienated from other kids for many reasons and being obsessed with a time before I was born didn't help.
Comics were my most passionate interest but the nature of the industry in that period made reading the comics of my parents' youth into a seemingly insurmountable task. Still, I was hooked on my father's comics history lessons. He talked about his earliest comics memories of reading The Spirit, Batman, and EC's Science Fiction comics. He told me about how he became a big fan of Jack Kirby and the Fantastic Four when he was in the army. I was hooked on his descriptions of comics I thought I'd never read.
I was pretty obsessed with Batman as a kid, thanks to a steady diet of the movies, the animated series, and of course, the comics. My father waxed eloquently about the earliest Batman stories. I remember the talking points. "Gritty subject matter. Long shadows. Moody art. Detective stories." You could probably imagine my excitement when my dad came home from work one day with a copy of Batman featuring Two-Face and the Riddler, a trade paperback that reprinted classic comics featuring those titular villains. The first chapter was an issue of Detective Comics from 1942! These were the comics my dad had spoken about!
Well, it sucked. The art was ugly, and not the kind of ugly I liked in Mad Magazine. Where were the long shadows? There wasn't much of a mystery either. This wasn't what my dad was full of shit.
Memory is a funny thing. My dad was right about Jack Kirby, and I like quite a lot of EC stuff. I can't tell you when I finally got around to reading any of those other things but the day I read those crappy Batman comics stays with me. I suppose it taught me that nostalgia wasn't to be trusted but it didn't stop me from pining for the past either.
My parent's childhood wasn't the only past I wanted to immerse myself in. As a kid, my comic book collection was divided pretty evenly between new comics, hand me downs from my older sister, and flea market finds that were usually from the 1980s. I poured myself into these comics and became obsessed with ads for comics that had been new a decade earlier.
I've continued to fall into this trap my whole life. When I became truly obsessed with Mad Magazine I bought as many old Mad paperbacks as I could find at a local used bookstore. When I discovered alt comics during my high school years I sought out as many 90s Fantagraphics releases as possible before diving into vintage underground comix. When I first discovered The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics it happened to be just before our current golden age of comic strip reprints exploded.
It's a bit weird for me to acknowledge how much my obsession with comics is tied into nostalgia. I no longer believe that comics were better when my dad was a kid. I honestly think that my adult life has been a peak for comics as an art form, and the last several years have played host to some of the greatest comics of all time. That's a line I'll be straddling when I write about these foolish things on this blog.
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