So let’s see…do I start off my next year of blogging with a post about our relative sense of “old” comics, or do I start it off looking at the trend of comics about real life murders and serial killers?
Well, let’s do that first one today, because that second one is going to take a little more digging than I’ve left myself blogging time for today. Let us go back to a comment left by longtime reader Chris G. who sez
“…Thank you for making me realize that back when I was a comic collector looking for ‘old comics,’ I was in fact looking for comics from thirty years earlier.
“Why did 1965 seem far away in 1995, but 1995 seems like yesterday?”
There are certainly a lot of reasons for that, particularly in reference to comic book collecting. One main reason is the wild overordering of comics in the ’90s, leaving plenty of stock around for folks to find. Now, generally, it may not be as easy to find now as it once was, given that many of the stores that did said reordering have since shut down and vanished along with their inventories (my former stomping grounds included). But even that is only a minor change in availability. If you want a Turok Dinosaur Hunter #1, you can find one in short order.
Related to that is the very nature of the direct market. Comics ordered by shops were, for the most part, theirs to keep. There were rarely “stripped cover returns” that newsstands, the primary retail arena for comics in the decades prior to the ’80s, were able to do. Thus, to use the years Chris offered up, a comic from 1995 that didn’t sell was just the retailer’s problem to store in the backroom forever or throw in the bargain bin. In 1965, a comic that didn’t sell would have the cover striped off and returned to the distributor for credit, the rest of the comic being disposed of.
Another possibility depends on the age of the collector in question. If you weren’t around, or at least old enough to buy comics, in 1965, those will always seem to be from ye olden tymes to you. But you may have been old enough to start collecting in the ’90s and are still collecting now, so there is a continuity of acquisition that makes you see those ’90s comics as “the earlier part of my collection” versus “hokey smoke those are three decades old.” I get that feeling sometimes when I’m at the shop: “I remember buying this issue of Spanner’s Galaxy off the shelf, it can’t be old!”
One more thing that would make a “30 year old comic from 1965” seem that much older than a “30 year old comic from 1995” is simple aesthetics. If you’re in 1995 looking back at a 1965 comic, it just looks old. I don’t mean wear and tear and other matters of condition, I mean the artwork, the storytelling, the coloring, the paper stock, everything…a 1965 comic would just look dated to the eyes of someone thirty years later.
Someone in 2025, like, y’know, all of us at this moment, looking thirty years back at a comic from 1995: it’s still going to have elements that are dated. Maybe some Liefeld-isms in the art, more dialogue on the page, more cover blurbs, some crazy cover gimmicks…but you can still usually draw a straight line from that 1995 comic to the comics of today. You can see how one may have evolved into the other.
If I had to put my nickel down on any of these, I’d say it would be just the sheer number of 1995 comics left out there in the marketplace to buy now. You can probably go into most comic shops and ask for a Spawn #27 and chances are good they’d have it. But if you were in 1995 asking for a thirty year old copy of Star Spangled War Stories #120, you might be out of luck.
I still wouldn’t quite rule out “being old enough to buy the ’90s comics when they were new,” because that’s the one that hits old farts like me the hardest.
Excellent points all. My collecting time started in the mid-1980s, continuing on from my dad’s habit that ended in 1985.
I recently went into a new comic store in my area (yes, there are still new comic stores!) and was somewhat shocked to see the wall of “rare, valuable, stored behind the counter” comics.
Reader, I owned 90% of them.
I’m going to lean towards “a person’s current age”. I remember being a kid buying comic back-issues in the mid-‘80s. I was at a store with my cousin (who is the same age as me), and I told him I was looking for covers with the Marvel Comics Group banner on the top because those were “old comics”. He was a bit wiser in the way of the comic world and said those aren’t that old, as the “really old” Marvel Comics didn’t have the banner on the top of the book. I was thinking, “How could that be? Marvel Comics had the banner on the top the year I was born. Gasp! Those must be really old comics.”
When you’re a child, anything from before the year you are born seems like it was ancient times.
Now, comics from 1995? I was just out of high school and attending university in 1995. I remember seeing those issues on the racks at the local comic store every week. I can’t be that old. Those issues seem relatively recent.
If you tell me that we are living in a world where 1995 is the same amount of time in the past from today as 1965 was in 1995, I have trouble comprehending the truth of this statement. Logically, I know it is factual, but trying to think about it further, it seems impossible. What? No. You see, 1965 was before I was born. 1995, I was graduated from high school.
Any time after you hit your thirties FLIES.
I remember re-reading All-Star Squadron a few years ago, and realizing I was as far away in time from their publication as the original comics were from the attack on Pearl Harbor. Definitely an eye-opening moment.
Speaking of 30-year-old comics, The Rest is History podcast is beginning a series of episodes on the Jack the Ripper murders currently. It’s interesting listening to their descriptive narrative while picturing Eddie Campbell’s scenes and panels (always and only in black & white, please). They also (at least so far) are presenting sympathetic and deep background details about the victims, which evokes in my mind the original writer’s dedication in the book. Anyway, good listening for anyone who’s read From Hell a few times (or Rick Geary’s succinctly fact-focused volume).
Actually, I think that first generation of vintage comics collectors from circa 1965 (comprised partially of fans who became professionals in the industry, such as Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, etc.), were quite fortunate in that they were able to acquire lots of thirty year old comics from the Platinum Age, Golden Age, and Atomic Age for comparatively little money and they also were able to get on board with Silver Age Marvel Comics several years after its inception–and thus track down the very first Marvel Comics Fantastic Four no. 1, Amazing Fantasy 15, Amazing Spider-Man no.1, etc., at a decent price.
Speaking of ages, we still don’t have consensus on what constitutes any age past Bronze. Let’s say the Bronze Age ended in 1986. That means we have age designations for the first 50 or so years of super-hero comic book history, and no age labels for the last 40. The lines between stylistic changes blurred following the early-‘90s. Are there major events comparable to Showcase #4 in the ‘50s, or the confluence of Kirby Leaves Marvel!/Relevance/Death of Gwen Stacy/ Expansion of Genres/etc. from 1969-1971? Death of Superman, maybe? What about after that?
I know this topic has been discussed on this blog before. I’m just looking at the fact that we can’t agree on a division of modern ages is another indicator that time and super-hero comics history have moved differently than they used to.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the Chromium Age used for the 90s, and I propose (but I’m sure someone else already has somewhere) the Celluloid Age for 1998 (Blade) through 2019 (Avengers:Endgame).