Fed up with modern comics? Do what I did -- go back in time!

[jacovny]

After having all but given up on the comic book industry as it presently exists, I began to get nostalgic for the kinds of stories I read when I first starting buying comics back in the 80s, off the spinner-rack in Waldenbooks. Fun stories, more pages, lots more text, without any divisive socio-political agendas. I thought about how fun it would be if I could just warp backward through time once per month, and buy my comics off-the-rack sequentially, starting with the year in which I bought my first comic. Then I realized that, thanks to modern technology, I could.

Using several websites (including Mike's Amazing World of Comics) to identify comics released by month and year, and ordering primarily from Dreamland Comics (not as vast a selection as Mile High, but an infinitely superior user interface), I began by ordering most Marvel and D.C. comics I could find cover-dated January 1982 (released October '81). That was my monthly comic order for last October. I'm now up to December '81 for this month, and I can honestly say I'm having more fun collecting comics than I have in years.

As someone who's never quite adjusted to modern single-issue decompression, the increased story length and text-per-page is a breath of fresh-air. It's taking me 4 times as long to read a 1982 comic as it did a modern one, and that's not a criticism. At times I find myself missing the more mature narratives of the current age of comics, but not nearly as often as I thought I might. And those glorious thought balloons, how I'd missed them!

So if you're like me and you feel like the comic book industry has simply lost its way, considering joining me on my monthly trek into the past, and enjoy comics as they once were!

[drew]

i would be bored out of my skull

[JohnMayo]

i would be bored out of my skull

Understandable. The storytelling style has changed over the decades. Maybe you just should go as far back as the 1980s. Maybe just go ten or twenty years back. There are tons of great comic books published in the past that are worth reading today.

[drew]

i would be bored out of my skull

Understandable. The storytelling style has changed over the decades. Maybe you just should go as far back as the 1980s. Maybe just go ten or twenty years back. There are tons of great comic books published in the past that are worth reading today.

20 years doesnt seem that long ago now - oh yes of course i continue to enjoy discovering many of the the late 90s and early 2000s comics I missed

todays comics have so much more to offer me in terms of reading enjoyment - old comics just dont work for me as consistently as the new stuff does - i have passed beyond 70s / 80s / early 90s comics outside of a few of the standout exceptions

but i read about 15-20 comics a weeks so their isn't much room for going back with sacrificing some of my current favorites