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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2020 7:13:51 GMT -5
Everyone, myself included, can sometimes think something was better years ago, whether it be music, comics, wrestling or any number of things. I mean, haven’t we all heard someone (e.g. our dads) say something about how music was better in their day? My late dad seemed to not like anything recorded after 1970.  Dave Meltzer, the editor of the WRESTLING OBSERVER, tweeted something similar recently. So many wrestling fans today talk about how wrestling was better in the late 90s/early 00s. Some say that wrestling was better in the 80s. And Meltzer made some sort of point about how those who watched wrestling in the 80s may well have said something like, “Wrestling was better in the 50s.” And I don’t doubt those alive in the 50s might have talked about the ‘glory days of 1930s wrestling’. I think whether we’re discussing music, comics, wrestling or anything, there is good and bad in every era. I grew up in the 80s so am going to have an affinity for 80s WWF wrestling. But if I put my objective head on for a while, there were some 80s matches which were bad (subjective though it all is). And while some seem to pine for the ‘glory days’, the fact is I have enjoyed some matches this year - and felt emotionally invested. This isn’t a wrestling topic, though, I mentioned that because I thought Meltzer had a point. How do we apply that to comics? A topic like this will be subjective. There are things today that I am not keen on, e.g. six-issue arcs seeming to be the norm or 3,451 crossovers a year, at least within the Big Two. And I do feel a nostalgia for the comics I read in my youth, although, oddly enough, I seem to have the most nostalgia for comics published before I was born. Figure that one out! I love the stuff I grew up with, e.g. the SUPER POWERS mini-series, John Byrne’s Superman, etc. But I can acknowledge that my era (80s) had things I didn’t enjoy. And while I might be cynical about today’s comics, I can appreciate current runs. The first volume of IMMORTAL HULK was a lot of fun to read - and I want to read the second volume. If we attribute Meltzer’s words to a comic mindset, I think it’s the same thing. An older and more cynical fan might say comics were better in the 80s. But if you travelled back in time to 1980, and asked a comic fan for his views, he might say, “Today’s comics cannot compare to 60s Marvel, no way.” But you keep going back. Travel back in time to 1961-63, and ask a comic fan for his view, he might say, “I can’t be doing with this current stuff, the 1950s was so much better.” And if you travelled back to 1950, and asked a comic fan for his/her views, he might say, “It’s okay, but I don’t think anything can compare to the comics of the 30s and 40s.” Apply this to music or anything. I can enjoy so much great rock today, but there can be people who think rock died in the 60s or 70s. Humans are a peculiar breed - and I do not exclude myself from that. We can’t help but be subjective at times, but I think if we can put our objective heads on (not always easy!), I think the easiest road to go down is to accept every era has good and bad, whether we’re discussing WWF, horror novels, rock music or comics. It’s something I am aiming to do. The minute we believe a particular era has a monopoly on what is good (or bad), that’s a road not to go down. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 29, 2020 8:03:10 GMT -5
Everything was better in the past except the tech. But the tech has us fighting with each other all the time. I wish sometimes I could go back to the 70’s.
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Post by brutalis on Nov 29, 2020 11:24:57 GMT -5
Personally I believe it's the "memory" that everything is better in the past. That we subconsciously remember a much stronger connection to those Joy's and happiness of past experiences making it nearly impossible for anything current or new to compete. Reliving the memories only helps to reinforce the happiness while currently expectations are built up from the stronger advertising pushes and overstimulation with internet discussions every every little bit of information discovered before anything is released.
In ye olden days there was no bombardment of every product. Now you have months of everyone else's thoughts and perceptions to influence you. An oversaturation of too much disinformation that can only lead to feeling unsatisfied when the product fails to live up to the "hype". Let me be the judge of if I like something instead of everyone else being the judge, jury and executioner before I have seen it. Not to mention that in the past things were given time to "breath" and grow on release so they had time to influence our perception or to build an audience for it. Now it is immediate sale's or it is gone in days and that equals "failure" which influences us to thinking/feeling let down in new items.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2020 11:39:56 GMT -5
Good points!
Some things do live up to the nostalgia. I still enjoy watching THE A-TEAM and THE INCREDIBLE HULK. But BLUE THUNDER and INSPECTOR GADGET didn’t quite live up the nostalgia when I saw them recently!
You say, “Let me be the judge of if I like something instead of everyone being the judge, jury and execution...” Spot on. I haven’t bought a genre-related magazine in months. Do I really want to spend £5 or more on a magazine just to read opinions about the latest season of THE CROWN or THE MANDALORIAN? Do I really want to pay money for that?
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Post by codystarbuck on Nov 29, 2020 12:00:16 GMT -5
I am less nostalgic for eras as much as certain attitudes and approaches to things. I was born in 1966 and grew up in the 70s and early 80s. The pace of life was definitely far slwoer than now, with a greater aprpeciation for leisure time and also much better "real wages" (the actual buying power of wages and salary). However, the 70s were plunged into a deep recession, in the wake of Vietnam and the OPEC Embargo, and a lot of people lost their jobs, especially in the manufacturing sectors. By the 80s, much of that manufacturing had been taken off shore. I wouldn't trade a cell phone of r a pay phone, except when you can't get reception. I would trade the food, as there were far less preservatives and additives, as well as artificial ingredients in packaged food and things like grocery store bakery products.
Now comics? It depends more on the comic. Marvel, in the 70s, was a far more experimental place, allowing creators to pursue their own unique vision. Jim Shooter put an end to that and Marvel never really came back to it, as the corporate mindset took over after he was ousted. By contrast, DC in the 70s was a pretty sad place, with occasional flashes of creativity and brilliance, but a lot of mediocrity. The arrival of Jenette Kahn helped put a foot up some creative backside; but, it was a slow process that didn't really pay off until the mid-80s. Then, for a brief, shining moment, DC became the place to be.
The Golden Age features a plethora of material, but the art form is in its developing stages, with a lot of amateur art and thin writing. however, there is an anything goes spirit to the best material. You can find all kinds of great comics across the period, in all genres. I would say by the mid-40s, the writing and art had progressed in the average comic to challenge anything that followed. Comics actually began to mature, which led to trouble in the 50s. Even after they were neutered, there was plenty of great material to tide us over until the Silver Age is well under way.
If I could turn back to any time in comics, though, it would be the 80s, for the expansion of the Direct Market and the rise of the independent publishers and small press. An amazing array of creative voices took the stage, launching some amazing works, before the distributor wars of the 90s and the recession helped bury most of those smaller publishers and indies. Cash flow was always the biggest problem and most companies never passed the five year mark.
It is true that your memories of childhood and adolescence are usually far rosier than they actually were, because it is the formative period of your life, when you develop your own identity. The music you discovered and loved sticks with you for the rest of your life, the movies, the tv shows, the comics, the novels....everything is a new discovery that changes your life. As we grow older, the weight of responsibilities alters our perceptions, sometimes for the better, often for the worse, making us long for those golden times, when everything was innocent.
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 29, 2020 14:10:37 GMT -5
If there is a modern comic with a '70s-early '8os approach (or even earlier, consider the Rocketeer) I'd be drawn to it. Solid episodic writing, cover and interior art that tells the story with no eye to being later framed and selling for three figures and up to a fan. So when something new (or a return to form) that is of that quality I can get into it. They chased me away in the mid-late '80s with too many historic character deaths, giant muscles and guns, heroes going extreme 'dark', villains going further into sheer leering evil, and the cynical money-grab cross-overs. Had 1985 led into 1998 I probably wouldn't have left.
So that's comics. I think in some ways tv got better, a lot of '70s early '80s tv was formulaic and meant to be seen totally out of order; Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and St. Elsewhere first broke through that.
I definitely dislike a lot of things computers have brought... most computer graphics hold no interest compared to even run-of-the-mill by hand work or traditional effects artistry... but there have been many exceptions to that too. I like going to funky shops that aren't virtual but I wonder if this covid is going to be the final nail.
Wrestling I only was ever exposed to in the '70s visiting one grandfather, and it was mostly out of Toronto or Calgary. Ice hockey I paid attention to circa 1976 (Philadelphia's second Stanley Cup) and it's had it's great years and it's crap years (and after 1994 and a riot over it in Vancouver I swore off it for a few years). I think some of the rule changes have been for the worse, some for the better. Surfing became more a competitive thing sometimes with surfers being mere robots performing a checklist on near identical waves where it used to be much more an individual expressive thing. Figure skating ditto. We've always had tv coverage of both, but I understand that might not be at all the case in other places. Local surfing is cold water requiring wet suits, and ice hockey has to compete with soccer (football) here more than most places. Professional baseball suffered from strikes and steroids (the Olympics boycotts and steroids), but I enjoyed playing softball, and I will watch a World Series if I care about either team (Red Sox, Cubs, Mariners in that order). I wonder if covid is dealing a serious blow to sports too.
Popular music has become overly-processed corporate formula 'product'. You have to dig but there is still a lot of interesting creativity hidden behind that most visible auto-tuned wall. I could care less about the stage effects and choreography which seems to be at least half of all the modern mega-star acts, just more too-shiny processing saying nothing usually. I like the variety of little independent labels model, kind of like the old ITV regions. That is a major loss.
I would take a one-way ticket to the past if offered for sure, where as back then I thought mostly about the future. The future back then looked much better than it does now, the future just ain't what it used to be. I miss the optimism and the feeling that progress and opportunity could come.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Nov 30, 2020 8:31:52 GMT -5
Personally I believe it's the "memory" that everything is better in the past. That we subconsciously remember a much stronger connection to those Joy's and happiness of past experiences making it nearly impossible for anything current or new to compete. Reliving the memories only helps to reinforce the happiness while currently expectations are built up from the stronger advertising pushes and overstimulation with internet discussions every every little bit of information discovered before anything is released. I think this too, is a lot of our summation of things in the past that we think are better than the present. Even if we are a bit objective that they're maybe good stuff in the present we allow our memories to judge something. Age of Apocalypse is my favorite X-Men story. AoA was also among the first comics I ever bought when I started collecting. When I read it over again, it's not so much all the story that I am reliving. I'm reliving the memories that go with those comics purchases. I may sit there after reading an issue and remember the events that happened around getting that particular issue. So even if another X-Men story is objectively better, whether I recognize it or not, AoA will always be my favorite. |
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 30, 2020 9:08:10 GMT -5
Oh, I thought you were talking in general, not comics.
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Post by Icctrombone on Nov 30, 2020 9:08:51 GMT -5
Artwork is better but storytelling is not.
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Post by SJNeal on Dec 1, 2020 20:54:01 GMT -5
The OP could have just repeated the thread title and I'd have still chimed in to agree...  |
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Post by Cei-U! on Dec 1, 2020 21:33:25 GMT -5
No, things (comics, TV, music, etc., etc) weren't better in the past but they were different. People are naturally resistant to change, especially changes in/to things from their past that resonate with them emotionally, and that can lead to a kind of nostalgia-fueled blindness. I'm as prone to this ss anyone, but I try to recognize where it comes from and work around it (not always successfully).
Cei-U!
I summon the big picture!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 2, 2020 5:32:03 GMT -5
No, things (comics, TV, music, etc., etc) weren't better in the past but they were different. People are naturally resistant to change, especially changes in/to things from their past that resonate with them emotionally, and that can lead to a kind of nostalgia-fueled blindness. I'm as prone to this ss anyone, but I try to recognize where it comes from and work around it (not always successfully). Cei-U! I summon the big picture! Good point. I try to do that, myself. I want to get better at it. For instance, I try to realise that quite a few TV shows today won’t feature standalone tales. There will be an arc to follow. The days of putting on random episodes of THE FALL GUY or THE A-TEAM, and just enjoying them on their own merits, might be over. I’m not saying there aren’t shows like that, but if those two shows debuted today, I’m guessing there’d be a season-long arc with maybe a few isolated episodes to break things up. Same with comics. I realise DC and Marvel aren’t going to give me standalone tales in their mainstream books. There may be some, but chances are it’ll be a five or six-issue arc. And sometimes different is just that, different. Not better or inferior. |
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Post by MDG on Dec 2, 2020 8:58:56 GMT -5
No, things (comics, TV, music, etc., etc) weren't better in the past but they were different. People are naturally resistant to change, especially changes in/to things from their past that resonate with them emotionally, and that can lead to a kind of nostalgia-fueled blindness. I'm as prone to this ss anyone, but I try to recognize where it comes from and work around it (not always successfully). Cei-U! I summon the big picture! I was just about to write pretty much the same thing. Your earliest experiences (or maybe your earliest self-aware experiences) with something--comics, movies, baseball, travel--is your baseline. Things are going to change, and if you don't see that change as a definite improvement, you're going to see it as worse than what came before.
That said, some things are such a product of the particular circumstances that led to them that attempts to recapture or recreate them will always fall short. In comics: EC, the post-war Spirit, the early Marvel age, the initial underground boom from 68-74. In movies: film noir before it got that name, 60s-70s drive-in fare, 40s-50s loony tunes...
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 2, 2020 13:56:48 GMT -5
I'm not nostalgic for comics from the early '40s because I wasn't there... but the quality of the newsprint and printing on it, lack of ads, the thick page counts, and the minuscule seeming ten cent price, that would be the high water mark for comic books to me. The ideal comic book in fantasy cloud cuckoo land would be in the form of the early '40s comic books! More and more ads, fewer pages, UPC code boxes, and plastic plates on the presses instead of metal would be hard to champion.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Dec 2, 2020 14:21:32 GMT -5
No, things (comics, TV, music, etc., etc) weren't better in the past but they were different. People are naturally resistant to change, especially changes in/to things from their past that resonate with them emotionally, and that can lead to a kind of nostalgia-fueled blindness. I'm as prone to this ss anyone, but I try to recognize where it comes from and work around it (not always successfully). Cei-U! I summon the big picture! Good point. I try to do that, myself. I want to get better at it. For instance, I try to realise that quite a few TV shows today won’t feature standalone tales. There will be an arc to follow. The days of putting on random episodes of THE FALL GUY or THE A-TEAM, and just enjoying them on their own merits, might be over. I’m not saying there aren’t shows like that, but if those two shows debuted today, I’m guessing there’d be a season-long arc with maybe a few isolated episodes to break things up. Same with comics. I realise DC and Marvel aren’t going to give me standalone tales in their mainstream books. There may be some, but chances are it’ll be a five or six-issue arc. And sometimes different is just that, different. Not better or inferior. I've been re-watching X-Files episodes in between watching China Beach with my wife for my first time, and I think X-Files did it so right when it comes to standalone episodes and story arcs. The alien conspiracy is on going throughout the whole show's time on the air and one movie. But within seasons you have the one off episodes where everything that was going to happened was going to happen in that one episode. So you were able to pick random episodes to watch. And as I was talking with others in the video game thread, this is one aspect of entertainment that I welcome change more than any other format of entertainment. Technology, in my opinion always makes video games better. It improves your immersion in the game. Anything from music/sound effects, your environment, etc. I'm playing Warframe an it will wow me that I might look down and see my character's shadow on the ground. Or in Breath of the Wild when you're walking through an open field and the grass is blowing in the wind! That's amazing compared to Asteroids being my first video game. So yeah as others have said things change, and that makes them different, but not always better to individuals. But sometimes different is better. Or with time things grow into something different and better. Ask me my day to day stress in marriage 15 years ago and I might have a list. It's never been better than it is now. And it will just keep getting better in the future. |
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