My prime comics-reading years were something like 1986 to 1995 or so – not that I stopped reading them in ’95, but I stopped collecting them as obsessively, didn’t keep up with as much, and was in general only tangentially aware of what was going on. These were good years – the Claremont X-Men run, Peter David’s Hulk, the birth of Image and the fall of the Comics Code Authority.
The Death of Superman, exemplifying more than anything else how much power the speculation market had over the industry. I bought three copies – polybagged in black with a funerary Superman armband. One I opened to read, one I traded for a copy of Ultima VII, and one I saved as a speculative asset. You know, at 14.
I was no stranger to the idea of collectibles. My mom was getting into Beanie Babies. And I’d grown up with the Kenner Star Wars action figures – though we had no idea they’d ever be worth anything back in the day.
Anyway. Fond memories.
Thanks to the ubiquity of old issues through resources like Marvel Unlimited and DC Infinite, it’s possible to go back and read those old comics. And I did! The Marvel ones, anyway. I roped some friends into a podcast titled Baby Got Back Issues where we read and reviewed the silver age of Marvel from Fantastic Four #1 in 1961. After a dozen or so episodes I found I didn’t have the time to keep editing and producing them frequently, so we stopped, but I kept reading all the way up to the 80s, well into the Bronze Age.
I’m starting to hit comics I remember reading as a kid. THAT’s an interesting experience.
Going forward I’m going to share my observations here, in this blog. Probably not issue by issue – storyline by storyline is a better pace – but I’ll cover the DC Comics I missed as well – which is honestly most of them.
