The Time Tunnel

So, a buddy of mine mocks my silver-bronze sensibility: he is a comics fan from a later generation than mine, and he says that my sense of adventure and storytelling (to include my DMing) has been shaped by my earlier reading of sixties and seventies comics, with their frequent innocent goofiness and often clear visions of morality and ethics (which I think he considers somehow equivalent). He's right, of course. I like to think I can be a little more nuanced than that pigeonhole might suggest, but I will not deny that my affection for those comics in many ways did indeed shape my worldview.

The next two magazines in the Spring Break Bargain Box Bonanza are clearly aimed at an audience of folks like me. These are both One Shot comics again, but from 2011. Jimmy Olsen collects and adds to a series that originally appeared in the back of Action comics under the Big Week arc. The Superman magazine is part of the DC: Retroactive Series, a series of specials that each focus on a particular decade of the heroes adventures - in this case, the 1970s.


It should have been a slam-dunk for DC to make me happy with these, but unfortunately, that was not the case.

The Olsen series has all the elements that were supposed to make it appealing and nostalgic: genies, the signal watch, aliens, blue-dress Supergirl, the bow tie, the Flying Newsroom - and a couple of cameo appearances from the Big Guy. Still, it didn't add up, at least not for me. Maybe the creators were trying too hard, but the antics seemed a little forced. Maybe the conceit works better when Jimmy isn't so self-aware of the unlikeliness and absurdity of his life, when every adventure is wonderful and fantastic, even though that's hard for us jaded and sophisticated readers to swallow. Maybe modern references (like the one in the clip below) were just too incongruous and jarring. Maybe shoehorning in Chloe Sullivan from Smallville was the problem, or the art, which made everyone look the 21-years olds who play high-schoolers on TV. Whatever it was, it didn't give me that ol' zee-zee-zee.

The DC Retroactive series seems to have the evocation of pas eras as an even more intentional and deliberate goal. My understanding is that each issue tries to convey the mood and tone of its target decade; in this case, the seventies. Again, this story tries to touch all the bases: we have Kandor (and an appearance by Van-Zee); villains from the day, including the Atomic Skull and the Master Jailer; hot-pants Supergirl; Steve Lombard; and Superman flying Lois to the Fortress of Solitude.

What we don't have is a compelling story, just the usual magical shenanigans of Mxyzptlk, instigated by that hoariest of comic-book cliches: a bet between two trans-dimensional creatures. So, while the story did evoke some sense of the seventies - and much if that decade's output was good in many ways - it didn't capture the best of that era.

There was a bonus feature in the issue: a reprint of a story from 1978. The original publication of  "Superman Takes a Wife" marked the 40th anniversary of Action Comics, but the reproduction here so muddied Curt Swan's beautiful art than I couldn't even read it.

So does this mean that all attempts to capture the lightning, to recreate the joys of the past are doomed to failure? I don't think so. I think these two comics fit that bill (even though they are edging their way toward becoming antiques themselves), and I can think of a more recent example from DC Comics video.

The DC Showcase Original Shorts Collection released in 2010 contained episodes of Captain Marvel, Green Arrow, Jonah Hex -- and the Spectre. While all were of high quality, the Spectre episode was exceptional. It captured perfectly the creeptacular moodiness of Mike Fleishcer's mid-1970s run on the strip, during the period he and Jim Aparo turned the Spectre into a macabre and ruthless agent of retribution. At the same time, it evoked the aesthetic of that era's TV crime shows, for which Quinn Martin Productions set the standard. There were no missteps or false notes - it all worked perfectly, both on its own and as a trip down Nostalgia Alley.

So, it can be done. It just wasn't done in these comics.

Objets anciens

So, while conducting a search through the actual paper files that still take up some space in my home office for a thing that I didn't find, I selected a few other ancient artifacts that I came across from the pre-internet era to present to you now. These document how we did things Back in the Day.

Memes

Back in the pre-internet days, ideas still spread from person to person within a culture through units (memes) that carried cultural ideas, symbols, or practices. We just had to photocopy them and pass them along in person. You knew something had gone viral if the person you handed it to had seen it already.

Quotations, inspirational and/or clever

If you came across a quote you liked, you didn't share it on Facebook or cut-and-paste it into your email signature. You cut-and-taped it to an index card. And then you looked at it once in a while, when you came across it in a desk drawer.

Movie images

If you liked a movie and wanted an image from it, you tracked down a store that sold old lobby cards or promotional stills and you bought one of them. You didn't install it as your desktop wallpaper, but you might put it in a plastic sleeve for protection and thumbtack it to a wall.

Comics Archives

There were none, unless you cut them out of the newspaper and kept them in a folder or envelopes.

Celebrity Pictures

If you were a young man in 1973 who watched Diana, the one-season sitcom staring Diana Rigg, even though it was incredibly derivative of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, down to the opening credits and the side-by-side desks in the office set and Richard B. Shull taking the Gavin McLeod role, just because it was Diana Rigg and you had been crushing on her since reruns of The Avengers -- anyway, if you were that young man and you wanted some photos of Ms. Rigg for keepsakes, you couldn't just download them, no. You had to cut them out of the Sunday magazine section and stick them onto self-adhesive polaroid photo backing sheets, that's what you had to do.

Scripts and dialogue

And if you wanted the some script pages, perhaps Abbot & Costello's entire "Who's on First" routine, you wouldn't just fire up a search engine with some well-chosen keywords. You would wait until The Naughty Nineties came on television again, and then tape the routine with a cassette recorder, and then painstakingly transcribe it onto Eaton's Corrasable Bond paper using a manual typewriter that you got with S&H green stamps. And you might even decorate that transcript with a little doodle of the comedians.

Yep, that's how it was, boys and girls. How did we ever survive into the information age?

Now get off my lawn and go play where you live.

(Relation)ship of fools

So, I was looking at stuff on ScansDaily and I saw with my own eyes an excerpt from some recent Superman magazine that clearly shows that Superman/Clark is dating Wonder Woman/Diana and that Lois Lane is dating some guy. (I forget who, but he seemed nice.)

I guess I had heard that this was the direction DC was going with the New 52 business, but I must have either blocked it out or forgotten it. (I could easily have forgotten it - current superhero comics have pretty much fallen off my radar screen.) Actually reading an in-continuity sequence that showed this as the status quo was bit surprising. This is just such a stupid idea that seeing it actualized makes me feel a bit like I am peering into the Bizarro world.

I am sure that the comixweblogosphere (or what remains of it) is all abuzz with deconstructions and  interpretations and criticisms pro and con, so I will offer only two succinct arguments:

Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane published by National Periodical Publications 1958-1974.

Sixteen years, 137 issues, moving close to half-a-million copies per issue in its heyday.

Excerpt from "For the Man Who Has Everything" by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, 

published in Superman Annual #11 (1985) and, as far as I am concerned, 

the last, best word on the subject.