The continuity and verisimilitude is what made comics worth checking out month after month, year after year. The departure from this was one reason I just stopped reading them entirely around 2002-2003: if the creators and suits in charge didn’t care about these characters, why should I?
I found that Marvel in the early 90s still tried to have continuity. Was it just a residual from the Jim Shooter era? Maybe, but Tom DeFalco always struck me as a guy who “got it” as well. It all ended with the Spider-Man Clone Saga. That’s when I said “Screw this” and dropped Spider-Man for a good half-decade.
Fascinating read! I'm enjoying this trip through the past, seeing how things got to where they are now. As a kid I watched the TV shows of Batman, Spiderman, etc because the only comics I ever saw were too adult for my tastes.
Glad you are enjoying the series! There's bit of discussion of comics for adults vs kids vs all-ages slated for the Comics Code posts, so hang in there. We'll get there soon.
Dynamite article. When I was a kid, I still got most of my comics through newsstand spinner racks, either at the local Rite-Aid, Dollar General, or the local newspaper distributor, well into '93. Only in about 1991 did we get our first local comic shops, and they started out centered on sports cards. I'm not sure whether they adopted comics first or started them because of the popularity of non-sports trading cards, many of which were comic related. Now the new card market is almost entirely dominated by Magic, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and the like, a whale that has also eaten the game and hobby stores that used to sell a much wider variety of material like Role Playing Games not made by TSR/WOTC and miniature wargames not made by Games Workshop.
Thanks, Micheal! My experiences were through grocery stores and drug stores. My awareness of the existence of LCSs began in college, and even then the closest one was an hour away. The best option for many of us comic book aficionados was the local used book stores, but even those are often things of the past these days.
There used to be a used bookstore down the street where I picked up many latter-day pulps, from mid-century ERB to Mack Bolan novels, for pocket change. Now there's not even one general interest bookshop in the entire county. I have to drive an hour to get to B&N or 2nd and Charles and walking through either is a harrowing journey through psychedelic sodomy land.
My LCS dropped all current year mainstream comics about 2 years ago when DC did their distribution shake-up. They now only carry old movie memorabilia, pre-2000 comics, old paperbacks, and collectible pulp magazines. Owner is much relaxed in making less, but making a living.
The continuity and verisimilitude is what made comics worth checking out month after month, year after year. The departure from this was one reason I just stopped reading them entirely around 2002-2003: if the creators and suits in charge didn’t care about these characters, why should I?
I found that Marvel in the early 90s still tried to have continuity. Was it just a residual from the Jim Shooter era? Maybe, but Tom DeFalco always struck me as a guy who “got it” as well. It all ended with the Spider-Man Clone Saga. That’s when I said “Screw this” and dropped Spider-Man for a good half-decade.
Fascinating read! I'm enjoying this trip through the past, seeing how things got to where they are now. As a kid I watched the TV shows of Batman, Spiderman, etc because the only comics I ever saw were too adult for my tastes.
Glad you are enjoying the series! There's bit of discussion of comics for adults vs kids vs all-ages slated for the Comics Code posts, so hang in there. We'll get there soon.
Dynamite article. When I was a kid, I still got most of my comics through newsstand spinner racks, either at the local Rite-Aid, Dollar General, or the local newspaper distributor, well into '93. Only in about 1991 did we get our first local comic shops, and they started out centered on sports cards. I'm not sure whether they adopted comics first or started them because of the popularity of non-sports trading cards, many of which were comic related. Now the new card market is almost entirely dominated by Magic, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and the like, a whale that has also eaten the game and hobby stores that used to sell a much wider variety of material like Role Playing Games not made by TSR/WOTC and miniature wargames not made by Games Workshop.
Thanks, Micheal! My experiences were through grocery stores and drug stores. My awareness of the existence of LCSs began in college, and even then the closest one was an hour away. The best option for many of us comic book aficionados was the local used book stores, but even those are often things of the past these days.
There used to be a used bookstore down the street where I picked up many latter-day pulps, from mid-century ERB to Mack Bolan novels, for pocket change. Now there's not even one general interest bookshop in the entire county. I have to drive an hour to get to B&N or 2nd and Charles and walking through either is a harrowing journey through psychedelic sodomy land.
My LCS dropped all current year mainstream comics about 2 years ago when DC did their distribution shake-up. They now only carry old movie memorabilia, pre-2000 comics, old paperbacks, and collectible pulp magazines. Owner is much relaxed in making less, but making a living.