the Golden Age of Comics

(Once again, this is cross-posted from BootCamp Comics blog.)

I want to share with everyone a quote I read on the comics blogosphere recently. Although I can't remember the exact wording, it goes something like this: "There are two Golden Ages in comics: one was from 1938 to 1950, the other is from the time you were 8 years old to the end of middle school."

Hmm, pretty good, no? It sums up both the thrill of childhood, but also how nostalgia can colour your perception and taste in comics as an adult. Face it, when you were a kid, chances are you didn't care about what happened in comics decades before you were born. If you were like me, you just wanted something brand new! Because if it's new, it's gotta be good, right? Certainly, I was no great connoisseur of storytelling or artwork. But I don't think 10-year-olds are expected to be. It's only when you reach your teens that you start to develop that "us versus them" elitist attitude towards others.

But even though I loved comics, I drifted away from them in my mid-teens. A good part of this had to do with a growing interest in music, but I also found comic books less exciting. To give a rough approximation of the timeline I'm talking about, this would have been in the mid '90s, right after the initial Image explosion. I found the stories of some of the newer books lacking, I didn't like the changes being made to my old favourites, and I was also questioning why every other female character had to have a gravity-defying rack and ninja training. Some might say these were symptomatic of the worst excesses of the comic book industry in the '90s. But I honestly think I would have felt the same, whether it had been 1975 or 1995. I was simply growing up.

The more interesting question is, why did I return to comic books? There are lots of people out there who read comics as children, and never pick up another issue once they've finished adolescence. What drives people like me, and the other creators on this site, to stick with the medium?

For me, I think it's the promise of adventure that a comic book holds. In just 22 pages, a comic book can whisk me on a brightly-coloured journey; taking me from the streets of New York, to the dark side of the moon, with a possible stop in the Negative Zone for good measure. I'll admit, now that I'm pushing 30 I'm not as easily impressed by the umpteenth "secret identity in peril" storyline. But there are lots of fantastic writers and artists working today who can take characters others have long left for dead and breathe new life into them. And when make me say "cool!" out loud while reading one of their books, then they're doing their job right.

It seems this entry has turned into my "why I love comics" routine. But it's also why I enjoy creating comics. Hanging with Ty and the BootCamp gang has shown me that I don't have to sit back and read the adventures other people have written. I just need to unlock the crazy ideas bouncing around in my brain and, with a little help from my friends, those stories can be unleashed on the world for all to share. My own personal Golden Age of comics may have passed, but the BootCamp Age is well underway.