I have been genuflecting to Joss Whedon (
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Firefly. etc...)too much lately. But here's one more:
First, a generous heaping of backstory: When I was a wee young thing in the 70s I stopped at the local 7-Eleven and picked up an issue of The Uncanny X-Men (issue #126 to be exact) and began descending into comic madness immediately thereafter. Each month felt like Christmas morning, opening up the pages to see what adventure, threat, personal drama, or battle awaited Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, Storm, Colossus, Cyclops, Dazzler, The Beast, etc...
Many years later I stopped reading because the comics just didn't do it for me any more. Some say it's an age thing. But I don't know... See, I love the medium itself. Still. I think it's just as valid as any other for storytelling and aesthetic possibility. But I just can't get into the actual comic books anymore. I try, maybe twice a year. I walk into comic shops, flip through a few things, maybe buy a few. And then immediately lose interest again. So maybe it's both age and a creative drought in comics? Maybe I just don't like the art anymore? I hated the Jim Lee (?) years of everyone drawn with the same gargantuan muscle look, which was not the case in the 70s/80s when superheros actually did have different body types, always fit of course but they weren't all injecting steroids and implanting silicone monthly. Anime is cool but I also hated when that became the standard look. I don't like every artist's work to look the same. Maybe I'm just picking up the wrong books? At any rate I lost a lot of joy in comic book reading. And I never got it back.
About Last Night:A few months ago I started picking up issues of
Astonishing X-Men when I heard that Joss Whedon was doing a one year writing stint. Color me impressed. After four issues now, I'm getting close to youthful obsession again. This
last issue was a doozy. I really love what he's doing with these iconic characters, and I can't wait for the next issue when Professor Xavier attempts to put the smack-down on the Danger Room, which is now sentient and in humanoid form.
Ouch. Now, I don't want to oversell this. But it's possible that last night when I closed the comic I was, for a fleeting millisecond, shocked to find myself in my 30s, on a subway in Manhattan, surrounded by strangers instead of in my parent's living room with the green carpeting and exposed brick wall, all giddy and pre-adolescent.
Are there any comic book readers reading? And if so, what else am I missing in the comics world? Or was I correct to stay away for many years?
