Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Something I just realized...

... but is probably 'old news' to everyone else (that's around my age of mid-40's).

I really became a comics fan in the early '70's. The golden age of comics that seemed so far away was three decades previous to that.

See where I'm going?

It's now more than three decades since I started reading. Those characters and their histories are now further away from the present than Golden Age Hourman, Dr. Midnight, Harlequin and Sportsmaster were from the Justice League that included Red Tornado and Black Canary and the Cockrum/Grell Legion!

Probably doesn't mean a hill of beans, but it's a strange thought. Not so much for the 'wow, I'm old' feeling as for the repetition of patterns and cycles that typify many things, including comic books.

Yeah, time is a funny thing, isn't it?

I became a comics fan around the same period. December 2012 will mark the 40th anniversary of my discovery of the Legion. At that time, they had been around for only 14 years and were already considered old news. (They hadn't yet taken over Superboy's title.) Now, 38 years later, we have what? Several reboots, a short-lived cartoon series, and a message board fan community. What did I think the Legion meant in 1972 that they would reach some sort of pinnacle in the intervening years? Or did I even think in those terms at all?

I remember giving up on comics two or three years later, when I thought I should outgrow them. I left Avengers # 125 and Defenders # 13 on the racks--only to rush back and hunt for them later. (It was years before I found an affordable copy of Avengers # 125--a Starlin Captain Marvel crossover.) So much for growing up!

I never again gave up on comics entirely, though I dropped specific titles here and there. Finally, in 2004/05, several things happened--both in comics and in my personal life--that caused me to stop buying comics on a regular basis. Not with a bang or even a whimper came the end--it was more like a previously unseen door opening.

There's no real point to this ramble. But for me and probably others who became fans at about the same time, a definite demarcation point seems to exist. It separates our fan time from previous eras. The Golden and Silver Ages loom large in our psyches as some sort of never-neverland which we missed out on due to the accidental timing of our births. In the never-neverland, comics seemed all important, every hero a cultural icon. Our own fan years are more compressed, simply because we've lived through them and have been occupied by other things in addition to comics. Too, the mythology of the Golden and Silver Ages looms large (thanks, in part, to DC and Marvel continuously telling us how wonderful those ages were); everything else pales in comparison, as reality always does when stacked side by side with myth.

But, just think: For kids today who are discovering comics, we are the survivors of some other Golden Age they've missed out on.

Either that, or we're old fogies.

The 80's are as ancient as the Golden Age.

The 70's...yeesh. That's as old as the pulp era.

Jeepers! I'm sure glad I saved all my early 80s comics from when I was a kid! They must be worth as much as Action Comics #1 by now!

I continue to have the sneaking suspicion that what dudes like Geoff Johns are supposedly "bringing back" from the Whatever Age that we allegedly have in common has nothing to do with what I liked about that age in the first place.

He and I are in the same age bracket, but I can only shake my head when somebody tells me (as either a criticism or a complement;doesn't matter) that it's my age group he and his cohorts are all feverishly catering to right now.

There's a well-loved art criticism book on my shelf in which the author points out that you can only analyze Art History in the way we got it back in school through "determined acts of wholesale exclusion." Or words to that effect. I'm pretty sure that applies whether we're talking "high" or "low" art, personally.

Well thank they hell outta you guys. No, I wasn't feeling old today at all. Then I see this and it gets put into perspective and I realize, I'm freakin' older than I thought. Gee, thanks.


*muttermumblegripestupidfriendsmakinmefeelolderthaniamalreadygonnapourjellointheirfishtanksgripemumblemutter*

Oh, shut up Rick.

Will and I are the old ones here, I/we started the Legion with the first comic they appeared in.

I don't feel old though, inside.

I quit comics for a few years, when my kids were being born, but I came back with the rebirth of the X-Men.

I consider the TMK and the reboot Legions as MY Legion, which was what, my 40's and 50's?

You're only as old as your hide bound ideas and attitudes, imo.

Well Crap, I'm 934 years old. That sucks.