| Posted: 30 June 2011 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | 5
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I'm with Matt, Sean. I'm a little younger than you guys (b. 1980) and I grew up playing countless hours of the original Nintendo, SNES, Sega Genesis, Turbographix16... I can't even tell you how much time I spent as a kid playing video games. Heck, one of the comics I collect today - the new Mega Man series - is entirely based on my love of that classic game from when I was a kid.
I still rode my bike everywhere, and made forts and played army with my friends. I still built snow castles in the winter, went sledding, and had snowball fights almost daily. I still got outside and played.
I still watched countless hours of Transformers, GI:Joe, Thundercats, Silverhawks, Ghostbusters, Fraggle Rock, Ducktales, Chip N' Dale's Rescue Rangers... all of which scratched pretty much the same itch as superhero comics. Heck, many of those WERE comics, or based on comics, though I didn't know it at the time (Carl Barks Library coming soon to my bookshelf!).
Plus, I was an only child/grandchild, so I was spoiled rotten by my grandma. I had nearly every GI:Joe or Transformer or He-Man or superhero toy I wanted (which also informs what I collect TODAY, incidentally). My God, I've gone two paragraphs without mentioned Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and all the hours I spent pretending to be them with my friends when we were playing at recess! Going back to Mega Man and video games, I've got a piece of my scalp missing on the back of my head from pretending to be Mega Man and jumping down a flight of stairs (it's from the one time I DIDN'T make it).
I was also a voracious reader. Read every Hardy Boys book I could get my hands on. I started reading Stephen King when I was 9, and kids in my class were still reading R.L. Steins Goosebumps books (to this day I've never read one). You think Harry Potter is taking kids away from superheroes? I've been reading Lord of the Rings at least once a year since I was 14.
One day when I was 10, I went to the local video store and instead of renting a Nintendo game, I rented Tim Burton's Batman. I watched Superman and Superman II often, and saw Quest For Peace at the Drive-In. Yes, we had superhero movies too! And cartoons - I still watched the classic 60's Spider-Man when I was young, and the 1992 X-Men cartoon when I was 12. And Batman the Animated Series is still MY definitive Batman, the way others have Adams or Miller or Sprang or Aparo.
What didn't we have as kids that's around today? The Internet? That's not that big a deal, really, since most kids play video games on it (which we had) or listen to music on it (which we had) I've been a fan of Bon Jovi, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Led Zeppelin, etc since I was barely in grade school. Heck, I had my own (albeit second hand) record player! ZZ Top Eliminator was my first LP.
The Internet, as amazing as it is, isn't adding something "new" in and of itself, it's just something that makes doing old things faster and easier. I had plenty of libraries to visit in my day to get all the information I wanted on dinosaurs, sharks, space, monsters, ghosts, aliens, birds, bears... I probably know more about Great White Sharks than any two people on this board, and I've never seen an ocean. Loved those things since I was a tot.
I apologize for the epic, but it's meant to make a point. I've typed out a tremendous amount of stuff that I did as a kid, and I haven't even mentioned comics yet. And boy, did I LOVE comics! You know what was really great about them? They were ubiquitous in those days. Couldn't enter a corner store or gas station without seeing a rack. They were impulse items, and they were so readily available I never had to worry about getting the next Spider-Man or X-Men comic, I knew it would pop up somewhere in my many travels.
The only difference between why kids read comics 20 years ago and they don't today isn't that there are too many distractions from comics - it's comics themselves not being available anymore.
Edited by Brad Krawchuk on 30 June 2011 at 1:42pm
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