I’m arguably more consistently impressed by Marvel’s overall strategy as a company, but DC are by far the boldest of the two major comic book companies. Some of the stories told are timeless ( Adam Strange could be set in any time), some feel decidedly modern (the Batman and Superman strips), some feel retro ( Green Lantern) and some feel intentionally hokey ( Kamandi). It’s simultaneously today and yesterday (and probably tomorrow for good measure) – always and never, thrown together in a big blender. This sort of anachronistic blending of old and new is reflected within, with Catwoman “googling” Jason Blood in one story and Green Lantern being compared to “Dean Martin” in another. There’s probably another discussion to be had as to whether the trend is a good thing, or if it is simply the medium eating its own tail. The result is something which is new, but feels old and familiar and comfortable. It’s taking something old, but approaching it a new manner and selling it as a “throwback”. However, here DC takes the concept and uses its own iconic creations – many of whom didn’t even exist in the era of the newspaper comic – in that context. The strip was based on the old newspaper adventure comics that use to fill up a couple of pages on the broadsheet with adventures of archeologists and such.
Wednesday Comics is perhaps that sort of revisionist nostalgia embodied. Or Grant Morrison’s tenure on Batman, which is dedicated to the assumption that everything you ever ready happened to Batman, just not as you read it (which is a way of appealing to the past, but without having to worry about specifics – Morrison could have used any junk to fill that hole in his story, but he chose continuity). Think of Geoff Johns’ run on Green Lantern, built upon returning to Silver Age values, albeit with a darker edge than any of those original books would have dared to play with (and abandoning the huge volume of camp). A nostalgia for a way that things never were.
There’s a modern trend in comic books to long for a past that never was.
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