Thursday, March 21, 2024

Stuck in the Past

As I've no doubt explained previously, I was never much of a comics reader as a kid – or, more precisely, I was never much of a superhero comics reader as a kid. With the exception of Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, which I picked up intermittently, the two comics I followed with any devotion were both science fiction titles, Star Wars (about which I've written many times before) and Micronauts (about which I don't believe I have). 

Nevertheless, like all American boys growing up in the 1970s, I was still very much aware of superheroes, thanks in no small part to their TV and movie adaptations, including cartoons. Perhaps because he was Marvel's most popular – and merchandised – character at the time, I had a special fondness for Spider-Man. I loved the terrible 1960s cartoon, which I saw in reruns, as well as the equally awful 1977 live action series, starring Nicholas Hammond of The Sound of Music Fame. I also remember watching the Adam West Batman series, various incarnations of Super Friends, the 1978 Superman movie, and probably others I've long forgotten.
As I got older, I retained a vague affection for the idea of superheroes, especially after I started playing RPGs. I can still vividly recall some of the adventures my friends and I had playing, first, Champions, and, later, Marvel Super Heroes. I remember, too, when we started to see big budget Hollywood movies featuring various costumed characters, starting with Tim Burton's Batman. The release of that movie in 1989 was a major cultural event and its success not only spawned three sequels but also paved the way for yet more superhero movies, a trend that has continued to the present day.

Despite not calling myself a fan of superheroes, I've seen more than my fair share of the superhero movies released in the last three decades, enjoying some more than others. One of the things that's always bugged me about these movies (and other adaptations) is how many of them continue to tread the same ground that their original source material did decades ago. There may indeed be nothing new under the sun, but did we really need to see another version of "The Dark Phoenix Saga?" For that matter, have there been any new superheroes or superhero stories produced in the last couple of decades with any staying power? Why are the biggest pop cultural characters all products of the 1980s or earlier?

I think about this often, most recently during a recent trip with my family. While perusing some weird snacks and candies in a store, I spied a tall, thin, red can featuring what looked to me like Larry Elmore's iconic cover painting for the Frank Mentzer-edited Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (1984). Drawing closer, it turned that, yes, it was Elmore's artwork on a D&D-branded energy drink calling itself a "Hero's Potion of Power." Intrigued, I bought the thing, but I didn't have the courage to try it. That job fell to my daughter, who declared it "alright, but nothing special." 

On the same trip, we went to a bookstore not far from where I grew up. I hadn't found anything to purchase, so I stood out near the lobby of the store while my daughter paid for a book. When I looked over at the checkout counter, I saw a display filled with little boxes sporting an immediately recognizable color scheme. I did an almost comical double take, because I was sure that my aging eyes must have erred in some way, because I couldn't conceive that I was seeing what I, in fact, was seeing – the familiar blue and brown palette of the AD&D Monster Manual.

Sure enough, that's exactly what it was. Apparently, the boxes contain one of a series of randomized plastic monster figurines based on the illustrations of the original Monster Manual. This, frankly, befuddled me almost as much as the Hero's Potion of Power, but then I've never really understood the appeal of these expensive, randomized "loot boxes." Beyond that, why were the figurines based on the artwork of Dave Trampier and Dave Sutherland rather than more contemporary designs? Did it have something to do with D&D's 50th anniversary? I'm honestly not sure of the answer. For all I know, there may be similar loot boxes available for the monsters of later D&D editions, but my gut tells me that's unlikely to be the case. (If I'm mistaken about this, feel free to correct me in the comments).

Of course, this past Christmas, my wife bought me a Dungeons & Dragons T-shirt that she unexpectedly came across while shopping. She knows I'm normally not a wearer of such things – I abhor the brandification of the game – but the fact that the shirt featured the Erol Otus cover painting of Tom Moldvay's Basic Set was sufficiently unusual that she decided to take a chance. She was right to do so, because I was positively tickled by the gift and often wear it as a sleep shirt (I'd never wear it while out and about – I'm too old for that sort of thing).

I can't help but wonder why it is that, in the pop cultural sphere, so much of what is being presented and sold to us are the products of earlier generations of creative minds. Is this simply the result of a lack of imagination or is it because, on some level, we know that we'll never be able to come up with anything better than our predecessors? If I were to travel back in time to tell my younger self that, decades from now, there'd still be new Star Trek shows and Star Wars movies – or that I couldn't care less about any of them – I doubt he'd believe me and yet here we are. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, but what does it mean when popular culture spends decades luxuriating in it? 

I'm as happy as anyone to see Erol Otus art on a T-shirt (even if he's unlikely to have profited from it in any way). At the same time, I think there's something not just decadent but even stagnant about endlessly recycling the pop culture of the 50s, 60, 70s, and 80s only even more vapid and rampantly consumerist than before. Have we simply run out of new ideas? Or do the new ideas simply lack the appeal of the older ones? What's really going on here and what does it mean?

30 comments:

  1. Bold stance to take for a self-proclaimed grognard! ;)

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  2. This all goes far deeper than the simple "Hollywood is out of ideas" meme."

    This kind of thing is a core human trait.

    It is often claimed that there is nothing new under the sun -- that all stories have been written, and that all are some variant of a play by Shakespeare, simply with the names and serial numbers filed off.

    Previous to Shakespeare, one could claim the same of Greek theater... the problem is that most of that has been long lost, as have most of the Roman fanfics thereof.

    To go with a more modern guru, as outlined by Joseph Campbell, all stories merely build off one of a number of different archetype.

    Each generation of each culture -- including "pop culture" -- creates its own variant of these archetypes. There are those who discover these archetypes during their "Golden Age," that is, around the age of 13 or so, when the individual's concept of individuality and choice usually has grown away from the parental circle and truly starts developing on its own, with a cadre of like-minded youth.

    And for the vast majority of individuals, with only very little adjustments around the edges, the internalized cultural choices remain essentially the same thereafter for the rest of their life.

    Historically, these internalized cultural choices have had different expressions at different age grades, and are expressed in different ways. Not so much with Pop Culture, which in its modern incarnation retains essentially the same physical expressions regardless of age, as a core element of modern Pop culture is the destruction of the authority of age.

    So everything associated with modern Pop Culture remains in an ill-defined state of youth orientation.

    And now we come to the point where Capitalism and its associated practices and laws enters the modern Pop Cultural landscape, though it is only a secondary influence. The primary influence is the passing on of Pop Culture knowledge being trapped in that nebulous "Eternal Golden Age."

    With the longer-term Capitalist viability of "properties" i.e., the Pop Cultural artifacts and concepts, thanks to long-term expansion of copyrights and essentially trademarks, the expression of these concepts remains financially viable for a much longer time than those of preceding pop culture eras (such as they were, being more limited in time and space).

    continues...

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  3. Modern Pop Culture is a global phenomenon. Just as a Pop Culture concept might otherwise have run its course in the past, due to generational differences and simple room to grow and chance, now it echoes around the world, buoyed by investments of money by owners and cultural mind-space by its proponents.

    Just as an ancient Greek child might be indoctrinated into Greek culture by sitting near the hearth and hearing the Iliad and the
    Odyssey being sung, so too do modern children hear the tales of our "heroes" -- Spider-Man, Superman, Captain America, and so forth -- bathed in the glow of the modern hearth, the TV, tablet, or phone.

    And so, all the elements of Pop Culture are propagated from one generation to the other, but with no real differences in expression between different generational cadres.

    Where a Greek might hear the tale of Achilles and play battles of Myceneans and Trojans; then participate in plays as a teen; then express the values as an adult member of society; then relay these ideas to their grandchildren through song as a grandparent; today everyone shares in the cultural elements with the same movies, television/streaming shows, action figures, and other physical cultural ephemera produced by modern industry.

    Of course, for gamers, the old Greek way is kind of familiar. Parents and grandparents alike introduce the children to gaming in general; as teens they find their own expression of the game (feeding edition wars, as teens must rebel against something, but of you are a gamer, its usually going to be 5E versus 1E or something like that); then as an adult you (sometimes) have the extra cash to indulge in fancy "toys" (such as the figures you mention); and then as a grandparent perhaps you take your grandchildren to a convention to share your culture.

    This is especially true in the United States, where Pop Culture IS culture, and the Capitalist imperative to produce tchotchkes for profit is almost a religion, if not survival imperative.

    It isn't some sort of nostalgia; it is expressing one's membership in a wider culture.

    It is just that some of us, especially we gaming grognards, are less invested in the "material" aspect of the culture than the "spiritual."

    Some Romans, when they visited Greece, strode down the streets of Athens and took in the ancient vibes of the culture and enriched their spirit.

    Others visited Greece and bought the miniature idols of Hercules, Achilles, and the others, took them home, and displayed them on or near their family altars...

    Sound familiar?

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  4. To sum up -- you can still find Shakespeare plays being run just about everywhere. You can still see stories of Hercules, the Iliad, the Odyssey being made into movies today. The Brothers Grimm and other fairy tales? Major modern movie and toy fodder.

    Marvel, DC, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, Star Trek? modern pop cultural expressions of the same kind of thing.

    The real proof of whether or not any of it has any true cultural value is not that it has lasted for 50 years... let me know how it is doing in 500, 1,000, or 3,000 years.

    Will an archaeologist a thousand years from now seek out the Lost Episode of Star Wars: The Bad Batch in the legendary ruins of Hollywood? Or will the sponsor of their expedition prefer they seek out the Batmobile of myth and legend?

    Only time will tell.

    After all, who would ever have thought the story of some "smart guy" who got lost on his way home from a war would have lasted this long?

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    Replies
    1. Exactly.

      Or so I tell myself to assuage any unease I feel as I purchase a new plush minotaur.

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    2. You need a blog! Would read! Most interesting thoughts.

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    3. Ah, thank you kindly, been there, done that. I've not the stamina nor such things as James has.

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  5. I can't help but think of Cervant3s who wrote Don Quixote as a reaction to the literary fantasies of his day and age.
    I guess we are going to see a return to realism in art and pop culture sooner or later (I think sooner, I'd say 5 to 10 years), the well is only so deep.
    Oh, and the Otus t-shirt rocks, by the way.

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  6. Yeah, nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
    But I have to wonder. Is this some kind of final "I told you so!" for those of us who were there, then? I never got beaten up for playing D&D, but there was definitely an "us against them" vibe. And we're still here, these many years later.
    We were right.
    It was cool.

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  7. I loved the Micronauts! That is one comic I'd love to have an anthology of to read from start to finish. I read that and Star Trek and Transformers, but never really got into other comics as they were overall too short and I gravitated towards longer novels. Now that I am old... I'm leaning the other way!

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    1. First Micronauts omnibus volume is already out, volume two (which takes us up to issue #54) due early April last I looked.

      Rom is back too. Marvel and Hasbro finally worked out an agreement on teh licensing issues.

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    2. Is this one of those $100+ omnibuses or is it something that mere mortals can afford?

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    3. Amazon has Vol 1 of the Micronauts listed for 100$ and coming out in April. Vol 2 is 116$ for preorder in September... I may bite that bullet though!

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    4. It's $100, but if you wait a bit and shop around you can often get absurd discounts. I bought Jack Kirby's Fourth World omnibus ($150 MSRP) brand new for under $60 off Amazon. Free shipping, even. It's like that for almost everything until they go out of print.

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  8. There will be increased nostalgia for newer things as soon as younger people have more disposable cash than their parents (and grandparents). You can start to see the beginnings of a shift, though, with remasters/rereleases of video games from the early 1990s and early 2000s to cash in on millenial nostalgia.

    To be honest, I also sometimes forget that some things are appeals to nostalgia because in my mind they're new enough to still be on their first go around. Things like Spongebob and Avatar the Last Airbender evoke nostalgia among young adults, even if they are properties that came out after my children were born.

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    1. I was going to mention that these "nostalgia" products are actually aimed at the same market segment as the original - just aged up, with more disposable income. Oh, and younger folks who recognize the value of studying the "classics."

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  9. My favorite toys of all time were the Micronauts.
    Favorite ship: Mobile Exploration Lab.
    Favorite figure: Pharoid

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    1. Micronauts were my go-to toys (along with PotA) until they were overwhelmed by the waves of Star Wars toys. The giant starship and the expandable city were my favorites. I loved the aliens figures, Membros was my favorite, with all his weapons and tools.

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  10. "did we really need to see another version of "The Dark Phoenix Saga?""

    We still do, until they get it right, dammit!

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    1. Amen to that! One of the greatest comic storylines ever IMO, but the movie treatments have been dog$#!+.

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    2. The best adaption of the Dark Phoenix Saga is Marvel vs Capcom 3.

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  11. For superhero movies, it's less a matter of nostalgia, or that we can't do better, and more a matter of marketing. The lure of an adaptation is that you have a built-in audience, even if that audience is a mix of current consumers and those who haven't actually read a comic in years. Then you have the people who never read the comic, but are going to see some movie -- any movie, as far as they care -- with the person who wants to see the comic movie. In my household, we would have had all three demos: me, Dad, and Mom.

    So the stories are going to be "fan-favorites," not novelties. And they are probably going to be old. And they have to be accessible without a lot of advanced knowledge. Origin stories tick all three boxes. It's actually sort of an embarassment of riches lately that so many movies now break with the origin-story tradition, like the Justice League movie that started from the premise, "look, you already know who these people are. They've been in a hundred other movies. You don't need an origin. You don't need their limitations to be explained. Let's jump in." And then it's _still_ 3 hours. And that's separate from the even larger leap that films like Guardians of the Galaxy made. ("Look, this is a comic book story. You don't know any of these people. It doesn't matter. You're seeing it anyway.")

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  12. Also, no, there are no vinyl figures for newer D&D monster manuals. That's 100% nostalgia. Also, the box clearly states they are not toys (I suspect because there's a whole slew of laws that toys follow that generic-vinyl-"collectible" doesn't have to.)

    They are good for building interest though. I got one for my eight-year-old (shush, don't tell) when they were marked down for clearance at the FLGS. She had fun menacing her My Little Ponies with her new Remorhaz, and kept pushing for more until she could draw a Mimic.

    (I'm not pushing her into D&D as a game, because the patience isn't there yet. Better the curiousity be there first.)

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  13. I got my son a pillow with the Erol Otus cover painting of Tom Moldvay's Basic from Amazon.

    He was skeptical 🫤

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  14. Interesting, my "comics" experience as a boy matched yours almost to the letter.

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  15. Would love to hear your thoughts on Micronauts, especially its blatant appropriation of Star Wars (an irony which was not entirely lost on my 14-year-old self).

    I would even argue that what Michael Golden and Bill Mantlo did in the first 12 issues — taking an obvious cash grab by a cynical publishing tie-in with a toy company and turning it into something memorable — was nothing short of a miracle.

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  16. I thinks these [1] are the D&D mini's you are talking about; however I don't think they specifically are a '50th anniversary' product though.

    [1]
    https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/50508/wizkids-will-release-dungeons-dragons-1e-monster-mini-series

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  17. I hate to be that guy (and I know this thread is probably dead) but some of this kind of stuff is essentially stolen IP. it's not unusual to see old art slapped on a t-shirt without the actual rights to the work. (and some of the "loot crate" stuff is even worse, and the contents will not be anywhere near what the box promises)

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