In 1984, the Olympic torch relay for the Los Angeles games ran down my street in Tustin, California. My family all went out to watch it, and at the age of 8 I took this photo with a Kodak Instamatic. It was the first time I successfully tracked the movement of a subject.
You may have noticed elements of the 1990s creeping back into comics, music, movies and TV. There’s a reason for that: pop culture seems to be obsessed with its past on a 20-year cycle, and the current love affair with the 1980s has passed its peak.
I go into more detail — including thoughts on some of the implications for the 10-year and 30-year troughs in the cycle — at Speed Force in Return of the 1990s.
When I was twelve, my family went to see the Space Shuttle land at Edwards Air Force Base. It was the first mission after the Challenger disaster, and the orbiter was Discovery.
I took a roll of slides using a manual SLR camera and (for the landing itself) a telephoto lens. With the last shuttle mission ending tomorrow, I decided to track down the slides and scan them. Continue reading
In 1984, Kenner launched a line of DC super-hero action figures under the name Super Powers. The toys were tied to the Super Friends cartoon, and each had an action: If you squeezed Superman’s legs, he would throw a punch. If you squeezed the Flash’s arms, he would run. Each figure also came with a 16-page minicomic starring the character and others from the toy line.
Today, Crisis on Earth-Blog unites fourteen sites in celebrating this landmark toy line.
Enjoy!
I’ve had parts of this in draft form for at least 2 years. Last night, while brushing my teeth, I decided to pick it up with a new approach. This morning, I jotted down a couple of notes. And earlier this evening I saw Comics Should Be Good’s post, Where do you buy your comics?—and realized the time had come to actually finish the darn thing.
How I searched for back issues of comics in…
1988:
1998:
2008:
Two main things have changed: mobility (I couldn’t drive when I was 12) and the web. Continue reading
