Ever get a craving ... an urge ... a yen ... a whim ... to dip deep into a dusty longbox and read something you haven't read in years?
For no discernible reason whatsoever?
Something that may have no particular redeeming qualities except, maybe, nostalgia value?
A craving that's hard to explain, even to yourself?
Join the club.
Replies
Today, out of the blue, I started thinking about re-reading Steve Englehart's run on West Coast Avengers.
I'm baffled.
At one time or another, I have gone in and read all of my issues of Our Army at War/Sgt. Rock (not a complete run, but pretty close), Master of Kung Fu (a complete run), All-Star Western/Weird Western Tales/Jonah Hex (a complete run, including Hex! the Road Warrior, the three Joe Lansdale/Tim Truman miniseries and the current Jimmy Palmiotti series), John Bryne's Next Men (a complete run, I think) and others ... and even shorter, less-complete runs of things like Not Brand Ecch! or '70s Star-Spangled War Stories featuring the Unknown Soldier or John Byrne's Fantastic Four ... it soothes the soul ...
Nostalgia isn't a bad reason to reread old stuff. I'm sure the #170-200 issues of the Avengers aren't the most profound or finely crafted run of comics ever, but I can see me sitting down with them all again some day.
I hadn't read Micronauts much before I started the current reading thread on them, but a lot of what surrounds those comics are highly nostalgic to me. Seeing the Scott Lang Antman, the 1980 Avengers cameo, and the few pages that I did read back when bring back a ton of memories. And then there are the pointers to what the world was like back then: The Farah Flick, Hostess ads, Star Wars homages.
(And they weren't joking when they said that 'smell' is the sense that is most directly related to the memory centres of the brain. There's something almost euphoric in that pulpy paper and ink smell of those old comics. The next generation of Absolute Editions will have that smell as an extra!)
It's all good.
Of course I do ...