Mindsets

The Beloit College Mindset list is a look at the life experiences and perceptions of the class of 2014. It’s always an interesting read (as you know, I have a fascination with the way things become dated), though I think it should be taken with a grain of salt: When one year’s list announced that that year’s crop of 18-year-olds had never seen a vinyl record, several 18-20 year olds I knew said their parents had record collections and they’d grown up with them (the list isn’t a survey after all, it’s the creators’ estimate of what the students think and experience).
But it also tied in with something I’ve been thinking about lately, the way comic-book blogs and sites such as Mighty God King and Comic Book Legends Revealed show the different perceptions I have from current comics readers, simply because I’ve been reading them so much longer.
It’s a real jolt to hear people discussing the Dark Phoenix saga in X-Men and realize they didn’t read it when it came out and never heard the reasons Jim Shooter gave at the time for having Phoenix killed (supposedly for good).
Or a recent Comic Book Legend about a Batman story based on Snoopy’s novel It Was a Dark And Stormy Night. A lot of the commenters weren’t around, I discovered, back when Snoopy was writing the book in the strip, and had no idea of the connection.
It’s not the first time I’ve thought of this. Back in the 1990s, writer Dan Jurgens wrote a flashback story set in late-sixties Teen Titans continuity and captured the tone of that period perfectly. I was reflecting on the fact that anyone who doesn’t know that period wouldn’t appreciate how well-done it was—and then it occurred to me that for someone who was (at the time of the Jurgens story) the same age I was at the time of the late sixties, that period was as far back to them as the early Golden Age was to me.
Between the Internet and the vast array of TPB reprints, I doubt any reader younger than 20 knows what it’s like to want a back issue and not be able to find it. It’s much, much easier for an 18 year old today to find a comic book (or reprint) written before they were born than it was for me (cheaper, too). Getting a story I was curious about reprinted was a big deal in my teens; I doubt it ever will be again.