My birthday came and went this month and it’s a fascinating premise, the birthday. The desire to mark the passage of time is fascinating, really. Maybe it isn’t even a desire at this point in history, but a drive. The drive to “Kilroy Was Here” our corner of the cosmos.
Despite how it sounds, I’m not trying to intellectualize this. In fact, I’m surprising myself somewhat as I think I may be romanticizing it. Though what is romanticizing but intellectualizing, only faster.
I was recently struck by the thought that Spider-Man had only existed 20 years when I started reading comics. My father was 12 years old when Spider-Man hit. My father had very distinct memories of the world before Spider-Man existed. It’s wild to think about. But at the same time, I have very distinct memories of the world before The Simpsons existed.
Both Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns had their ten year anniversaries while I was in high school. Talking it out now, I’m realizing that it’s not just about celebration or acknowledgement as much as it’s about keeping a sense of perspective. It’s a sense of scale, I suppose. People of a certain age, for example, have the same reaction if you were born after The Matrix as they do if you were born after 9/11.
Frank Miller was 29 when he came up with Dark Knight Returns and he’s said before that part of the inspiration was the fact that he was about to turn 30, which was “ancient” to him at the time and that Batman(who was basically canonically 29 in the comics) “absolutely” had to be older than him. So he made a book where Batman was very much older than him.
I’m not entirely sure where I was going with all this, but what can I say, I’m advancing in years.