Daily Comic Journal: August 13, 2022: “It’s A Dirty Little Secret No More.”
Thanks to the Marvel movie’s popularity among young men & women, teen boys & girls and just about everyone else, comic book culture has become part of acceptable society (even though comic books themselves may not be). That being said, young people today may not believe they were once not popular.
Yes, despite all that I was a big comic book reader and collector as a kid.
BUT
I remember my senior year. By then most everyone in school knew I was an artist, a comic book collector. I usually had a bunch to read during study hall. Many of the other seniors in my study hall would ask to borrow a comic book, to read during study hall as well.
The same kids, who during middle school would make fun of comic book geeks & nerds, were now reading them as seniors.
Funny – things have moved the exact opposite way here in Denmark. There used to be a thriving comic interest back in the 70s and 80s when I was young (I’m a couple of months older than you), but it broke down at the turn of the millenium. Most people explain it as being due to the rising popularity of computer games. And with Denmark being a small country (about 5,9 million) even a moderate fall in interest may make it no longer economically feasible to publish a certain genre.
In fact I was forcibly reminded of it only last week, when I was reading webcomics at a coffee shop and a young guy at the next table asked whether I were a graphic designer or something – because it obviously had to be because of a professional interest that I was viewing stuff like that!
To be fair there HAS been some revival in later years, but it is mostly manga. Also, the comics we were reading back then were probably other ones than what you read – primarily the Franco-Belgian series. Insofar as we read American series it was mostly newspaper series (Peanuts, Garfield, Beetle Bailey), while superheroes have never had much of a following in Denmark (to give an idea: Wonderwoman has never been published in Danish).