Day 264/365 - Confessions of a Retro Boy, Pt. 2

I've already confessed my love of old movies (which really should've been the first retro boy confession) and old radio programs, so it should come as no great surprise when I confess that I also love old comic strips from the 1930s and 1940s. As with the radio programs, I don't care so much for the old comedy strips. It's mostly the old adventure and detective strips that draw my interest.

Terry and the Pirates and Jungle Jim are two of the best adventure strips and Dick Tracy is unequivocally the best detective strip of all time. Tracy is also my favorite comic strip, period. The contemporary version of the strip is pretty dreadful and not worth reading, but the classic Dick Tracy strips had it all -- action, mystery, romance, melodrama, suspense, high tech gadgetry, fiendish death traps, and larger than life characters. I got hooked on Tracy when I was in high school. At that time, the contemporary strip was still pretty damn good.

When I went away to college my parents would save the comics sections from the newspaper for me so I could catch up on my Dick Tracy reading when I came home. Then, after I joined the Navy, they would clip the strips from the paper and send me an envelope stuffed with them every month so I wouldn't have to go without my Tracy fix. Now I love collecting and reading reprinted editions of the vintage Terry and the Pirates, Jungle Jim, and especially Dick Tracy comic strips. As with most examples of popular culture from that time period, they have a tendency to be casually racist. It's astonishing how the mainstream America of that era had no qualms about employing slurs and stereotypes that make most modern audiences cringe.

I love the old comic strips despite their flaws, although being a white guy probably makes it a lot easier to overlook the racist elements they contain and just focus on the slam-bang stories. There's more than a little guilt associated with this guilty pleasure.

(Taken with my Nikon D90)

Day 89/365 - Enter Sandman

Borders sent me a coupon good for 40% off one book today, so tonight after work I detoured by the store to pick up the first 'Sandman' graphic novel. I had a couple people recommend it to me yesterday and with the coupon it only came to $12.50, so that gave me two good reasons to get it.

I was pretty heavily into comics and graphic novels when I was in high school and college. When I left for the Navy though I gave my collection of several thousand comics to a couple of my cousins. Since then, apart from reprints of old newspaper strips like 'Dick Tracy,' 'Jungle Jim,' and 'Terry and the Pirates,' the only comics I've read are a few issues of 'Indiana Jones' and 'The Shadow.'

I'm looking forward now to dipping my toe back in the waters of the illustrated world.

(Taken with my Nikon Coolpix S200)