User blog comment:Nausiated/The Golden Age of Comics? It wasn't that golden../@comment-3127363-20110406061142/@comment-61022-20110407071854

To the modern reader? Probably not. Really it depends on how you look at the story. If you're going to read it with the same expectations that you have for something that is written today, then you are going to be flat out disappointed.

And that is really why I think that a lot of people don't like reading a lot of older comics. They aren't reading it in the proper context.

You have to try to understand it from the standpoint and the era it is written in. If you can objectively read it like that, then you might find it interesting.

But that is easier said than done. That's like trying to read Shakespeare or Jane Austin. All their work appealed to a different period. They are considered immortal classics of literature, but not everyone can get into it (I remember slogging through Jane Austin's snore-fest "Emma" in high school and thinking that having broken glass inserted into my butthole would have been less painful)

Also as M1 stated, you can't really look at the stories with the same eyes as the original audience. The concept of super-heroes were pretty much a new concept. It was fantastic to them.

Also look at how we have changed as a society. Not just by social trends but also in the realm of science. How many science fiction tales have become ridiculously dated thanks to advances in science? Even the Silver Age Marvel stuff is a bit of a laugh because the science doesn't back up.

I mean, we can look at Spider-Man and laugh about how radiation gave him his powers, when we know in real life, the only power radiation would have given him was cancer. In another 70 years kids will probably be laughing at Ultimate Spider-Man's bioengineering origin for it's lack of science.

But that's the thing about the unknown, you can always turn it into something fantastical and amazing (or very very dangerous depending on the coin you want to flip -- A lot of pre-super-hero Marvel stuff was about the dangers of science. Another good one is Adolus Huxley's "Brave New World" that guy had such a hate on for science he envisioned a world where genetic engineering and cloning would make us all into moralless drugged out sex freaks who worship the Model T and the assembly line)

But anyway, roundabout of saying that if you're going to go back and read those old stories, you have to keep the context of when they were written in mind.... Which is what I'm going to remind myself as I read Young Allies comics featuring the character "Whitewash" Jones...