Today I'm going to shine a bit of a light on a series of episodes that I feel like most of our listeners aren't even aware of.
Real Comics History sort of started out of necessity. This was around the time where Reggie and I were contributing the Young Animal Segment for the Weird Science DC Comics Podcast... which I spoke a little bit about a few weeks back. Now, here's the thing... the DC Comics' Young Animal imprint was (and is) curated by a buffoon who didn't prioritize getting his comics out on time. The sort of fella who was more interested in getting the Young Animal logo onto t-shirts to be sold at Hot Topic than actually getting words down on the page. That said... there were many weeks where we didn't have a Young Animal book to discuss on the show.
So, what could we do to fill our segment? Well... I suppose we could've just sat out those weeks. I know many a Weird Science listener probably would have preferred that we did... but, no. We still wanted to contribute... something. But, what?
Reggie and I talked a lot about "theories of fandom"... which is probably apparent. One of our "go-to" concepts was a well-trodden theory that pop-culture (well, everything... but "pop-culture" for our purposes) is at its best when you're twelve years old.
From there, I thought it might be cool for us to actually evaluate that theory on a person-by-person basis... starting with myself. Now, for me... I was twelve in 1992, so I'm pretty sure as far as comics are concerned... I win. I mean, the Image launch, Death of Superman... how couldja beat that? Well, I'm guessing if you were twelve during a different year... you might feel differently. And that is what we wanted to find out.
And so, playing off our Weird Comics History series... we decided to call this one Real Comics History, as it sought to analyze and evaluate the "real world" around comics. A fan's perspective. And, again... we started with 1992.
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You might note that this is listed as "Episode 2" of the series... but, that's only because it was the second episode to be moved to the Chris and Reggie feed. The first one we shifted over was an episode discussing 1985, so we could slot it in during our six-part Crisis on Infinite Earths series of shows.
Not only did I feel like this could lead to some decent discussion... I also saw Real Comics History as an opportunity or us (well, me) to show a little bit more personality. Up until this point, my contributions to both Weird Science and our own feed were... I dunno, maybe a little bit "dry". Maybe notsomuch "dry", but... impersonal? Impersonal is probably a better word to use. Listeners wouldn't actually know a lot about me from my output... and I wanted to change that a bit. Give folks (those who were interested, anyway) a little bit of insight about me, my life, my preferences... just sorta flesh myself out a little bit as a content creator.
I think Real Comics History was where I sorta found myself... being myself. These shows weren't heavily scripted... and were, just fun discussions that we just so happened to be recording. These felt less like we were lecturing... and more like we were sharing.
Real Comics History was slated for a return this Summer, as Reggie and I both agreed it would be a topic we could slide into pretty easily... without Reggie having to read a whole lot from a script. We figured I could "pitch", he could "bat"... and we'd get some good stuff. The more "off the cuff" nature of this program would have made it a lot easier for him... and would have brought more fun content to the channel.
The show didn't run all that long... and we dropped the "when you were twelve" trappings pretty much right away. There were a lot of "Comics Years" we wanted to discuss... even if we didn't personally know anyone who was twelve during them. I do still feel like the "When You Were Twelve" concept is a darn good one, and one I'd love to further explore with folks. Maybe one of these days I'll actually get around to doing it!
