DOCTOR WHO MAGAZINE - Complete Online pdf files

[Raven]

Of course there will. Today's comics are tomorrow's nostalgia. I thought the same as you in the 1980s, but now I'm always encountering people in their 30s/40s who think the comics of the eighties were the "best ever".

Many of today's comics are full of strictly filler material, though - very similar posters, spot the differences, and other cheap stuff, issue after issue, with the free toy being very much the main draw, and I don't think readers engage with or are attached to them in quite the same way. For example, I think the licensed characters will surely be tomorrow's nostalgia, but I'm not sure their comics will necessarily be a major part of that. They're more like toys attached to some paper.

The Beano could still be an exception to that - I've recently seen kids walking down the street, their faces buried in their obviously just bought copies, once two in the same family, so it's clearly important to them.

[starscape]

The '80s did have some great comics mind you. 2000AD at it's height. Mature comics from DC inspiring the likes of Crisis, Revolver and Deadline. Alternatives like Viz, Brain Damage and the best of the rest. The Eagle and Battle had some good times (not their whole run by any means). DCT was pretty standard mind you. The likes of Victor or new comics like Spike never moved anything on. Maybe Buddy was their highlight (I think The Crunch was 70s? But I enjoyed that).

I think people are just missing comics they enjoy. There's an old style newsagent where I am, covered in Oor Wullie and the Broons souvenirs. I'm just so desperate to go in and order a Warlord.

[Phoenix]

I think The Crunch was 70s

The Crunch straddled the decades, starscape...just. It ran from 1 (Jan. 20 1979) - 54 (Jan. 26 1980). It then amalgamated with Hotspur as Hotspur And Crunch.

[Lew Stringer]

Of course there will. Today's comics are tomorrow's nostalgia. I thought the same as you in the 1980s, but now I'm always encountering people in their 30s/40s who think the comics of the eighties were the "best ever".

Many of today's comics are full of strictly filler material, though - very similar posters, spot the differences, and other cheap stuff, issue after issue, with the free toy being very much the main draw, and I don't think readers engage with or are attached to them in quite the same way. For example, I think the licensed characters will surely be tomorrow's nostalgia, but I'm not sure their comics will necessarily be a major part of that. They're more like toys attached to some paper.

Admittedly there won't be as many kids of the future waxing nostalgic about comics, but one reason is sales have been in decline with each generation since the 1950s. But I think the children who discovered comics in the last 5 to 10 years will be on the equivalent of message boards of 2045 talking about the good old days of The Dandy, The Beano, BeanoMAX/EPIC, The Phoenix, Gum Girl, Toxic, Doctor Who Adventures, Commando, 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine, Marvel Heroes, Transformers, the numerous children's books produced in comic format, digital comics etc. Sadly they won't have as many different comics to talk about as we had, but they'll still be nostalgic about the ones they did have. (I'm including some titles that have ended over the last few years because nostalgia is never isolated just to one year.)

[Raven]

But I think the children who discovered comics in the last 5 to 10 years will be on the equivalent of message boards of 2045 talking about the good old days of The Dandy, The Beano, BeanoMAX/EPIC, The Phoenix, Gum Girl, Toxic, Doctor Who Adventures, Commando, 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine, Marvel Heroes, Transformers, the numerous children's books produced in comic format, digital comics etc.

There might not be an equivalent! Messageboards are already mostly only used by older folk, and I suspect even Twitter will become too slow and over-verbose for people by 2016.

It'll be interesting to see if the same intensity of nostalgia for pop culture will remain fixed in a period where people had less to focus on, much more intensely, or will continue through the era of endless choice where people may value things less because everything's instantly available.

I find the idea of people waxing nostalgically (like wot we do) about The Phoenix and Doctor Who Adventures in thirty one years unlikely (and suspect that most buyers of 200OAD and Judge Dredd Megazine are probably us-type adults already). This will partly be because in a world of instant access to almost everything, there won't be the gulf separating people from the things of their childhoods the way we experienced it, which sparks the wistful, sentimental longing of nostalgia. Nothing really goes away any more.

[Lew Stringer]

But I think the children who discovered comics in the last 5 to 10 years will be on the equivalent of message boards of 2045 talking about the good old days of The Dandy, The Beano, BeanoMAX/EPIC, The Phoenix, Gum Girl, Toxic, Doctor Who Adventures, Commando, 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine, Marvel Heroes, Transformers, the numerous children's books produced in comic format, digital comics etc.

There might not be an equivalent! Messageboards are already mostly only used by older folk, and I suspect even Twitter will become too slow and over-verbose for people by 2016.

That's why I said 'the equivalent of'. Meaning whatever form social messaging takes in the future, even if it's telepathic brain implants.

It'll be interesting to see if the same intensity of nostalgia for pop culture will remain fixed in a period where people had less to focus on, much more intensely, or will continue through the era of endless choice where people may value things less because everything's instantly available.

I find the idea of people waxing nostalgically (like wot we do) about The Phoenix and Doctor Who Adventures in thirty one years unlikely (and suspect that most buyers of 200OAD and Judge Dredd Megazine are probably us-type adults already). This will partly be because in a world of instant access to almost everything, there won't be the gulf separating people from the things of their childhoods the way we experienced it, which sparks the wistful, sentimental longing of nostalgia. Nothing really goes away any more.

Well, I included 2000AD because I was stretching a reader's childhood to include all the teenage years, by which time some may have moved on to that comic. But I take your point about the easy accessibility of information. However, it seems to me that although the Internet has already been around for years a lot of people still take the easy option of asking on social media about something instead of Googling it themselves. That probably won't change, due to human nature. I can imagine someone in 2045 going "Does anyone remember a comic called The Phone Knocks or something like that?" without searching his implanted media history brain chip.

[Raven]

That's why I said 'the equivalent of'. Meaning whatever form social messaging takes in the future, even if it's telepathic brain implants.

Though people are already moving away from discussing things. The social media platforms are on the rise are those where they post photos!

Well, I included 2000AD because I was stretching a reader's childhood to include all the teenage years, by which time some may have moved on to that comic. But I take your point about the easy accessibility of information. However, it seems to me that although the Internet has already been around for years a lot of people still take the easy option of asking on social media about something instead of Googling it themselves. That probably won't change, due to human nature. I can imagine someone in 2045 going "Does anyone remember a comic called The Phone Knocks or something like that?" without searching his implanted media history brain chip.

Though that's more people just wanting their idle curiosity answered.

It's just that any comic they want, from however long ago, they'll be able to get it instantly from eBay or other sources and have it in their hands within a few days. Compare that to the decades where it was near-impossible to find a copy of Cor!! or Sparky.

Same with, say, children's programmes. We went decades without being able to see a glimpse of the likes of The Tomorrow People, Tiswas or the Kids from 47A, as if they never existed. Hence all the "did I dream this programme?" business on the internet. Now, even if you don't want the DVDs, you can instantly get your quick fix - if you want it - from YouTube. Kids need never develop a wistful yearning for their own era's programming. Without there ever being a distance from or inaccessibility of anything in pop culture, I'm not sure nostalgia will have a reason to build.

[abacus]

I think there will always be some sort of nostalgia for the past where memory dwells on good times be they real or illusionary.For something to register in childhood there has to be some sort of long run.Dr Who, Pokemon, Beano , Viz today's loom weaves all will be remembered fondly and merchandise of such times will swap hands at inflated prices.Because we are more concerned with comic related material we can find less to focus on in today's market.The american superheroes will be remembered but the UK is short on comic related material at the moment.I am optimistic however that the media of UK comics will again flourish at some time or other.Remember when the Eagle hit the ground running?

[ISPYSHHHGUY]

Messageboards of the future will become so trivial that discussions like this one will be revisited in 20, 30, 40 years time and reappraised by some of the surviving board members: imagine, future nostalgia will likely be revisiting these very wafflings!

[Phoenix]

I think people are just missing comics they enjoy. There's an old style newsagent where I am, covered in Oor Wullie and the Broons souvenirs. I'm just so desperate to go in and order a Warlord.

Replace enjoy by enjoyed and this post captures the nostalgia issue perfectly, the shop that starscape decribes evokes so well the repeated experience of our going into the equivalent ones in our own locality, and his expressed desire to enter it in search of that week's Warlord is a poignant reminder of those many occasions when we all did the same thing with similar hopes that our favourite comic or story paper hadn't already sold out.

We only need to think briefly about the shop before we are evoking its appearance and atmosphere. There was always a smell of tobacco, there were lots of jars of sweets on shelves behind the proprietor, and the counter, sloping towards the customer, was covered in newspapers, comics and magazines, most of the titles now long defunct, from the News Chronicle, the Daily Herald and the Empire News to Racing and Football Outlook, Everybody's, John Bull and Model Engineer. We can all add our own comics.

Nostalgia is a normal and common enough emotion, but it is nevertheless true that only a minority of people, such as comics UK members, feel the need to acquire artefacts in order to indulge their nostalgia in a more concrete way. Nobody else in my family collects anything. Some buy books and DVDs but they are merely accumulating them rather than collecting them. My sons are nostalgic, but for things they did, or we did, but not for things they read. In fact, they find my obsessive search for more and more story papers quite quaint, but it's when they say something like Oh, not more comics, Dad, haven't you got enough already? that a sinkhole suddenly appears between the generations, and it's certainly not as if they were deprived of comics in their own childhood. They've simply moved on.

Their children in turn are of their own time, and because my lads spend a lot of time on their iPhone or Samsung equivalent, it was inevitable that my grandchildren would follow suit, so when I'm visiting them I could be reading The Guardian while they are watching YouTube clips or films on their Tablet. I read to them, and I read with them, and I buy them comics, but frankly I sometimes feel as if I'm p***ing in the wind. (Admin's unnecessary asterisks!)