GOING RETRO

As if the steady return of the Silver Age in comics wasn’t enough, more blasts from the past are making a comeback.

Over the last few years, both Marvel and DC have been quietly ushering in the return to Silver Age storytelling in their various books. Marvel’s biggest was the controversial move of returning Spider-Man to his swinging single 1970s days by retconning away his marriage to Mary Jane Watson. Over at DC, we’ve had the return of the Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes, Krypto the Superdog, and more.

But two recent trends interest me. The first is Marvel’s return to the Annual crossover story. Starting in 1988, Marvel would begin the tradition of featuring a crossover story between various titles’ annuals with The Evolutionary War. The stories would either be company-wide, or restricted to books within a particular character family until the mid ‘90s. In 2001, Marvel decided annuals were irrelevant to the grand scheme of things and ended them in favor of a regular 13^th issue a year. In 2006, annuals slowly began making their return to the company.

In 2011, Marvel made a return to the crossover Annual epic with two stories: Identity Wars, running through Amazing Spider-Man Annual #38, Deadpool Annual #1, and an upcoming Incredible Hulk annual, and Escape from the Negative Zone, running through Uncanny X-Men Annual #3, Steve Rogers: Super Soldier Annual #1, and Namor, the First Mutant Annual #1.

On the other side of the spectrum, Archie Comics is doing a little retro renovation themselves. After spending the last few years trying to advance the Archie titles beyond the “stagnant” sameness they’ve always had by introducing Riverdale’s first gay character, the first new characters since the early 90s influx, and by creating an adult-themed alternate universe where Archie marries his sweethearts (not at the same time, don’t worry!). Now, they’ve decided to bring the titles back where they were. And I mean the ACTUAL titles.

Archie announced a return to their classic trade dress, reducing the amount of cover art in favor for a colorful background behind the book’s title. This was a practice many comics followed back in the early 70s. With this change also comes the restoration of some of the original title designs, particularly that of Betty and Veronica.

And once again.

Then.

Now.