Tag Archives: Compuserve

The Future of Comics Is Now

Greeting, Legions of the Unspoken! Emily Scott here, hoping you enjoyed our Six Weeks of Punishment! I would say I hope you also enjoy the new season of Daredevil, but most everyone probably binge watched the entire thing the first weekend it was out, right? Yes, in many ways, comic book fans (or at least fans of comic book characters) have it pretty darn good these days. It’s amazing how quickly we can take for granted the beauty of being able to stream not just a superhero television show, but many superhero shows directly into our homes or on our phones any time we want. There was a time not very long ago that such an idea would have seemed as ludicrous as the suggestion that someday a lot of us would be tired of how many Spider-Man movies there are.

That time was 1994. So strap on your rollerblades, grab your skateboards, and get ready for things to get extreme as we take a little trip down the Information Superhighway, courtesy of this article by Mike Stokes from Hero Illustrated #13, the July issue. Ah, July of 1994, a time when Kurt Cobain’s death still felt fresh, The Crow had just surprised a lot of people at the box office, and the entire comic book industry, like all industries, contemplated how new digital technology could best be used to their advantage. While some of the things that have come to pass, like the advent and ubiquity of smartphones, couldn’t really have been predicted, credit where it’s due – these guys got a lot of things spot on. Except for CD-ROMs. We were all wrong about CD- ROMs.

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Brandon Lee died 23 years ago today. The goth adolescent in me is still not really over it.
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Neil Gaiman’s not the only one hip to the way it’s going. If you’d like to see what his Pneumatic Man idea evolved into, some super awesome person was thoughtful enough to write an article about it.
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It’s good to know my memory hasn’t exaggerated just how much the media tried to push the idea that the whole world would be on CD-ROM someday. I remember that much more clearly than I remember actually using CD-ROMs.
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Ah, the heady days of the mid 90s, when the idea of needing a smartphone while sitting on the toilet wasn’t even a glint in our eyes.

I hope you’ve enjoyed our trip back to 1994! I’ll be back later this month with a look at Man-Thing. (If you’re lucky, maybe I’ll make a CD-ROM for my article.)