The Birth of Comics' 1980s Retro Craze

 

This week, I launch a new series that looks back on the early 2000s trend of reviving 1980s toy and cartoon properties. It all started with a certain Wizard magazine article...perhaps the last significant contribution the magazine made to comics culture in this era.

And, because the editors saw fit to cut the justification for the title "Nostalgia Snake," here's the opening paragraph as originally written:

Welcome to the first installment of a new series I'm calling Nostalgia Snake, a look at a curious phenomenon from the past...the early 2000s revival of genre properties from the 1980s. The ouroboros  is an ancient symbol depicting a snake eating its own tail, usually viewed as symbolic of the concept of eternal cyclic renewal. Here, I'm talking about the twenty-year cycle of nostalgia. Just as fans were nostalgic for '80s properties in the early aughts, we've now reached twenty years since the revival of these properties. If the theory holds, this means people are now nostalgic for their nostalgia.