Here are some Captain Marvels comics from the year I was born:
I have been collecting comics since my teens, which were about the early 1990s. Ironic, considering the Captain Marvel film was set at that time.
The film itself, provides a great example of how brands and consumer iconography are used to depict an era or epoch of contemporary history (i.e. the placement of the Blockbuster video store in Cap Marvel) . Brand placement are sometimes the only way to signpost that point of time in western history.
Many places in many parts of America will probably STILL have the same types of buildings and structures existing over the last 30 or so year. Aside from the odd obscure landmark, the only change we might see are recognised brands; companies or shop names or even old models of cars. The very street you live on may contain the same buildings and structures with only different shop names or wind displays. The main thing is a popular company brand can signify the passing of time in a modern location where only consumerism drives purpose and existence. Yet, in a film like Back to the Future – everything had to be changed to convince the viewer of a time period pre 1980s because the aesthetic of the 1950s ( compared to the 1980s) was significantly different than the difference between the 1980s and the year 2015. Buildings remain relatively similar and Fashion trends have probably come full circle. However, a person dressed like someone from the 1950s probably blends into downtown Los Angeles as much as Captain Marvel would in a bright space suit. This is because although history apparently repeats itself or fashion travels in circles, consumerism doesn’t actually seem to go backwards.
This is likely because western consumer culture has changed very little in the last few decades with relatively little cultural evolution. Only the progression of brands and trends. The only technological sophistication in the film was the presence of dial-up internet as a joke, to signpost the pre-wifi broadband age of the internet.
However, seeing comics like the ones above (from the year I was born) creates an interesting way of visualising my own lifetime. Even though the comics are only ever an account of a fictional story set in space. I can date my own existence and monitor by comparison the trajectory of my own life experience ( and hence my mortality) upon that era of comic book history.
I remember as a teenager in 1996, excitedly finding a cheaply priced Daredevil #26 A silver age comic from 1966, from a time, long before I was born. The comic looked so dated and old fashioned, much like how the Captain Marvel comics seem now, in the light of the millennial age. The same amount of years has passed between 1966 and what was then 1996, as the time that Captain Marvel returned to earth in the 1990s, to indicate the passing of time in the film made in 2015. The aesthetic has changed so little, it required a globally know brand from the past to ( not convince) but signpost the epoch of that era. I guess society has changed little since, the most convincing theatrical device to instigate the passing of history was the lapse in modern technological advancement, the aesthetic had changed very little.
The point is this; comics from a certain decade have an aesthetic quality that projects the relevant epoch. The style of the artwork, sometimes a renown style acts in the way that fashion does within an era. To the initiated, it can signify an era within a hobby, entirely fictional that somehow connotates the structure or zeitgeist of an era comics that represent times gone by. When Marvel or DC comic books are made into films reaching a wide mainstream commercial audience, it can flatten and stretch the relevant timing of the original events in comic-book history. This nothing new for the Batmans or SPider-Mans who have years of numerous tv franchises. The presence of Superman on the silver screen is nearly reaching a century in itself and has thus lived through and already met considerable cultural changes in the 20th century like WW2. However, with a relatively unknown character like Captain Marvel, it is quite a new thing.
It may just social reflections or sociological observation with subtle critique, hidden within the narratives of the comic. Or even something far more blatant like the example of what is called Historiographic metafiction. The storyline of one particular Spider-Man comic breaks the fourth wall and depicts the struggle in the aftermath of 9/11. (Amazing Spiderman #477). This brings the reality of New York into the comic world and breaks the fourth wall. A bit like how WW2 was brought into the Captain America film, yet despite how the film merges reality and fiction, the actual comic was created as a reaction to the war in 1941. The captain Marvel film has had to create the illusion of being set in the past and can only do this by using the now-defunct Blockbusters video store as a signposting device, in a relatively recent era where little has changed since.
Essentially, it is now only a fictional aesthetic value . in the form of a shop brand or logo that signifies the passing of time because we know that Blockbuster videos no longer exist. Yet the stores probably live in with other businesses in them. For some parts of America this is perhaps, a way of measuring history. That is just how postmodern our current cultural climate is.
The Death of Superman in the 1990s made national and global news headlines and for the first time, a main comic book protagonist was killed. The reality of the superhero myth being infallible had been challenged. The impact of this could be perhaps credited to the connotations of Nietzsche’s views on the death of god and the comic characters long interviewed history with the Ubermensch etc. ( Or the Freudian interpretation of the concept).
However, the truth is that fictional comic book narratives can now be considered a means of measuring sociological observations and even document the passing of history in postmodernity.
Rant &Rave 