Over the last few days, I have been rereading one of my all-time favorite comic books as a child, “Ultimate Spider-Man.” This was a comic book I read from the age of four to the age of 13, and, at this point in time, have read every issue. This comic was one of the first exposures I ever got to my favorite super hero, and each issue had great action, and even better character development. Everything I know about character building and world building I learned from that comic book. Every now and again, when I’m feeling nostalgic, I read those comics again and again to relive some of the joy I got reading them when I was younger. With every new time I read them, I always learn something new about the characters, or relate to them more on a personal level, which makes me eager to read them again. Reading these comics this time around though made me think about this infrequent habit to reread them, and by extension other comics I reread, got me to think a lot about nostalgia, what it means to me as a whole and how it can both be a good and a bad thing in today’s society.

For me, and a lot of other people, Nostalgia is a longing for a simpler time in our lives, often our childhoods, where we had less responsibility then we do now. Because of this, we tend to gravitate towards certain media, whether it be a cartoon or comic book, that correlates to said simpler time. For example, my father loves the old 1960s' cartoon, “Underdog,” which is a pretty enjoyable cartoon in its own right, but for my father, it brings him back to those days as a kid when he didn’t have to worry about bills or work on a daily basis. For me, aside from “Ultimate Spider-Man,” I tend to gravitate towards certain cartoons that I grew up on, such as “SpongeBob Square pants,” or “Ed, Edd, and Eddy,” which bring me back to the days before weekly essays and monthly exams in high school and college courses. Each and every one of those cartoons, or other video games or comic books, carry memories with them. I remember going with my dad to get some of those Spider-Man comic books every week at the comic book store, and getting a “7-11 Slurpee” afterwards. I remember watching episodes of “Ed, Edd, and Eddy” after school, which always made a bad grade or a bad day in general better. Nostalgia, in my opinion, can be a double-edged sword in my eye. While it does bring back great childhood memories, and helps us appreciate all the things we had a children, and can re-instill a childhood passion, it also serves as a bittersweet reminder of the time that we can never get back and that no matter how much we want to be young and have little responsibility, we can only keep growing older.

On a slightly related topic, I feel that nostalgia has become extremely prominent in today’s pop culture, as many studios and TV networks are now gravitating towards older franchises in an effort to draw in both new and younger crowds. These projects also tend to be of mixed quality. For example, the “Ice Age” franchise was one I remember seeing when I was child, and yet the movie recently had its fourth sequel see a theatrical release not too long ago. "Ice Age" was a franchise that should have ended a long time ago, yet because the brand is recognizable to people my age, and to those younger, the movie ended up making almost three times its budget in the box office. There are plenty of other older franchises that have been revived over the years, such as “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” “Ghostbusters,” “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” and “Jurassic Park.” While some of those movies are good, or at the very least entertaining, many of them tend to be ill received by critics. So how do these movies keep getting made? Because the studios know that if people still love the brand, mostly out of nostalgia for said movie brand, then they will still go see the movie. Studios aren’t afraid to exploit people’s nostalgia, hence why so many movies get remakes or sequels. And while I don’t really agree with said exploitation, as long as people keep seeing these movies, Hollywood will keep making them.

However, despite my slightly cynical stand on most franchise revivals, some of them do stem from the outcry of fans that want these shows back on syndication. For example, shows like “Hey Arnold” and “Rocko’s Modern Life,” two shows on Nickelodeon I remember fondly, are being revived on the network in the form of two TV movies. The network realized that many of the children who watched these shows are now grown up, and because both fans and creators wanted to see these shows come back, they did. Even shows like “Samurai Jack” on Cartoon Network are getting full shows again - again, out of the passion of the creators and fans who wanted to see this show come back. Some might say this is because the networks, and in the case of movies, Hollywood, have run out of ideas. And while this might be true to an extent, these are projects that fans have been begging for, and someone finally decided to answer the call. It seems that this is an era of old becoming the new. So if you’re feeling a bit nostalgic for things from your youth, then hopefully, like myself, we’ll be reliving our childhoods in the best possible way.