Tried reading a Silver Age Fantastic Four issue after only knowing modern comics

I picked up a 1963 Fantastic Four #33 from a booth at my local shop last Saturday for $8. I figured I'd breeze through it since I read the Hickman run and thought I knew the characters. But the whole thing felt like a different universe. Reed Richards spent three pages explaining a machine with boxes and arrows, and everyone kept yelling THINK at each other. The dialogue was super dramatic and they narrated every single punch. By page 10 I realized I had no idea what was actually happening in the fight scene. I learned that old comics move way slower and expect you to read every word balloon like a novel. Has anyone else picked up an older issue and felt completely lost?

2 comments

2 Comments

jake_owens14d ago

And yeah that track with something bigger I've noticed outside comics too. Everything now is about instant payoff and short attention spans. I watch my nephew scroll through TikTok videos every 5 seconds because he can't sit still for more than that. Old comics were made when people actually sat down and read a newspaper for an hour. They expected you to commit to the page and use your brain to fill in the gaps between panels. Not saying one is better or worse, just that our whole culture shifted toward speed over depth.

terrybennett14d ago

Yeah, that whole "commit to the page" thing you said really hits it. @jake_owens The whole reading experience has changed. I remember learning to read from old newspaper strips that had these long, slow burn storylines that took months to pay off. Now everything has to hook you in the first three seconds or people swipe away. It's not even about comics being "better" back then, it's that the way we consume information shifted so hard toward instant hits that the old style feels like a foreign language to younger people. The brain doesn't get trained to sit with a page and fill in the gaps anymore.