3 out of 5

There’s a nice, one page editorial after the main content of Stuart Moore’s Bronze Age Boogie from the author, discussing the difference, essentially, between affecting nostalgia and a nostalgia wank.  While worrying over whether or not Bronze Age falls into the latter, Moore accepts that sometimes things can be both, for better or worse, and he hopes that both his nostalgia nods and all of the original elements smushed into BAB will be able to appeal to readers of all kinds.

I liked this editorial.  I mostly liked the text shorts – Kek-W’s ‘how not to have writer’s block’ definitely took up the wankiness torch that Moore was fearing to hold – and I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of a backup comic about a Nasa-spaced gorilla who gets the ability to speak.  Ahoy Comics likes packing in these extras, and these were a good batch.

But I don’t know what to make of Bronze Age Boogie’s actual main comic bits.  There’s time traveling, which is sort of distractingly used as a frame before we jump back to a Conan setting with a warlike dad and his equally tuff daughter; daughter has also been conversing with a monkey who brings her gifts from the future – no clue if this was purposefully meant to thematically tie in with the other talking ape comic – and this bit of oddity was plenty enough to introduce the sci-fi / time travel concept, especially since having the opening as it is massively undercuts the impact of where the issue ends up: with more time travel.  There are likely / possibly ‘bronze age’ references I’m missing, but none of this, so far, reads like nostalgia of any kind, but it also doesn’t necessarily read like an issue of a comic, so much as the first part of ideas we’ll need several issues to get in to, and shells of characters plugged in to those ideas.  I do appreciate Ahoy’s mix-and-match of shorts and text pieces, but I would’ve taken the extra pages, here, to allow Moore’s script some more room to actual grind in some hooks instead of just coming across as somewhat random bits and bobs.

Alberto Ponticelli is similarly interesting but not especially defining; both the 1970s and past settings lack a real sense of ‘place’; both locations feel like they could be one and the same, just people carry axes in the past and drive cars in the future.  Giulia Brusco’s expressive colors are straight up wonderful, though.

BAB is certainly worth a read, but in a crowded comics market, it’s hard to dedicate wallet allottings to something that’s just sort of casually good and not too grabbing.