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Reading comics - part 1

A phrase from the latest blog entry by The Reinvigorated Programmer, What I've been reading, lately part 23, has prompted me to get this post out of the mental draft folder.

Speaking of The Complete Harlem Heroes, a reprint of the strips from 2000AD he says
They are full of panels that, forty years on from my first reading, still reach right back into my hindbrain and yank on my neurons.
I have the same thing as I re-read a couple of comic books I have from my childhood, a 2000AD annual from 1980 and a Superman Giant Bumper Book:

I must have re-read that book many times, because when I look at it now can remember imagining a cavern with a laugh echoing round it almost as if I was there. With this picture:
I can imagine the slimy and firm-to-yielding texture of that thing, as well as the force it takes to push it down into that container.

When I occasionally read comic strips/graphic novels it's not quite the same. Is it because my imagination has atrophied with age, or because I haven't re-read enough? Something for part 2...

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