In the process of going through the endless vastness of my pile, I’ve discovered things that I haven’t thought about in years. Specifically, I’ve pulled from the pile two 80^th anniversary issues that DC had put out in 2020 and 2021. I had forgotten that these even existed, but the memory of going to the closest comic shop, still in the grips of Covid, and seeing if they had the specific variant issue I wanted, came rushing back as I unearthed them. Even through one is close to half a decade old now, it’s time to talk about the Wonder Woman 80^th Anniversary and the Green Lantern 80^th Anniversary special issues.

Both issues are anthologies celebrating the milestone staying in consistent publication for eight years for both of these characters. Although, for Green Lantern, it’s a little unique as Alan Scott is the character turning 80 with the Corps not becoming a thing for nearly 20 years, but then semantics. Even still, the stories here from a wide variety of writers, artists, inkers, colorists, and letterers helps to showcase the different perspectives these characters can inhabit. For Green Lantern, we have tales of every iteration of the character from the 40s onward and for Wonder Woman we get to see her distinct eras play out—including that time in the late 60s when she gave up her powers. But it isn’t simply a celebration of the characters as, for many of these stories, it’s a recreation of their pasts in a new form. With creators like Denny O’Neil or José Luis García-López, we see these distinct eras both through the eyes of newer talent and the people who were there while they were happening. 

This idea of the history of these characters is what really stands out across these two issues. More than ever, the study of history is alarmingly important. We need to learn from past mistakes to see where improvements can be made and what was actually working well. Taking a look at these characters, we see the eighty years of them stretch out in thousands of scripts and panels—we see their essences and what has made them beloved enough to warrant anniversary specials. And in maintaining their history, of celebrating what had worked so well and working to improve the issues that had persisted in the past, we can make them just as relevant for another eight years.

Even though I’ve only been actively reading comics for around seventeen years now, seeing anniversary specials does trigger a fond nostalgia around when I first went to a comic store and picked up an issue ofGreen Lantern. The distance between then and now feels like a gulf, but is only a quarter of these character’s lives in publication. But they’re always there, sitting on the shelf in the local comic shop, still as glossy as that first issue.

Get excited. Get nostalgic.

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, 510, & 651) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.