HORMONE TROUBLE

 I'm trying to frame this as a response to a post claiming that in the 1980s "comics became a medium for young guys who didn't want to grow up, and who wanted the signifiers of adult themes without the complexity and ambiguity that could be found in novels and cinema." _________________

C.S. Lewis once said something along the lines of, "It's unfair to assume that fairy tales are for children, for many adults like them, and many children do not."   

I feel the same way about the general assertion that adventure stories, in the comics or anywhere else, were aimed at kids and/teens. Don't some adults like the genre all their lives, while some children turn their nose up at superheroes and barbarians when very young?

It's true that adolescents may pursue a genre or form of storytelling avidly for some years and then lose interest. Getting older MAY be a factor why those persons move on to other things. However, the best seller lists suggest that the greater numbers move on not to Nabokov but to "beach books."

Other adolescents, like the majority of comics nerds under discussion, can't be said to simply "not want to grow up." If they like a genre deeply enough, they'll pursue it. Maybe they'll embrace trash as readily as diamonds; maybe they won't. But since the "adult world" supports quite a lot of trash too, getting older doesn't seem to have anything to do with one's tastes.