Comic review: Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Return #1- Nostalgia for the bearded generation

Writer: Brian Lynch
Artist: Jerry Gaylord
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Released: 11th March 2015


The last Bill & Ted movie (Bogus Journey) was released in 1991, and when my young niece watched it last week on Netflix she called it, ‘The most boring movie that I’ve ever seen.’ 

So, in regards to this 2015 Bill & Ted comic I’m guessing that the potential audience will consist of old people like myself whom lived through those dark days before the Internet, mobile phones and Edward Snowdon.

Who exactly is reading comic books in 2015? You know, sometimes when I look at all of the pointless alternative covers on new books I suspect that it’s bearded forty-year old losers like myself. My friends, I have seen the future. It’s a bit sad, and it needs a shave

Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Return #1 is fluffy, inoffensive, cute and friendly. The art is nice and colourful and everything about it scream ‘nostalgia’ for the 40 year old bearded bloke crowd. I’m a part of that crowd. I’m the guy that the comic book is aimed at. So, did it hit?

Yeah, it did what you would expect it to do. It offered a five-minute jolt down memory lane, but I can’t see it winning over any younger converts. The comic book is still set in the early 1990’s (the safest place for comic books to exist in today) so it’s not really doing, or saying anything. It reminded me of the silly movie, but I was a different person back then, heck, the world was a different place back then, and things have changed whilst Bill & Ted have remained the same.

I don’t want to go back in time to the early 1990’s. I was there, and they weren’t that great the first time around. In fact, times were so stiflingly dull that Nirvana had to come along just to kick some life into the party. Okay, so they told people that they sucked, but at least they said something, and that was the problem with the early 1990’s, people were going through the motions, nothing was being said and nothing was really happening.

I guess in that sense we are living through a period much like the early 1990’s once again in 2015. There is a cultural vacuum that is becoming increasingly more apparent as the days pass. Who is going to fill it? Is it going to be a self destructive, nihilistic rejection of everything as represented by the band ‘Nirvana?’ Or is it going to be something more positive? Something that looks at the corporate/government tyranny of our time (like Nirvana did) but rather than turning inward and self-destructive, instead turns outwards and looks for solutions to the problems that face us all today? My money is on the later.

Bill & Ted are not going to help, but by going back to what they represented in 1991 we are being reminded that it’s time again for another shake-up.

2015 is the new 1991. It’s time for something genuinely new, genuinely revolutionary and genuinely determined to shake this joint up again.

There’s an open space, people are sleeping again, and the most exciting thing about living in 2015 is to have that sense of anticipation that feeling that something is lurking, planning, scheming, creeping, ready to pounce and ready to get this party going again.

Rating: 6/10 (Not bad, but it's just a nostalgia book)