Everything Old Is New Again

Since I've lost some weight, I was pulling out my old shirts that didn't fit me anymore, and trying them on to see if things have changed. A lot of stuff that I had from back in 2012 or so, when I had my first success at trying to lose weight, actually fit pretty well. I have a bunch of new shirts that I can wear...but they're not new shirts. They're old shirts that the hoarder can finally use again.

I found this one in particular:

I think this one was a birthday gift from Rish Outfield that year, if I remember correctly. You can really tell that it's an old shirt though by the characters that Marvel was allowing to be highlighted on there. Here's a better look at it:

Yeah, there's a lot of Fox-owned characters on there. The entire Fantastic Four makes an appearance, along with the Silver Surfer, Galactus, and Dr. Doom. When was the last time you saw those on a Marvel product?

Also, look at all those X-Men! Iceman, Nightcrawler, Juggernaut, Angel, Colossus, Magneto, Cyclops, Wolverine, and Beast. Those folks were squashed out of sight for such a long time.

Spider-man is front and center, along with his rogues gallery, the Rhino, the Lizard, Sandman, Vulture, Electro, Venom, and the Green Goblin. I don't know that they were ever quite stupid enough to completely try to disavow Sony's Spider-man like they did to the Fox properties, but here's a look at the more recent Marvel Comics T-shirts I've managed to purchase at stores:

Who's up front and center on those shirts? Well, the Avengers for one, including Black Widow and Hawkeye. The first shirt was certainly printed before the big Avengers movie from 2012 hit the theaters. They didn't know they had the gargantuan hit on their hands just yet, I suppose.

Then we've got Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist (friggin' Iron Fist!). Black Panther, Ant-man, Falcon. Sometimes, I can't help but be amazed at what the Marvel Cinematic Universe...which I suppose sort of, kind of includes those Netflix shows...managed to achieve with such second and third tier characters.

But now, everything old is new again. Not just with my shirt fitting me like it used to, but also the characters that have always been Marvel's most popular ones are coming back home, and we'll be seeing them again.

At Comic-con, they announced that the Fantastic Four will be rebooted in the MCU. It'll be a while, but for an old guy like me, a while is a blink of an eye. It feels like I lost that weight and was wearing that T-shirt a year or two ago, not seven years ago. So, before I can even form an opinion on the idea of these characters coming back, their movies will have passed us by, and they'll be rebooting the Inhumans or some other such lower tier characters for us again.

I will say, however, that I don't plan on ever being fat enough to fit these more recent shirts again in the future. That stuff is going to stay old, and never become new again. I'm not that fat guy anymore.