Parenting & Family Quote by Victoria Pratt

There is a quietly unfashionable honesty in Pratt's admission: comics, for her, aren't a moral obligation or a badge of nerd credibility, they're a childhood language she never learned. In an era when pop culture demands fluency in Marvel backstories the way offices once demanded "The Sopranos" opinions, saying "I missed it" is almost contrarian.

The line works because it smuggles a broader claim about taste under the guise of personal anecdote. "Miss the boat" isn't just about comics; it's about how culture gets wired early, before we have the adult impulse to turn every gap into a self-improvement project. Pratt frames fandom as developmental timing, not intellect. That matters because it pushes back against the idea that adults can simply binge their way into belonging. You can watch every superhero film, but you might still lack the tactile nostalgia that makes the genre feel like home: the ritual of spinning racks, the serial cliffhangers, the sense that these stories were yours before they were content.

There's also subtext about identity policing. When actors enter comic-book franchises, they're expected to perform reverence. Pratt sidesteps that performance, implying a boundary between professional participation and personal obsession. It's a small refusal of the modern demand to be "authentic" by being encyclopedic.

Contextually, her comment lands in a culture where comics have been mainstreamed into adult life, but the gateway remains childhood. Pratt's point isn't that adults can't enjoy comics; it's that enjoyment and initiation aren't the same thing, and industries built on nostalgia know exactly how wide that gap can be.