Aging & Wisdom Quote by Jhonen Vasquez

Nostalgia is supposed to feel warm; Vasquez makes it sound like a bad smell you can’t get out of your clothes. He’s talking about “retro looking stuff” not as an aesthetic choice but as a social scene: peers “my age or younger” performing an affection for earlier eras like it’s a costume party that never ends. The disgust isn’t just taste-policing. It’s a moral reaction to what nostalgia can become in creative culture: a safety rail, a way to borrow credibility from the past instead of risking something ugly, new, or sincerely personal.

The key move is the pivot from revulsion to insulation. “Not that it affected what I did” reads defensive on purpose, the kind of line you say when you know the atmosphere is contagious. He’s admitting the pressure while refusing to grant it power. That tension feels especially of a late-90s/early-2000s alt-cartoon moment, when “retro” was everywhere: faux-vintage design, throwback animation cues, indie scenes building identity through reference. Vasquez, whose work thrives on abrasive edges and discomfort, positions himself as allergic to that consensus.

“I was doing my own show” lands less like ego than survival strategy. The subtext is territorial: in an industry that rewards familiar aesthetics, autonomy isn’t a vibe, it’s protection. He’s drawing a line between influence and imitation, between community and crowd. The cultural jab is sharp because it’s aimed sideways at his own generation, accusing them of being too young to be this nostalgic, too early to be retreating.