You may have noticed elements of the 1990s creeping back into comics, music, movies and TV. There’s a reason for that: pop culture seems to be obsessed with its past on a 20-year cycle, and the current love affair with the 1980s has passed its peak.

I go into more detail — including thoughts on some of the implications for the 10-year and 30-year troughs in the cycle — at Speed Force in Return of the 1990s.

One day, someone will take a collection of popular songs from the 1990s and turn it into a nostalgia musical.

Update July 2016: I was wondering if this had happened yet. I suppose you could count “American Idiot,” but apparently the album was intended to tell a story, so it’s not quite the same as someone stringing together the hits of ABBA or whoever.

It turns out someone put together a Spice Girls–inspired musical in 2012. It was not well-reviewed and didn’t last very long.

CBR reports that Teen Titans #30-31 will feature the long-awaited* return of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! It seems that Kid Flash is a fan of the series, which never actually got canceled in the DC Universe, and has gone grim-n-gritty with the rest of the DC line. “Excerpts” of a Zoo Crew “parody of Watchmen and Dark Knight and their fallout” will be interspersed with the regular story.

While grim-and-gritty doesn’t seem to go with Captain Carrot, parody does. And to think, I was this close to dropping Teen Titans. It looks like I’ll be staying on a few more issues. Update: It was terrible, and totally not worth it.

*OK, long-awaited by some. Let’s just say it was Captain Carrot that got me into comics at the age of seven, so there’s a serious nostalgia factor at work.