Thanks E-Sabbath. Wonder if I can find it somewhere cheap.
Lok
Howcome spidey and friends aren’t pushing 40? They’ve been around a good 40-45 years(same for DC).
How can the Flash logically be the thunderbolt that created him(with a little bit of suspension of belief)?
Why am I playing 3.50+ for 22 pages?
I also remember this guy… Guardian or Sentry or something… Apparently Stan Lee created him and left him on the drawing board and they talked about how he got erased from the marvel univese or got time lost… What happend?
- Because the writers at Marvel are chickens. When the FF & Spidey started, the thing that was different about them (unlike DC characters) was that they grew and changed. If Spidey had been a DC character in the '60s, he’d have still been in High School and wondering if he should ask Liz Allen for a date in the '70s. (I’ve got a looooong essay about how shockingly innovative Spidey was, somewhere)
However, somewhere along the line, they decided to freeze things. Marvel time is measured from the Fantastic Four’s rocket flight (so Peter went to that radiation experiment (say) one year after the FF’s rocket trip). Anyway, they’ve decided that the Fantastic Four’s rocket went up 7 years ago for whatever value of “Now” is.(I’d swear that John Byrne was the one who introduced this idea in the late '70s/early '80s). Today, the FF’s rocket went up in 1996, but in 2050, it’ll still have gone up 7 years ago…in 2043. There’s a lot of adventures that happened in that 7 year period. Per Peter David, things don’t change at Marvel anymore, there’s only “the illusion of change”.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s really undermined Marvel.
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Time-travel. When he defeated the anti-Monitor, he was going so fast that he was transformed into pure energy that was going back in time.
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Because booksellers don’t make enough of a profit otherwise and the books don’t get on the shelf. When Marvel did it’s .99c line experiment (“Untold Tales of Spider-Man”, the X-Men one and the Avengers one), lots of retailers refused to carry it. If you’ve got limited display space, would you rather have a magazine that sells for $3.50, (of which you get, say…$2.81 (75%) ) or .99c (of which you get .74c)? Espcially when you consider the fact that they both take up the same amount of shelf-space?
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Sentry. And it was a hoax. A damned good one, but a hoax nonetheless. Sentry was created in the late '90s by…um…whoever wrote/drew the book. Lee had nothing to do with it, outside the story. It wasn’t all that original of an idea(Triumph was a time-lost, forgotten member of the J.L.A. had been running around and Alan Moore, in his stunning Supreme series was doing flashbacks to non-existant earlier issues) but it was well executed one.
Personally I have no problem with people never aging in the Marvel U. It’s only when people start nitpicking it that it bothers me (not the nits, the concept.) I just don’t think about it and I enjoy the stories. As long as continuity is kept up. Granted it’s hard to do Christmas stories every year or refer to the current President or trends but, hey, I’ll be dead one day, and that’ll be the least of my worries.
Someone on usenet I think once suggested that Franklin Richards was keeping everything the same age while the world around progressed. He could do it. I’m sure he’s NOT, but if Marvel ever gets desperate for a Hypertime of their own, Frankie is the one to turn to.
Of course, we have to note that VERY FEW comic characters actually experience conventional aging. (The only example coming to mind are the Golden Age heroes such as the JSA, but even their survivors have been nicely de-aged and made static as well.)
Thus, the “Marvel” rule has always applied to, say, Peanuts, Beetle Bailey, the Family Circus, the Simpsons, Dick Tracy, Prince Valiant, Archie, etc. The only difference with Marvel is that most of the characters have their origins mired in the cold war, in which case those elements of their origins have to be either overlooked or ignored. (Or given the John Byrne treatment, but we won’t go there.)
Paul Jenkins.
–Cliffy
Even there, they never really did age accurately, but that was explained by the various members being exposed to different magic effects over the years that slowed their aging. After all, Jay Garrick is in his 80’s but looks no older than late 50’s (depending on who’s drawing him) thanks to the Speed Force, Alan Scott is kept younger by the green flame (of which his body is now apparently entirely composed) and even Wildcat somehow acquired “9 lives,” in the '40’s, in a story which I’m sure is yet to be told.
Their kids have aged, although very slowly. I think Jade is in her mid 20’s, as is Atom Smasher. Jack Knight is around 30 and of course, Hector Hall has been reincarnated into his mid 20’s.
On that note, I say Superman is 37-38. I don’t have a problem with that, does anybody else? (Remember his classmate Pete Ross is now Vice President, and as far as I know the qualifications for that office are the same as for President, so he had to be at least 35 at the last election.
It also makes sense if we consider that his career has lasted at least a decade, and more like 12 to 13 years, and he went public when he was 24 or 25 (according to Byrne anyway, and that much has been maintained).
**Look it up, I’d love to read it.
How do you figure? If you’re talking about how in mainstream continuity the heroes staying eternally young hampers what stories can be told in a certain sense you’re right. The FF will never have problems with Social Security like they’ve had in the past with paying their rent.
OTOH, even though the characters are frozen in age there is nothing stopping them from growing. Look at Spider-Man, important milestones in his past that affect the way writers treat him include: Deaths of Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy, graduating HS and college, getting married, getting separated, anxiety over being partly responsible for creating Venom, etc. It’s not like we’re dealing with DC from the fifties where you can conveniently forget a story from last month if it means Superman would handle meeting aliens from outer space differently. Just because a character doesn’t age doesn’t mean they can’t become more complex.
Or are you talking about how the origins of specific characters don’t have the same oomph they used to due to continuity freezes making the specific circumstances surrounding their origins different?
Or is it that it’s something else entirely that I’m missing?
Personally I think that setting the story in real time, or even slowed time with the characters aging, could cause more problems then it’s worth. People invest a lot of time and emotion into these characters due to the escapism that stories about them provide. If you weight them down too much with aging and accompanying consequences then some of the fantasy is lost. Yes, people like seeing the heroes having problems with everyday issues like bills and SO’s and such, but that’s because it allows the reader to have greater identification with the protagonist and thus enhance enjoyment of the characters adventures. IMO, however, too much reality will weigh down the average super-hero because part of their appeal is that they are forever young with their future eternally ahead of them.
I don’t think an Alterniverse or Elseworlds monthly series dealing with heroes getting older would be a bad idea, I just don’t think those stories belong in primary continuity. There was a Marvel book in the eighties set entirely in real time (each issue comprised a month in real time) called Strikeforce Mortuari, and I’m sure that there have been other books that have done the same, so it’s not like there aren’t books out there that have real time consequences (okay, so in Mortuari all the characters only had a year to live max and that’s not exactly a problem Joe Blow would encounter but you get my point).
A little of both.
There is a neat period feel/flavor to the early Marvels that’s as much a part of the stories as the actual stories themselves. Ben and Reed did fight in World War II. Thing and Human Torch did Meet the Beatles. MJ Watson was a go-go dancer. Black Widow is an ex-Commie spy. The X-Men did go to Coffee-Houses in Greenwich Village and listen to beatnik poetry. Flash did enlist (or get drafted) for Viet Nam. Tony Stark was held captive in a “country in south-east Asia”, I could go on for pages about how deeply ingrained in their era those comics are. And how that makes the books better, not worse.
I am convinced that a large part of the reason that MARVELS sold (and keeps selling) so well is that Busiek and Ross accepted and embraced the fact that their books were set in their respective eras, rather than the bland homogenized “every-era” that they’re set in currently.
And as for characters aging, I see your point, but I’d prefer to see at least the Marvel characters age because they did. Reed and Sue got married and had a kid. Unthinkable in the '60s. Peter went from painfully shy nerd to outgoing Joe College type across about 40 issues. Unheard of. Now? Bland “How can we pretend to change, but not really.”
Marvel books did something unique by letting their characters grow and captured the feel of the '60s like no other books…and by removing that period feel and the aging, it weakens the story. I have no problem with them creating “Earth 2” like they did with their Ultimates line, especially since they’ve been stunningly smart and not slavishly copying the old stories with a different suface gloss and they’re not teasing the fans (see Legion about 8 years ago for an example of playing “tease the fans”). They’re telling new stories in a world that’s different from the “Earth 1” Marvel. And it’s working. (and I can’t wait for the inevitable shot of a construction worker in front of a brick wall about to be crushed by some fallling debris with Ultimate-Spidey on one side and Regular-Spidey on the other with the caption; SPIDER-MAN OF TWO WORLDS! 
)
It would necessitate a new line to be started every 20 years, but that would be preferable to seeing the gibberish that Marvel’s been putting out trying to fix things. I mean, I’ve been reading comics since the mid-'70s and it never bothered me that the Thing and the Human Torch met the Beatles on their first US tour but were still about 18 and 35 respectively. I never cared that Superman Earth-1 had met Kennedy but was still 28 in 1977. I understand that it bothers some people, but I don’t see why.
erm…IMHO, of course.
And I’ll try to dig up that Spidey article.
Fenris
Sorry I wasn’t able to reply right away…the person I was thinking of was Doctor Demonicus. I just found it funny that he tried to do what it seems like every other guy out there did.
Here’s a couple of (possibly) tough questions, one for information and one for trivia (not that I doubt your ability, just a test)
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Did they ever use that “Skinhead” guy again who fought Rocket Racer(hee hee)?
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Whose debut story was “Vengeance In The Sky With Diamonds,” and what happened to THAT guy?
- From marvel, I always thought it was 10-15 years ‘ago’ that everything happend. Although in spiderman(side note: Marvel has essentials which are in b&w making them cheap, and able to have 20-25 issues which are great to catch up on early marvel) in the early days would age pretty rapidly considering that time line, it makes sense. Say it was 10 years: Spidey at the start was 15, now he’s 25-30. That’s enough time for him to finish school, go to college, get married, get divorced, become a teacher realistically. While on the other hand him having all those adventures in such a short time contradicts it.
By my math:
[ul]
[li]Hulk is 35[/li][li]FF: Reed is 40, Sue is around Reed’s age, Ben is 35, johnny is 25-30(spidey and him seemed to be the same age)[/li][/ul]
In DC, if IRC it seemed set in stone that everything happend 12 years ago making Batman 36 and Superman around 34.
This Spidey talk reminds me: what happened to Peter and Mary Jane? They’re divorced? Spider-Man was not one of those books I followed religiously, but I always liked their chemistry.
Actually, MachineHead, Ben would have to be around Reed’s age since he and Reed roomed together in college.
And Sue is considerably younger than Reed. They’ve made reference to that in a few issues (and no I can’t cite.) She’s probably a good 10 years younger I’d say.
’bang, Peter and MJ are not divorced. They’ve just been separated for quite a while when she finally reached a breaking point after being kidnapped for some reason (not Spidey related, IIRC.) She moved out to L.A. so she could work on her movie career (and got a part as the love interest in the Lobster-Man movie.) They’ve spoken a few times. She’s come to NY to see him, but he was in another dimension and when he came back he was in astral form and couldn’t communicate. He and Aunt May later flew out to L.A. and talked a few things out.
Last issue, MJ and Pete flew to NY and L.A. respectively in an effort to try one last attempt at working things out. When neither was home and appeared they’d given up, they both hopped flights back to their cities. Circumstances caused both flights to land in Denver where Pete and MJ have run into each other.
Issue 50 coming out this month promises to be the revelation of their situation. Could go either way right now. Personally I hope they call it splits and Pete hooks back up with Black Cat. And then MJ will be mine…all mine!!!
What?
- Does anyone know if DC plans to put out any more TP’s of Hitman? They put out 4, I think, but haven’t released any more. I would certainly but them as I think Ennis’s writing was good and funny, (I liked it a lot more then I did Preacher which seemed to me to be a case of How badly can we gross out the reader this issue?? type of thing)
And why would DC even bother to collect and put out a few TP’s of Hitman and then not take it all the way, especially since the series ended?
- Are the 2 Superman: Our Worlds At War TP’s worth picking up?
“Our Worlds at War”…personally, I thought this was an Orient Express of an idea that turned into a mammoth train wreck.
The short of the concept was that a mammoth “Galactus” type creature was assaulting Earth, and that every hero (and a few villains) were required to join the assault under the orders of Lex Luthor. There was chaos, major devastation, several key deaths…and in the end, the whole thing amounted to a great big nothing. I haven’t seen a lot of long-standing repercussions from the storyline; as far as I know, all the loose ends have been tied up. A few of the characters killed during the storyline all ended up coming back (Guy Gardner, Aquaman, and Doomsday, who wins the record for making a comeback the following month.)
And, as far as I can tell, Superman’s gone back to wearing his red-and-yellow “S,” as opposed to the red-and-black one he adopted after the war. I didn’t even notice the switch.
Ya mean ya didn’t like it?
“He’s called ArseFace!”
“Just me and my meat! Old Odin, alone with his meat!”
“Bugger the cat!”
“Aye, possibly.”
“Can you see yourself kneeling behind me while ramming a swordfish up my rectum and yelling ‘Who’s the man? Who’s the man?’ ? Because that is the only way I can currently achieve even a glimmer of sexual satisfaction.”
And The All Time Favorite
“You’re gettin’ it up the choccy starfish!”
Wonder Woman’s mother Hippolyta did not come back. Dammit.
The reason the main members of the Justice Society remain spry and younger than they look is because of absorbing the chronal energy of Ian Karkull. All of the original JSA members who fought him absorbed his energy when he exploded, which has slowed down their aging process considerably.
Jack, IIRC, is 31.
I think Hector’s new body as Dr. Fate is developmentally in his early 30s. In real time, he’d be about 1. 
I tink Jade, Nuklon, and the rest of the surviving members of Infinity Inc would be in their late 20s.
Now… what the hell happened to Northwind, why did they turn Brainwave Jr. into a psycho, and where is Helix?
Mr. Bones is the head of the DEA? How the hell did he get there?
Ooops. I meant DEO.