Many of the comic book characters that we know and love are getting pretty darned old.
Batman started his one-man crusade against crime in 1939. Being generous and assuming he was in his mid twenties, that would make him now pushing ninety.
The X-men were all teenagers in 1963, so the bunch of them must be, at the least, in their fifties now. Speaking of which, Magneto was a child during the Holocaust, so he must be in his sixties or seventies now.
Spiderman was also about 17 back in 1962, so he should be about 58 now.
There are some characters with which you can get away with this. Wolverine can probably live for centuries. Superman is probably immortal, but what about Lois et al?
So, what have the writers done? Have any of them even addressed this? Or have all of our favorite heroes mysteriously stayed frozen in their early to mid thirties?
Batman (and all of the DC main-continuity characters follow the conceit that current continuity started approximately ten years before the present, no matter when the present happens to be. Furthermore, any thing that happened prior to the Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries is not necessarily reflected in modern continuity (Explaining this would be very complicated; best to just accept it).
Marvel is more complicated, for various reasons. There’s no explicit blanket policy, so that means that things happened whenever the current editorial staff says they happened. In the particular case of the X-Men, there was a retconned origin story that places the original lineup of X-Men as high-school aged at some fairly recent time (by design, there’s no mention of actual dates, but it’s recent enough for home personal computers not to be something to comment on). On the other hand, there was also a similar attempt to rewrite Spider-Man’s origin as happening in more modern times; unfortunately, it stank worse than gym locker full of sauerkraut, so the writers of various comics since then have generally ignored it. Worse, despite being ignored, it has not been officially repudiated - so, now, nobody can say for certain whether it applies or not. For the most part, you just have to accept that the writers are going to treat the character as no older than 30, forever.
As per the minimally titled Origin, Wolverine ages at most very slowly, and he may no longer age at all. Superman has never (in current continuity) had the aging question resolved; he’s too young for it to matter.
DC has done a pretty lame job with aging some of their Justice Society, characters, I think. The way they go about it seems to be “if they’re popular enough, they don’t age.” Thus, Jay Garrick is still somehow running around and Alan Scott is composed entirely of energy while Ted Knight and Wesley Dodds actually got to die. I like that Ted and Wesley were actually killed (and in a well done manner, too, none of that Zero Hour bullshit), and while I like Jay as a member of the Flash family, I kind of wish they’d just give the characters a break.
To tell stories about them in WW2 is cool, but to have them still running around the DCU just seems kind of silly after a while.
Not that it matters to anybody else (particularly DC/Marvel), but I think that since most comic books characters have multiple storylines going in different titles, at least one of them should be with the character aged appropriately. It should rely on the first origin story told as canon. Batman did this, IIRC. (then Beyond , right?) But that was still a future thing, like when B-man would be 200.
I know someone else will post this, but John Byrne has dealt with the issue of age and actual-comic-publication dates in his GENERATIONS series from DC (currently volume three of the series is being published as a 12-issue story).
The premise being that if Superman was launched in 1938 then he would have landed on earth some 25-years earlier. Therefore Byrne has modified the general DC universe history to fit around the 1913 ‘birth’ of Superman/Clark Kent. Similar stuff has been done with Batman/Bruce Wayne. There’s some cool stuff where an as-yet un-orphaned Bruce and still-on-the-farm Clark interact.
Byrne has written (and drawn) the series in such a way that the current Superman/Batman are actually children and grandchildren of the originals. He killed one of the Batmen (I think the Batman in the 60’s died in one of the Joker’s maniacal traps) and depowerd supergirls, etc etc etc. Quite a lot of fun.
My only qualm is
SPOILER!!!
That he put Batman through Ra’s Al Ghul’s lazarous pit at some point and made him immortal. Superman is immortal too, which is cool -he went off to marry a woman on New Genesis, which makes sense cos Lois has been dead for 500years- but Batman as an immortal is kinda pushing it.
However, it is fun and the stories gel very well… in fact methinks I’ll be reading them again shortly!
Mike Grell’s Green Arrow would celebrate birthdays. Of course Grell had effectively removed him from the realm of superheroes. He was just this guy who dressed up like Robin Hood and executed vigilante justice. It was one of those “For Mature Readers Only.” Man I loved that series.
His girlfriend …, I forget her name, would make fun of him for it. He probably only celebrated a few before Grell left and they brought in a new guy who started bringing in superheroes in tights and ditched the birthdays. I believe the birthdays he celebrated were from the mid-40s.
I still remember a panel from that run with Ollie wearing a T-shirt that said something like: “Pushing 40 is all the work I need”
DC had a perfectly neat and workable idea that allowed them to reinvent their characters for each new generation. I’ve always thought that the multiple earth/time band theory was marketing Genius. Every 20 years or so, move to a new dimension and recreate everything again from scratch in light of new society. This way you don’t wind up destroying the existing universe for those who loved it, and you have a new crop of rebranded characters that fit in with the current zeitgeist.
I’d just re-boot the universe every 20 years or so like that, if I had my druthers. That way you can deal with your characters as they age and even sort of conclude their stories.
Why are you here? Jesus Christ, is this how you got your high post count, by entering threads you have no interest in, taking a crap, and leaving? If you have nothing substantial to contribute, stay out! You’re worse than the friggin grammer police!
Anyway, I know for one, Marvel likes to have crazy things happen to their characters that suddenly makes them much younger. This happened to Magneto back in the 80ss, I believe it was. He went from being a 60-something to a 30-something. Then became good, then back to bad, but to my knowledge, never back to 60. Professor X, on the other hand…
But, for the most part, they treat it as though time just kinda moves rather slow for them. I mean, when one five issue storyline takes place within the span of two days, it’s hard to go and say “But, Beast’s birthday is in July, and they completely missed it!” I take it it’s pretty much the same with most other comic books.
Alan Moore also did some interesting little bit with Supreme, from what I’ve read, where the headlining character became privy to the fact that the universe rewrites itself every few years, and came into contact with all the Supreme’s of the past.
But, for the most part, just remember that 100 issues is about 8 months or so in reality, but can be about 3 months comic time.
Preach, Elvis! We need to formulate some new rules for thread participation in Cafe Society. In addition to the “Don’t post copyrighted stuff” rule and the “Please use spoiler boxes” rule, we need a rule that says something like this:
“Yes, we know that it’s just a movie/TV show/comic/whatever. We still intend to have a serious discussion about it. If you find this discussion to be pointless or distasteful, then please do everyone a favor and don’t participate.”
Then there was the late 80s “New Universe” launch of a dozen or so new related titles from Marvel. The starting point was late 80s earth, exactly the same as ours, with a cosmic macguffin event giving some people superpowers. The rule was that every comic book in the New Universe would follow outside chronology…so the 6th issue would be set 6 months after the first.
The trouble is that a standard comic book is really pretty short…You could have a story that only takes up an hour and not feel compacted. And it made telling longer stories difficult…you could bend the rules and have things happen more closely together, but then you had to resynchronize. You don’t want to have too many 4 month jumps in continuity just so you can tell a 4 issue story. The writers would have to move really fast and do a lot of telling you what happened, instead of showing you.
Jesus Christ guys, calm down. RealityChuck was merely stating his opinion in question form, don’t take it personally. It’s as much his thread as it is yours.
I just purchaed this book a week ago on amazon. I had tumbed it In Barnes and Noble before, but never sat down and read it seriously.
OH MY GOD
Best Comic ever
This might be enhanced by the fact that I read Batman: Year one which is I guess is the oppisite of this thread. But anyway, Frank Miller has a true understanding of the dark knight
Don’t read Batman Year Two, it SUCKS it’s a normal batman story cept he pulls a gun on somebody. the feel that he’s new to his job is totally missing, espeically when you take into context the fact that this is only a few months after his first run in with the joker (hinted at in YEar one-NOT A SPOLILER). I guess this is a bit of a hijack, but who cares Batman: Ruturn of the Dark Knight is the best ever, and superman is a wuss.
Most comic-book (and comic-strip) characters don’t age. For that matter, neither do character in some famous fiction. Rex Stout kept Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin the same age from the 1930s to the 1970s (and Robert Goldsborough kept them the am ages into the 1990s). Sherlock Holmes and Watson didn’t age, until the last few stories.
Similarly, Batman and company don’t age either, unless the story requires it (the aforementioned The Dark Knight Returns, and Kingdom Come). Heck, Franklin Richrds (Reed and Sue’s kid in The Fantastic Four) was born back in 1966, and hes still a kid. He advanced in age just enough to keep him from being a baby. Swee’ Pea from Popeye never even got that far.
The only cases I know of where characters age is in comic strips – Gasoline Alley and For Better For Worse.
More serious is when a character’s fundamental origin is dated: The Hulk was created in an aboveground nuclear test, which dates him to 1963! It’s a damn good thing Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed by a mugger, and not by bootleggers or Nazi spies!
I remember years back before the Crisis, when Superboy underwent a transformation: back in the early 1950s, they’d placed the years that Clark was a teenager in the 30s- and then never advanced him from that time! By the time that Superman was existing in a “now” of the mid-1970s, having him be a teenager in the Great Depression simply wasn’t feasible anymore. So over a period of a few years they advanced “when” Superboy was around until he had caught up to Superman [minus fifteen years], and kept it that way until the Crisis.
Some comics related magazine once did an article about the concept of superhero aging. They pointed out for example that Reed Richards and Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four were originally WWII veterans and that both Superboy and Superman had met JFK while he was President. The basic idea is that you just have to kind of accept it along with the various other violations of scientific logic that regularly occur in the comics.
Heh, Magneto was aged back to a BABY. How’s that for screwing with age? They tried something screwy a while back too that implied that Mags wasn’t, in fact, the “real” Magnus Lensher.
To be fair, there is a good explanation for why they are at the ages they’re at, and Ted certainly didn’t die of old age (nor, for that matter, did Dodds, technically)
No, he’s not. The OP asked about how the writers worked around the fact their characters didn’t age in their stories. Jumping in, saying “They’re just fictional characters, who cares?” is NOT an opinion focused on the OP, and it contributes absolutely nothing to the conversation. If all he’s got to offer is an opinion, then he’s in the wrong place, because the discussion is about a “how” not a “what do you think.”
Personally, I like it when reality starts catching up to the “future” set in certain storylines. Kinda like how movies from the 1930s have moon bases set up in 1975. For example, I’m not sure of the exact date of the storyline, but I’m pretty sure Kitty Pride is nowhere NEAR the old crone she was in Days of Future PAst, and that can’t be that far off from continuity sake. Just out of curiosity, wasn’t there a Wolverine storyline/book a few years back dealing with him in the DoFP reality? Psylock was evil and Barron Zemo and his Thunderbolts were evil and in cohoots. Was it set in the same time, or did they advance the years any?