Wonder Woman hasn’t really aged, she just gets a Make-Over, they give her a different Hair-style and Uniform. She is over 60, her mother and the other Amazons/Sisters never age either, it must be their Immortality.
So it’s a good thing that RealityChuck did nothing of the sort. He just pointed out that the comic-book situation of characters not aging is pretty much par for the course for most literature.
You think so? “Why should this be an issue?” sounds a lot like, “Who cares?” to me. CalMeachem made the same point as RealityChuck without coming off as a condescending prick, and tempered his opinion with examples where the characters do age, showing that he put at least some thought into the question.
And I would take exception with the idea that this is “par for the course for most literature.” The Three Musketeers, for example, definetly aged. The second book was even called “Twenty Years After.” Characters in the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Buffy universes have all aged. I would go so far as to say that ageless characters are the exception, and not the rule.
The “Why should it be an issue?” is a serious point I keep trying to make. Why should it be an issue whether the characters age or not?
Suppose they don’t. What difference does that make to the story? Why should it be a matter of concern to anyone?
And don’t say it’s not “realistic.” You’re talking about people who fly, climb walls, turn into the jolly green giant when mad, etc. Comics are inherently unrealistic – that’s part of their fun – and to insist on realism is pretty pointless.
I will admit I got snippy over this, mostly because I see this sort of constatn overliteralization all over the board. But the issue seems to me to be that people just can’t accept the fact that fiction is fiction and always require elaborate explanations instead of concentrating on what’s really important – the story.
Because it’s interesting from a point of view of the craft of creating comic books. How do the writers deal with it? Do they change the character’s background? Ignore it? Create elaborate explanations for it? What are those explanations? How does it all impact the all-important story? I enjoy comics, but I have neither the time, money, nor inclination to buy them regularly enough to follow a story over the course of a decade, which is how long it would take for this to become noticable and get addressed within the continuity of the comic itself. I find threads like this interesting because they bring up a lot of backstory to comic characters that I have missed due to the overwhelming volume of inter-related comic-book history.
I don’t speak from experience on comics: most of what I know I’ve learned by lurking in threads just like this. But I can tell you, when it comes to subjects I’m more familiar with, that “overliteralization” you complain about rises not out of ignorance over the importance of the story, but because we’ve already sufficently discussed the story. I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer a lot. I like having discussions about the show. But after a while, I get tired of endlessly debating why I think the story arc from season three was better than season two’s, or complaining about the shifting symbolism of Willow’s magic use. Things like nit-picky continuity bitches or “what if” scenarios are ways of injecting new life into the discussion by focusing on other aspects of the material. Story is important, yes, but it’s not the only thing. And it’s not the most important thing, either: character always takes precedence.
Of course, that last bit is only my opinion: if you started a thread discussing the story of a particular book or movie, I’m not going to come in and tell you, “Why is this even an issue? It’s character that’s important.” It would be condescending and insulting to demand that people only discuss art in terms I found appropriate.
In current continuity, Wonder Woman’s only in her early 30’s, I believe. She’s immortal, but that doesn’t really matter much when Batman never ages, either.
You’re right. It just kind of bugs me that they jump through all sorts of hoops to keep certain characters alive forever, and it just seems a bit silly to me after awhile. Just a pet peeve.
You know, I was all set to take your side and say that you have a valid point, but then you elaborated your argument to an extent that I couldn’t support, and you managed to do it while being condescending.
You’re missing the point entirely about fans pushing for mainstream super-hero comics to be more “realistic”. The trend for comics in today’s age, indeed going back to the sixties or seventies, is a push for more realism. This realism is distinct from believability in that, as you pointed out, we’re dealing with people who can climb walls, turn into the jolly green giant, etc., which are things that are far from believable. However, with the readership of comics getting older there is a higher standard that is desired from the writing of comics that was not there when the market was primarily preadolescent males, with one of the current standards being explanations for why comicbook characters can have experiences that are tied to specific points in history (Superman meeting JFK for example) and still be young, vibrant and unchanged years later. These explanations are not some rock hard rule set by the medium or the genre that comic writers have to follow; they are what the fans, the people buying the books, demand, because these explanations allow the book to be more enjoyable to them.
In case the above is unclear I’ll put it another way: the comics reader is presented with a set of circumstances by the writer that are unbelievable (an alien looks human and gains god-like powers from a yellow sun, for example) and are asked to suspend their disbelief that much. Now the questions the average modern reader wants answered is how does this character exist in a real world? What would be the realistic effects upon such a person? What would be the ramifications of having a secret identity, not only upon him, but also upon the people around him? Granted, I am oversimplifying and there is actually a far greater suspension of disbelief that is asked of the reader, such as an ignoring of the effects upon the world that would exist if super-heroes were real, but the basic point remains valid: Most readers want realism in their comics story after they have swallowed the unbelievable.
To further elaborate, and as I mentioned above, realism in comics is not a new trend and more than a few of the books that are considered classics in the super-hero genre deal with this exact point. The Watchmen takes the concept of realism to an extreme and depicts a world where one superpowered being completely upsets the geopolitical balance of the world, and the majority of the rest of the costumed heroes are outlaws and hunted by the police. The Dark Knight Returns depicts a Batman that is approximately the age he would have been if he had aged naturally from his first appearance in 1939, and his body and abilities are negatively affected by his age, and these effects are nearly universally agreed upon to add to Batman’s “final” story immensely.
Even comics writer Kurt Busiek, who believes that super-heroes are unrealistic and any attempt to make them so is at least a degree of pointless, ironically succumbs to the very issue of giving the reader more realistic heroes in his Astro City series when he has a character comment that one of the heroes of the series never seems to age (Jack-in-the-Box), only to explain it away in a later issue that this is the second incarnation of that hero with a new person under the mask. Busiek makes points on both sides of the issue, demonstrating the hero as immortal icon in one issue only to turn around a few issues later and explain why the Jack-in-the-Box has been around for as long as he has, thus giving a degree of realism to what seemed at first glance to be an unrealistic scenario, and all this is for a series that was created in the mid-nineties!
Ultimately whether or not there should be explanations for why characters never age, even when events in their past are tied to specific points in history, and how realistically they should be treated is left up to the individual and which scenario would provide maximum enjoyment for them. However, when enough individual readers have amassed to form a majority it is to them that the industry will bow to and in turn give them the stories that they desire, which right now is more realistic stories and histories for the characters. It would be an equally legitimate request of the fans to have the characters never age and have any stories that would tie their age to a specific point in history be ignored, which is how it was at DC until at least the sixties.
Ultimately what I’m saying, RealityChuck, is that all this boils down to the old adage that different people have different tastes, but no one person’s taste will be good for all, and when his taste is not what is currently popular he needs to accept that.
Here, here, Asylum. For certain comics, asking for realism is a rather mute point. I mean, when the comic takes place in a completely imaginary world, in another dimension, or just plain in it’s own constraints where realism just isn’t important, then yes, wondering about the specifics and reality of it are a little off.
But when the storytellers themselves try hard to make the comic realistic and true to life, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder how things go. Sure, comic book characters tend not to age, but look at Spider-Man. I mean, he started off as a simple high school student who gets fantastic powers. Sounds simple enough, but right off the bat, his life is rought with strife. His parents are both dead, and soon, his foster father dies as well. So, Peter deals with death, grief, and responsibility. Sure, maybe that’s not much different, but as time progresses, he graduates high school, gets a real job, and eventually gets married and tries to start a family. There is some progression there of time and age, and there are several issues that deal with nothing but personal interraction and non-crazy comic booky stuff. If realism is completely unimportant, then why make it such an important factor in the storyline?
What makes a comic truly successful is the ability for its audience to relate to its characters. I don’t know anyone who can stick to walls, is smart enough to create web shooters, and fights bizarre super villains on a regular basis…but I do know about getting stuck wthi too much homework when there’s more important things I’d rather be doing; having arguments with parents; dealing with girls; and suffering through loss. These are the things that give Spider-Man his following and, what, twelve series? Even the likes of Batman and Superman have their human moments and stories, proving that the most extreme comics recognize the necessity for realism.
Heck, James Bond has not really aged (except for the last 2 Roger Moore movies :rolleyes: Grandpa Bond, come sex me up! )
Worse, he has been played by 5 actors. Shoot, makes most comics (other then the Green Lantrern) look like the paragon of stability.
Only Q was allowed to age gracefully. “Do pay attention James”.
Read the first half or so of the thread, only scanned the last half. Still, I’m a bit surprised that no one has mentioned the one major exception to the “no aging rule” (that I know of): DC side kicks. Specifically, Dick Grayson and Wally West (aka Robin I and Kid Flash, respectively) but I think there have been others as well.
I think a lot of it is probably a marketing decision more than anything else. In many ways, comics have become American mythology, as some of you have already alluded to. We get attached to our heros and it’s just not the same if there’s someone new behind the mask if you’ve grown up with someone else. Put simply, Bruce Wayne IS Batman. They could put someone else in the costume and let him run around kicking butt, but it’s just not the same.
DC has made a few exceptions to this, but not many. I’m not really aware of any other major publishers playing with the aging idea and in most of DC’s cases it was more an issue of knocking someone off that just aging out of the job - check out Green Lantern and/or Flash for specifics. Those are the ones that come to mind for me.
Seeing as the Boy wonder first appeared in Action comics #38 during 1940, I would say that the no-aging bug has effected the currently twenty-something lad a bit.
DC Comics used to have some freedom for aging some of their characters. When they still had Earth-2 continuity, these characters were free to age and have heirs. Thus, the Huntress was the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selena Kyle. Bruce Wayne retired from being Batman and eventually became Commissioner Wayne (although he was eventually KIA). Clark Kent and Lois Lane married and Superman went into retirement (and got some spiffy grey in the temples). The JSA ended up replacing Batman with Robin (who then dropped out to become an ambassador). Superman was replaced with Power Girl (Kara Zor-El of Krypton, of course). The rest of the JSA aged but at about half the normal rate due to a “chronal energy” exposure. However, many of them had children in the 1960s. These children went on to form Infinity, Inc.
Earth-2 had remarkably tight and consistent continuity for its day, but it got trashed because Earth-1 (mainstream DC) continuity was such a mess. So a couple of con men blamed all the problems on “alternate earths” and had the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” that fixed nothing.
Some Earth-2 stories even made oblique reference to the oddity of Earth-1 continuity, mentioning that time was “different” in the “mainstream” continuity. On Earth-2 time flowed at the same rate as our own world.
Dogface, thanks for the info. I’ve read plenty about the Golden and early Silver Ages, but I unfortunately haven’t read many of the individual issues. I was aware that Batman aged, got married and died, and that Superman was married as well, but was this aging natural across the years, or did they suddenly decide to age them when the Silver Age hit? I had been assuming the latter, but after reading your post it seems I might be wrong.
Strap yourself in. To answer this question, we will have to take a scenic tour. The Golden Age began to peter out near the end of WWII and was dead by the early 1950s.
A few flagship characters continued to be published, but they slowly drifted in different directions from their original concepts. All that can be definitively said is that the Batman and Superman of the Silver Age were not the characters of the Golden Age. No sane person tries to draw a hard-and-fast line. That is, there never was a real point at which it was officially stated “we are no longer publishing in this continuity but have started a new one”. Thus, from one point of view, the “Silver Age” Batman (Earth-1) and Superman (Earth-1) are the “true” Golden Age characters because they were truly published in ceaseless continuity from their original appearances.
Gardner Fox reinvents the Flash concept, thus creating the Silver Age. To confuse matters, the Silver Age Flash is inspired by comics he read as a kid about the Golden Age Flash. Thus, it is established that the “original” Flash did not actually exist in continuity anymore. Up until this moment, there was no status for unpublished Golden Age characters. The new Flash defined that a new continuity “officially” existed.
Okay, so move up a bit and we have Tale of Two Flashes. In another stroke of competence, Fox decides to adapt the “parallel worlds” concept to comics and puts Jay Garrick’s Flash on this parallel earth. Thus, Earth-2 is born. You will note that decades have passed between the last publication of a Golden Age Flash story and the first appearance of the Earth-2 Flash.
Golden Age concepts are presumed to be the underpinnings of the Earth-2 setting, but so many contradictions exist between Earth-2 as it is fleshed out and actual Golden Age stories that it is far more sensible to conclude that the Earth-2 continuity is based on the Golden Age, not the Golden Age in and of itself. Likewise, if we look at publication history, it was not the Earth-2 Batman and Earth-2 Superman who were published continuously from the Golden Age, onwards. It was the characters who were eventually placed on Earth-1 who had the complete and continuous publication history. Tiny incremental changes just piled up over the years. Technically, therefore, Earth-2 is not the Golden Age setting. Earth-2 did not exist until the Silver Age, when it was invented in Tale of Two Flashes and the only characters who were truly published without break from the Golden Age, onwards, ended up on Earth-1.
Now, all that being said, one case can be made that the Golden Age characters never aged at all.
Now, in regards to the Earth-2 characters, there was simply a set of decades that had no stories therein. It was presumed that time passed and events occurred. One story, told in flashback, was “Trial of the JSA”, which explained “why” the JSA “disbanded” in the 1950s (actually, the comic got cancelled). There were also short flashbacks in the “Crisis” JLA/JSA teamup issues. However, for at least a little while, they didn’t worry too much about actual ages–just drew the characters a bit older (after all, they could be presumed to be in their 20s by 1945 and not too visibly different by 1961). But as time went on, the Earth-2 characters should have started visibly aging, since they were so tightly tied to WWII. Thus, the “chronal energy exposure” was invented to explain how they aged more slowly.
Thus, in a nutshell, the aging decision was sort of made “suddenly”, but only in a sense that essentially new characters were introduced who were based on characters “from the past”.
Once the Earth-2 ball got rolling, they did try to keep up with the aging properly. Thus, Steve Trevor had really put on the years by the time that the Crisis on Infinite Earths had rolled around, and Mrs. Trevor had likewise gone grey and gotten some crow’s feet (marrying a mortal man and voluntarily bearing his child is bad for ones Amazonian immortality). Dick Grayson was Dick Gray-hair (he had to look older than the Huntress, who had been born in the mid-1950s, after all).
um… no.
The characters have aged.
It has been established that the WW II members of the JSA have aged slower because of absorbing the energies of Ian Karkull when he exploded.
The Golden Age Green Lantern is not composed of Starheart energy. While that was the case for a while, at the end of the current story arc, it is now back in the ring.
There are still many fans, like myself, who like these characters and still want to see them around and active in the DCU.
Detective Comics #38 was the debut of Robin.
Ah, yes, Mockingbird, now that was a character who could be a poster child for messed up continuity…
She’s in her mid to late 20s at most.
She was in her early 20s when the series started over in 1987.
She is not immortal. She lost that in leaving Themyscira.
But that wasn’t DC…
If Wonder Woman was in her early 20s in 1987, that means that she is approaching 35 now.
Of course, that would only be if the character were aging…