I’m home sick, watching a bunch of MCU movies while I get better and I’m dealing with the Stark family problem - Howard Stark is a successful pilot, inventor and businessman in the mid-1940s - so he’s clearly someone born in the 1910s (and probably early in that decade), but he has a son who is in his late 40s (or maybe a bit younger) in 2010 or so - and Howard Stark is murdered in 1991 in the prime of life, not as an old man.
Fan fix: The Howard Stark who is Tony’s father is Howard Stark, Jr., born during WWII. He told Tony all about Captain America (annoying Tony) because he grew up when Cap was a famous war hero, who his father (Howard Sr.) knew, not because he knew the man himself. Howard Stark, Jr. kept the business going after Stark, Sr. died (probably before Tony was born), and Tony naturally conflates a bunch of their activities together, since both Howards were inventors and businessmen.
Howard Stark was born in 1917, putting him in his late 20’s for the events of Captain America.
When Tony met him in Endgame that was 1970, which would have made Howard 53, which I used to think was old, but seems not too old now that it’s not much older than I am.
Tony was born in 1970, so exactly 40 in 2010. There was a reference in Endgame to the fact that Howard’s wife was pregnant, but also that there was something off to Tony on that timeline. (I’m not sure where they are going with that in the MCU, but comic readers may have some speculation.)
BTW, RDJ was born in 1965, so is 5 years older than Stark.
When he was killed in 1991, he would have been 74, which is old, but not old old.
It could. Howard could have had a kid in the 40’s who had Tony in 1970, but it’s tough to shoehorn in, and I don’t see it as necessary.
Thanks. That fills in some gaps in my understanding of the timeline. Howard being abnormally young for his level of success is ordinary comic-book extraordinariness, so I can accept that (Howard is obviously inspired by Howard Hughes - who was born in 1905).
Howard Stark was also arrogant and reckless, and thus would not be above juicing a little ‘Super Soldier Serum” on himself to maintain his virility, especially if it meant keeping Stark Industries viable until Tony was ready to take over. No intermediate Starks necessary, and it also explains how the character initially played by Dominic Cooper matured into John Slattery.
My impression is that 74 year olds born in 1917 look a lot older than a 74-year-old I meet today (born in 1948), but that may just be a faulty impression.
This provides a nice in-universe explanation. Thanks
That was my take as well. Plus, he was steadily dosed with Vita-rays, from both Steve’s transformation and the development of nitramene, so that could have easily kept him from aging normally.
Possibly in a couple specific books, but as an industry standard, no. Particularly at Marvel. IIRC, there’s a panel on the next page where Magento’s friends wonder how he’s still so young. (Answer: he had previously been turned into a baby, then re-aged back up to an adult in his prime) This was in 1981.
The super heroes themselves have a sliding time scale: The rule (I think explicit at DC, implied at Marvel) is that everything that’s happened in a particular book took place within the last ~ten years or so. Ties to specific historic events get retconned to be tied to other specific historic events: Tony Stark gets wounded in a vague Afghanistan analogue, instead of a vague Vietnam analogue. Captain America’s always a WWII veteran, but the date he gets found frozen in the ice keeps moving forward.
See Kim Newman’s story “Coastal City” about what it’s like to live in a sliding timeline:
That must have been 1939 or ’40. Then, there had been a framed photograph in Riordan’s office of him in France, posed by his biplane after his famous victory over Hans von Hellhund, the Demon Ace. Later, the picture showed him with the crew of the bomber Eudora Fae, after dropping the third atomic bomb on Samurai Satan’s private army. Now, his younger self, flashing Nixon Vs, was beside his experimental hypersonic Stud Fighter on a carrier off the coast of Vietnam
