EDITORIAL: Age the Heroes?

We could have a mini-series showcasing hat these heroes could be when they age, but it should never happen in a mainstream comic. It's a cool idea, but should never be permanent.

@CorndogBurglar

Whoa.. I never did the Kitty Pride test of time. Good test. that would be one f-ed up year. lol

But I would love, like ComicCow suggested to see a cool miniseries.... but then.. everyone, everywhere, has miniseries ideas.

@ Crowpirate

Yeah man, there was an article online that i read a while back that had every single Marvel story that all happened while Kitty was 13. It was very interesting.

You would be staggered at how many stories all happened in that time.

@ crowpirate

Dude, when Batman punched Guy Gardner, that was one of the greatest moments in comics history as fa as I'm concerned. So classic.

I hate Guy though...

Awesome editorial! You are absolutely right! Time should pass in the comics. And then, every decade or so, start the whole thing over again. That'll keep the stories and the characters fresh. And every time they start a new "Universe", it can be a different volume. I mean look at how many times DC and Marvel have rebooted or relaunched their books anyway! At least this way they can do it in a way that makes sense. And if a few books are selling well, then keep those volumes or stories going even after a new one has launched. Each volume can be part of the "multi-verse".

I think Comics would be SO much better! Imagine it. Characters can REALLY die in one volume(universe) and instead of having to do some stupid plot, just relaunch the character with the new volume. Events can have truly LASTING EFFECTS. Characters can CHANGE over time. New heroes can come up as the classics age. Our beloved heroes can have endings to their stories...

@MoonDoggyX

One of the things I just hated about the Mary Jane ending was.. They killed Gwen... and he finally found love. So instead of having him mature, and seeing Pete gain experience, get older, wiser, cooler, and be alone without ANY parent... like "I" have to do.. and so many others...

they kill his maturity and his love... make him single again just to save his aunt who should be dead by now anyways.

I am not trying to say let's kill her off. But, between her and the love of my life.. it's time to go, and be with Uncle Ben. he's been waiting for you!!

@CrowPirate1 - Exactly! Why do we need 2-4 Spidey, Bats or Supes, etc comics with the characters at the same age. It be easier to have a "Volume 2" running with a mature, married parker, and then start "Volume 3" with a young spidey again...? Best of both worlds!

@ralfinader - "Marvel Time" would be awesome, if it were consistent. As it is now, its just Marvel's excuse to write however is convenient for them at the time. Did you read the bottom of the article with all of the problems that their sliding timescale represents...?

And those comics are awesome! Kingdom Come is still my favorite book EVER!

This was my biggest issue before I saw TASM (didn't care when I saw it, but when the subject is on the table and ready for discussion...)...

Peter has no future. In the comics, he's moved up to teaching classes, unless they de-aged him when I stopped reading. Now he's back in high school in TASM, supposedly learning important life lessons on responsibility and selflessness. He's going to be selling pictures of himself to the Daily Bugle like some pencil-thin girl who likes to take pictures of herself half-naked and post them on Facebook every day/week. Because of him, Gwen is going to get killed. Flash is going to get beaten up or killed dressing up like Spider-man.

And when that gets tired, he'll be rebooted back to the 11th grade.

John Byrne once said that the Marvel Universe aged one year for every seven to ten in reality. This allowed for Franklin Richards to be born and eventually join Power Pack around age five or six. Kitty Pryde has aged somewhere between four and six years. And Peter Parker has aged four to five--moving him from high school to college/grad school.

That said, it is not in anyone's best interest to have the ongoing universe(s) transpire in real time. They tried it with the New Universe in the 1980's. The appeal wasn't there. More importantly, as stated above, some heroes would have to die or--in the very least--watch his relatives and friends age and die naturally.

You would incur a variety of problems. The solution would be obvious: every fifteen to twenty, they would re-start the universe. How tired would that become? That answer is obvious as we ponder Marvel NOW! and DC's New 52.

...and comics NEEDS the laws pf physics! It is the best solution to over-powered characters instead of selectively 'nerfing' characters like supes and thor depending on the needs of the story...

That was the one thing superman returns actually got right. God-like superman stopping a crashing plane, boring! In the comics he couls literally do it with one hand behind his back. But superman trying to stop a falling 747 without ripping it apart or tearing through it, that's a lot more interesting...

Actually Spider-Man would be 65 if he aged in real time (He became Spider-Man at the age of 15 in the comics, and he's celebrating his 50th anniversary this year).

The fact is, no matter how hard comic book companies try, they can never make new characters who are as iconic as the older, classic characters. I think the most memorable character to have been created in comics recently is probably Deadpool (for Marvel) or Bane (for DC), and they're both about 20 years old. Even those characters are no where near as well known as classic heroes, Deadpool is more of a cult-classic character, while Bane is well known to Batman fans but not the general public. The fact is, no one is ever going to create a new superhero who is as highly regarded as Spider-Man, or Superman, or Batman, or any other classic hero from the Silver Age of comics (Bats, Supes, and Captain America are the most successful and well known Golden Age heroes, the others are only known to comic fans, silver age heroes are better known to the public).

That's also why so many characters are brought back to life after they die in comics - because they're so classic and beloved.

Plus hasn't it been established that it's not a true sliding time scale? That the characters do age, but incredibly slowly? Like, 50 years ago in real world time was 10 years ago in comic book time?

If you think about it, each story arc lasts multiple issues, which are released once per month. But those stories generally don't span months in the comics, they're usually set across a time span of a few days, or a couple of weeks. We aren't experiencing months of comic book stories each month. We might be experiencing a day, or even a couple of hours, per issue.

So here's an example. If The Amazing Spider-Man comics are now at issue 689, and we say, for arguement's sake, that each issue spans one day. That means 689 days of adventures. Then we assume that Spider-Man does have quite a bit of time off between adventures, say two or three weeks? So in simple maths, we double the number of days (the number of days being equal to the number of issues) - 689 doubled is 1378 days. That means it could be written that the 50 year run of The Amazing Spider-Man comics made up less than 4 years in the comic world. As it is, Marvel have actually sped up the amount of time the comic stories span to almost 10 years instead of under 4.

the problem with doing comics in volums is the origins. i have no desire to re-read origin storys like ground hog day. they could change origins but for many characters thats half of their appeal. i mean look at how split opinioins are over the amazing spidermans origin changes, and they arent even huge, xmen first class type changes. im all for the old man logan storys from time to time. days of futures past, those sorts of things. what writers should be aware of is the life altering decisions in a characters life. for example will peter ever marry gwen? that should have been decided 15 years ago, sort of like a frame work or character time(life?) line. have bench mark events thought out well in advance (of course creativity would allow for flexability). my point being that these events alter a character, for better or worse or whatever, but they are still important and should be planned/accounted for. not written into a character in one arc that another writer will have to deal with 2 years later. i like the decelerated aging.