Marvel's Broken Timeline

[SpikePrime]

After having revisited a large number of early Marvel comics (Spider-Man, Iron Man etc), I’ve noticed something kinda funny/odd about Marvel Comics;

Nowadays comic fans are used to the idea of the “sliding timescale” Marvel and DC use, where even if a specific date is used for a story, it’s retconned later to be only “a few years ago,” even if the event happened in the 90s and the story following up on it is made in 2016, the characters either don’t age, or maybe age a year or so in all that time.

The funny thing is, I noticed recently that wasn’t always the case. Spider-Man aged basically in real time from his first appearance, through his college years, and even a little after that. Peter had 3 years of high school from the age of 15, then graduated, attended college for years of real time, and seemed to keep ageing as he should until he just kinda stopped at age... maybe 25, 27 at a stretch?
Ditto Iron Man going from in his 20s to his 30s, Reed Richards and Sue Storm getting married and having kids who aged naturally in basically real time.

So here’s my two questions on this:
1. When and why do you reckon Marvel stopped letting their characters age naturally and move on in their lives?

2. Do you think things would overall be better now if Marvel HAD continued in the tradition of Stan Lee and other Marvel writers, allowing characters to grow as they once did?

[Frustration]

1) When characters were old enough out-of-world that their stories would change dramatically if they were that age in-world.

2) That would eventually end with the characters dying, I note.

[SpikePrime]

1) When characters were old enough out-of-world that their stories would change dramatically if they were that age in-world.

2) That would eventually end with the characters dying, I note.

The real heart of the question, though, is this: would that be better or worse for the mainline comics to just allow characters to age up appropriately, and indeed to stay dead rather than drag them out to comedic degrees so that death has absolutely no meaning anymore?

(we've STILL got characters running around being superheroes whose origins are rooted in the 1930s and 40s. Fine for Captain America who doesn't age naturally and got frozen for decades, not so much for characters like Doctor Mid-Nite, Hourman and Wildcat)

Just for example, how many times can Jene Grey and Prof X die only to return in increasingly ridiculous ways?

[Frustration]

Ultimately I suspect people value familiar characters who stay around unrealistically more than they'd value realistic characters and live and age and die and are replaced. But I could be wrong.

The problem might be the difference between what people say they want, what they believe they want, and what they actually desire.

[Thebestoftherest]

Your not wrong, I have to wonder do they want Peter to be a teenager or back in college again. Since they keep talking as if he is still a young man as oppose to a person with years of experience.

[stryke]

2. Do you think things would overall be better now if Marvel HAD continued in the tradition of Stan Lee and other Marvel writers, allowing characters to grow as they once did?

This reminds me of the 'Batman should kill the Joker' debate both of which to me just miss a fundamental point about comics to me. Namely that the current audience and the current readers are not the only one, and you have to bare in mind that there's always going to be both new writers and a new generation of readers. Sure you might have this amazing story of Joker getting shot in the head by some random bystander for his many, many crimes, or Peter Parker dealing with male pattern baldness, but once that's done sure you might have a great story but you've also rather arrogantly declared that no one else gets to play with your toys anymore. Which means that that later writer down the line who has a great Spider=Man adventure or Joker caper won't get to write it, and that new younger audience won't get to read it.

Some characters are just frankly too important to discard so easily, and the writers should realise that they're stewards too for whoever has them next. Many writers don't sadly and then you have unfortunate periods like when it took a decade to detoxify Tony Stark after the first Civil War. Not saying you can't tell those stories where you do break them but best to leave those for Elseworlds and the like.

[Frustration]

Characters cannot both grow and develop, and remain eternal archetypes. If we are always to be at war with Eurasia, we cannot actually be at war with Eurasia, because an actual war changes and someone might accidentally win.

[clearspira]

Magneto. WW2 Holocaust survivor. In 2022 he would have to be knocking on the door of 100 years old.

You cannot keep this guy aging. You could do some hocus pocus and make him immortal like Nick Fury, but that's about it.

And the problem is, I think that the X-Men would be greatly diminished without him as "the Holocaust" is the perfect example of what the X-Men are fighting for. This is what they are trying to prevent happening a second time. That moment in the first film where he flases that serial number on his arm is massively powerful. I think this is actually why X-Men First Class decided to go back in time, solely to protect Magneto from being too old.

I don't know how the MCU is going to get around this as any other massacre just isn't going to have the same audience ressonace. Personally I hope we do get a "past" X-Men as well as a "present" X-Men so we don't miss out on some great stories.

[stryke]

I'd also point to Punisher as Vietnam veteran and John Constantine who was both a 70's punk and then was made who he was by Thatcher's 80's. Without those elements the characters can suffer a lot when they become unmoored from their origins. Legends of Tomorrow just about got away with it with their use of the character, but even that had issues and his initial usage bringing back to his interracting with the super-types roots in the Nu52 was just all kinds of nope.

Honnestly I think it's just best not to call attention to it in the same way the Simpsons shouldn't have done the That 90s show episode as it directly confronts the problem in a way the fans are going to not be able to deal with. See the RealJims video on The Simpsons Timeline (the Present) for a good digging into how the mechanics of comicbook time can and can not work when applied to that show.

John Constantine works pretty well as someone in his 40-50's. I know some people don't rate them but I rather like a lot of Paul Jenkins run where he was the first to really showcase a decidedly middle aged Conjob. That though is where you had to stop though. Man I love Jamie Delano, to date easily the best writer Hellblazer has ever had, but his special four issues about a correctly aged pensioner Constantine in modern Britain was utterly dire.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Also Wolverine.