Active Topics | Member List | Search | Help | Register | Login
The John Byrne Forum MOBILE
Byrne Robotics | The John Byrne Forum Page of 5 Next >>
Topic: Comic world or real world... what time is it? Post Reply | Post New Topic
Author
Message
Eric Sofer
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 31 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 4789
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 9:36am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

A lot of recent threads have involved the topic of comic book reality, and how much real world events and characters have to appear in them. So let's discuss it.

Several topics come to mind...
REAL WORLD TIME: Robin and the Teen Titans grew up. Spider-Man graduated high school and went to college. Reed and Sue Richards had a baby, who became a little boy, who became a young man. How well does this work? And how does it foul up existing characters? The only times I can think of this being handled realistically are Elseworlds/What If/imaginary stories. Mr. Byrne's excellent Generations books are the perfect example. Kurt Busiek's "Secret Identity" was also a superb mini series that spoke to this. But in the "real" comic world, you can't have it both ways. If characters age... ALL characters have to age. If Robin is an adult, then Batman has to be in his 40s. 

Marv Wolfman once felt the need to deal with this in Fantastic Four by de-aging them after they were subjected to a Kree aging ray... and making them young again. FF #214.

Roy Thomas did the same in All-Star Squadron annual #3. All the classic Golden Age JSA heroes (and, coincidentally, their significant friends, mates, etc.) were subjected to an explosion of magic that mysteriously kept them dynamic and vibrant for decades.

Is this necessary? Or can we leave them alone, stories occurring without characters aging?

REAL WORLD EVENTS: Let's allow that super heroes stay the same age and just kinda slide through time, not aging as time passes. How involved should they be with real world people and events? Should the Fantastic Four be involved with Mayor Ed Koch, or Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan? Should Captain America and the Falcon be involved with a White House scandal that all but identified the sitting president? Superman had a couple of stories with President Kennedy, and one wonders why JFK didn't ask for his help with the Russians, or at least with the goal of getting a space ship on the moon. And where was Green Lantern at the time of Apollo 1?

If the real world time and events intrude on super heroes, then it is inconceivable that they would not react. The Justice League wouldn't have sat by while 52 Americans were held hostage for over a year. It's unlikely that the Avengers would have sat by when a blackout took down a lot of the Eastern seaboard (inlands at least as far as Ohio.)

And the most egregious of these (to me, at least) was the result of 9/11. Marvel felt it necessary to PUT THEIR CHARACTERS INTO THIS STORY. Does anyone remember Amazing Spider-Man 36 (or 477)? It shows (among other thinigs) Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers helping out cleaning up the wreckage of the towers. It also shows a group of villains watching this from a distance. Dr. Doom is so touched that a tear escapes his mask.

First, why were they so involved in the aftermath, but had NOTHING to do with the actual event? It didn't all happen instantly, and the Avengers are BASED IN NEW YORK. Second, Doom was emotionally moved... but not enough to use his time machine to go back and stop it? It was literally hours after the event had occurred... changing something that recently couldn't affect very much in the present.

Very obviously, I feel that it's senseless to force real time into comics. I don't think the stories need to be relevant... I don't want to see the Mole Man in VR Google goggles, any more than I wanted a super hero based on disco. What's everyone else's take?
Back to Top profile | search
 
Robbie Parry
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 17 June 2007
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 12186
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 10:03am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Lots to discuss, eh? :)

 Eric Sofer wrote:
Marv Wolfman once felt the need to deal with this in Fantastic Four by de-aging them after they were subjected to a Kree aging ray... and making them young again. FF #214.

The problem with that is, it can easily explain away the likes of the FF and Nick Fury, but what about civilians?

A contrived reason could be made (e.g. cosmic rays from space) de-aging Spider-Man, but it's unlikely the rays would also have affected Jameson, Robbie Robertson, a teacher at Parker's university, etc. 

 Eric Sofer wrote:
How involved should they be with real world people and events?

Topical references are fine as long as people "play the game" and suspend disbelief.

There have to be topical references. They shouldn't be the story, but it makes sense for Spider-Man or the FF to occasionally meet a president or mention someone like Bill Gates. 

Play the game, I say. Like James Bond fans do. I seriously doubt (but could be wrong) that there are dozens of 007 fans asking how he could have been active in the Cold War and still be doing missions in the modern day.
Back to Top profile | search
 
John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 10:17am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

The fanboy invasion! In the Silver Age I read comics for about a decade, and nobody aged a day. Then I came back, circa 1970 to find Johnny Storm was in his twenties, the "Teen" Titans had grown up, Robin had gone off to college, etc, etc.

To make matters worse, some of the more reasonable fans-turned-pro tried to address the "problem" in a way that might satisfy the more anal fanboys. Len Wein suggested that it had been, by 1976 or so, seven years since the FF went up in their rocket. And it would always be seven years. Didn't take too long before the minibrains were chanting "If it was seven years then, it must be ten years now!"

And don't think some logic could be impressed upon these people by pointing to things like THE SIMPSONS.* "That's a cartoon! It's not REALISTIC!"

Sure, because a teenager who gains the abilities of a spider from a radioactive bite is SO much more realistic than Homer and Marge, et al.

------------

* Even THE SIMPSONS succumbed. When people complained that "Maggie should be talking by now," she spoke.

Back to Top profile | search
 
Petter Myhr Ness
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 02 July 2009
Location: Norway
Posts: 3813
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 10:56am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Once they started aging characters, they opened a can of worms. Dick Grayson must be closer to Bruce Wayne in age than he ever was. Wally West grew up to be The Flash, and now he's YOUNGER again. My head is spinning. 





 
Back to Top profile | search
 
Dave Phelps
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4176
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 11:12am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Juxtaposition between the real world and the comic world can get a little awkward sometimes. In Avengers, Kurt Busiek did a story where Kang slaughtered the majority of the population of Washington DC. That was his last story and then Geoff Johns took over. His first issue had Washington DC up and running again in no time flat. Meanwhile Sam Wilson is part of the team that's still deciding what to do about the World Trade Center. Or to use that Spider-Man story as an example, IIRC Juggernaut was one of the villains disturbed by what had happened. Of course, a few years earlier there was an X-Force story where he himself had done some severe damage to at least one of the towers...

And it's not just events - it tends to annoy me when writers would have characters talk about how "we used to just have to deal with 'death rays' and now everyone has guns." If there actually were handheld weapons capability of wiping a building from existance with one shot in real life, I know what I'D be more scared of...

As for the passage of time, when you take a soap opera approach to storytelling (as opposed to a "playing with the elements" approach, ala classic Archie, Simpsons, the Ducks, etc.), eventually the "weight of stories past" kind of pushes you along the time stream whether you mean it to or not, especially with the teen-aged characters. My preference is to just let what happens happens and don't think about it too much. Treat holidays as you would any other "topical reference".

Or to put in another way...

 Eric Sofer wrote:
But in the "real" comic world, you can't have it both ways.


Why not? That's pretty much what they've been doing for decades.


 QUOTE:
Roy Thomas did the same in All-Star Squadron annual #3. All the classic Golden Age JSA heroes (and, coincidentally, their significant friends, mates, etc.) were subjected to an explosion of magic that mysteriously kept them dynamic and vibrant for decades.


That's a weird one. For better or worse, the JSA had been locked to WW2. So if you're going to have their kids and proteges active in the present day, who will be "20 something" for the next few decades, the math's going to get weird quick. Calculating back from the month DC did their New 52 reboot, I think Shiera Hall would have been 66 when her son Hector was born...

The FF one was silly, though.
Back to Top profile | search
 
Rick Whiting
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 22 April 2004
Posts: 2181
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 12:27pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

These characters shouldn't age. Any past stories should be referenced to have happened "a while ago". Any fans or pros who are obsessed about the passage of time in both the MU and DCU should stop reading Marvel and DC superhero titles and/or stop writing,drawing,and editing them.
Back to Top profile | search
 
Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4407
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

I think you have to come to things ultimately from a Doctor Who fan's direction of "the set walls might be wobbly, the alien might be painted bubblewrap, but aside from that..."

I'm not sure if people here remember a comic strip called Gasoline Alley where real time ruled. Eventually it was around long enough that a baby left on a doorstep became a senior citizen. It's been proven over time that a comic strip like Hi And Lois or The Family Circus is the more valuable 'property' to the companies however. Mess with it at your peril I guess. I'm not going to ask things like where Huey, Dewey and the other guy came from, so it's an illusion of change or progress up to a point that we can have from most mainstream 'property' characters.

Then there's "In Captain America #127 character X told character Z about character Y, so what you just did in #361 is 'impossible', where's my coveted 'no prize'?" Originally the fans were supposed to supply an 'out' for Marvel but that kind of got lost somewhere. So Doctor Who fans became much better at explaining away bubblewrap I think.
Back to Top profile | search | www
 
Brian O'Neill
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 13 November 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 1964
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Popeye fans are still trying to work out his nephews, Peepeye, Pipeye, Poopeye, and Pupeye...
Back to Top profile | search
 
Adam Schulman
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 22 July 2017
Posts: 1717
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

In the early 1970s, Marvel writers like Roy Thomas and Steve Englehart wrote stories which referenced the FF gaining their powers in 1961. They treated "Marvel time" as "real time."

It made no sense, because if Peter Parker "really" became Spider-Man in 1962, then by 1974 he should've been 27. But he wasn't being written as such. He was 21, maybe. 

Now for all I know Thomas and Englehart and others thought "well, superheroes are on their way out anyway, the next dominant genre will be something else, that's why Marvel's publishing Conan the Barbarian and Tomb of Dracula and so on."

OK, fine. Still made no sense, though. And for writers to still reference Englehart's "Secret Empire" story or the O'Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories years later...I'm sorry, those stories make no sense outside of the context of the early '70s. Just move on.

As for JSA and Infinity Inc. -- this only became a problem when Earth-Two was erased. Thomas clearly wanted all Earth-Two characters to live and die in real time. After Crisis (lord, I hate mentioning that name yet again) this was no longer possible. 

Some Infinity Inc. characters have powers that probably allow them to never age more than they want to age (Jade, Obsidian, probably Atom-Smasher). If or when they're brought back everyone's going to have to forget that they're supposed to be 20-somethings. 

The Amazing Spider-Man issue about "9/11" was supposed be purely symbolic. Not canonical. That seemed clear to me. Doesn't mean it was well-written, though. 

In any case, I wish comics writers would stop trying to specify when some fictional event took place. Stop saying "ten years ago" or whatever. Just say "years ago." I'll even accept "many" or "several" or "a few." 

(BTW, unless things have changed, it's canonical that Dick Grayson became Robin when Bruce Wayne was 27 and Dick was 12. Dick became Nightwing when he was 18 or 19, so at that time Bruce was 33-34. One can do the math from there.)
Back to Top profile | search
 
John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 7:50pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

For the first few of years of "the Marvel Age" time was more or less real. Then the brakes were applied.

Unfortunately, too many writers (and fans) missed that last part.

Back to Top profile | search
 
Eric Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 27 October 2013
Location: United States
Posts: 2280
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

I really think it would be helpful to separate DC and Marvel here.  I think time should pass at Marvel, while the DC characters should be more timeless.

Right from the beginning, Marvel had that soap opera aspect of time passing and life events happening that affected the characters.  Peter Parker graduated from high school and entered college.  I know a lot of people here would prefer he was still in high school, but I think that would have grown old fairly early on.  My favorite stories took place during the college years.  Peter moved out from his aunt's, was a young man making his way in the city, Flash Thompson went to war, romance with Gwen Stacy had more weight, etc.

At DC, on the other hand, the best stories had Superman or Batman (and others) at their iconic best--timeless.  At DC, time passing was usually intrusive.

Ironically, Marvel often goes the "timeless" route, while DC has gone the other way with characters growing older, getting married, having children (really, both Superman and Batman have pre-teen sons?), being replaced in their super-identities, etc.  "Brand New Day" had "the Devil" erase Peter and Mary Jane's marriage (and the issues I read then or after were very coy about how old Peter was now or how long he'd been Spider-Man) when an immature young couple's divorce would have done the job just fine.  And, of course, CRISIS carried with it all the baggage of characters aging and opened the floodgates of "legacy heroes"--Dick Grayson and Wally West couldn't be teenagers anymore, making their mentors (dead or alive) older still.

I'm fine with ten years or more passing since Marvel began.  Peter Parker was 15 when he became Spider-Man; he could easily still be considered a young man at 25 or 26 (I know some 30 year-olds who are still very youthful).  I really wish Franklin was a teenager by now though.  It would not help my enjoyment of the Fantastic Four if Reed and Sue were still arguing about their dating relationship.  There have been "future flashes" of Captain America married to Sharon Carter, with two sons--I would love to see the beginnings of that at least.  Steve was never much of a ladies man anyhow, and there are some great storylines being missed because Steve is being kept "young and single."  Marvel is stagnant because their icons are frozen in amber, so the writers keep replacing them.

Over at DC, however, I wouldn't mind at all if things were reset to the iconic figures we all think of.  Not another reboot, but if formats were changed and SUPERMAN and BATMAN and others went the magazine route (or some other format), I would be fine if Robin was suddenly 16 again.  (We never really got to explore his training years.  Or Supergirl's teen years either.)  We get new starts every time a TV show or movie franchise starts.  I think a new format might be the only way to break DC of their revolving reboots/fix-its.  I loved Robin becoming Nightwing, but that was tied to loving Wolfman and Perez's NEW TEEN TITANS and that boat was scuttled long ago.




Edited by Eric Jansen on 17 February 2018 at 8:07pm
Back to Top profile | search
 
John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132129
Posted: 17 February 2018 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

Soap opera characters are played by actors who age.
Back to Top profile | search
 

Page of 5 Next >>
  Post Reply | Post New Topic |

Forum Jump

 Active Topics | Member List | Search | Help | Register | Login

You are currently viewing the MOBILE version of the site.
CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FULL SITE