From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Character Aging (was Re: Marvel Continuity)
Followup-To: rec.arts.comics.misc
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 19:32:10 GMT

In article <Bs5yJA.8uK@news.cso.uiuc.edu> tgt33358@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Deus Imperator) writes:

>To my knowledge, the only comic to address this henious problem was The 
>Punisher, where, in the lettercol, they announced the Unofficial Official
>Marvel Stand on Character Aging.  To wit, they don't.  No reason to really
>change this.  After all, it's a Gerschpringinit comic book!  People come
>back from the dead almost as often as they die!  You sorta check reality at
>the door, if you know what I mean.  I am a regular reader of Green Arrow, the
>only book I read where the character "ages" along with the rest of us.  And
>the point is that in a very short while, he'll be too old to do the kind of 
>stuff it takes to be a superdude.  Sure it's great reading, this realism in
>the midst of the malestrom of fantasy, but when I plop down my money, I
>don't want to hear about someone falling out of prime, and I'm sure you
>don't either.  If you do, send me $1.25 every month, and I'll tell you 
>about myself, my family, hell, even the president!  And I draw pretty good
>too.

	I don't know-- I don't think that character aging would be
such an unmitigated disaster.  After all, given your basic superhero
resiliency, an average hero can be active (though at a reduced level)
up through age fifty or sixty-- even older if his powers give a
half-way decent justification for it (an elderly Kryptonian, even
reduced to a tenth his youthful vigor, is still more than a match for
just about anyone... especially since his old enemies have been aging
as well.)

	So, even at a 1:1 ratio, you could use a character for thirty
to sixty years without having to replace him (depending on whether he
starts as a mature adult or a teenager, and how old he can remain
active).  And it's silly to use a 1:1 ratio for most characters
anyway, given that you only have twelve issues per year, which
generally don't give a year's worth of events.  Make it 2 or 3 to 1,
then-- sixty to a hundred-twenty years of comics before you absolutely
have to retire a character, unless you started him old to begin with.
Add to that the fact that there are several character concepts which
have done well with the idea of "passing the torch" to a younger
generation.  Flash, for example.  While Green Lantern has the idea
built in-- Green Lantern is a job title, not a personal name.  If,
twenty real years from now, DC felt obligated to make someone else
take up the Green Arrow mantle after Ollie's death or retirement, it
probably wouldn't destroy the character concept.  It might well make
it deeper, by giving it some history to build on.

	Admittedly, a company has to look to the future-- Superman and
Batman are still going strong after half a century, and it would be a
shame to have to retire them.  ("a shame" meaning "a financial
disaster no one would be stupid enough to commit himself to", of
course.  :-) ) But this neglects the fact that DC, at least, has
demonstrated a propensity for shaking things up every few decades,
anyway.  A few decades ago they invented a new Flash, GL, etc., and a
bit after that retconned into existence the Golden Age versions of
continuous characters like Superman and Batman.  Six years ago they
reinvented their universe again.  If they committed themselves to
character aging, Superman (starting from his current arbitrary 29)
would leave his thirties in twenty years, and hit fifty in 2034.
(Assuming a 2:1 time ratio.  Stretch it more for 3:1.)  Does anyone
really believe that they're not going to do another serious retcon job
in all that time?  That they won't again want to try "scraping the
barnacles" from their overcomplicated universe?  If anything, they're
accreting such baggage more quickly now than they did in the
pre-Crisis era (in part, to be fair, because continuity has become
more of an obsession, in part because of the divergent aging rates
changing the relationships between characters).

	If and when they do their Big World-Shaking Change (whatever
it is-- it may be integrating with the Marvel universe after a
financial disaster causes it to fold and Marvel gets the characters
cheap, though I shudder to imagine it.  A lot can happen in multiple
decades, though--) they can turn the clock back on the characters they
refuse to lose to retirement and aging.  After all, they're virtually
guaranteed to make major changes of some sort, _sometime_ in the next
four decades.  Hence, I don't think that aging the characters would be
all that difficult or ultimately destructive, while it would add
immeasurably to the verisimilitude of a comic book universe.  Of
course, I happen to like the books where it's been done (Flash, GL,
JSA, etc.) more than I like the idea of static, unchanging characters.
And disparate aging rates means continuous retcons.  (One of these
days, Superman is going to be younger than the New Titans.  Infinity,
Inc. is either forty-something or are very much the children of the
JSA's old age-- there aren't many people under thirty who are the
children of WWII veterans.  And so on.  Which means each retelling of
a story will have to change the names of the players, IMHO defeating
the purpose of having such a unitary universe in the first place.)

Mike
-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Workers of the world, forgive me.
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 You had more to lose than I thought."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Karl Marx (1990) as imagined by
mss2@usite-next.uchicago.edu     Jim Koncz (konc@midway.uchicago.edu)