Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics
Subject: Marvel Continuity
From: rickard@anasazi.com (Ronald J. Rickard Jr)
Date: 25 Jul 92 13:57:12 GMT
Organization: Anasazi Inc, Phoenix AZ USA


With the recent talk about Magneto and Professor X's ages, I was reminded of
reading somewhere that because of the 'unique' timeline that Marvel follows
in its universe, someday changes to origins of its characters backgrounds
will need to be changed.  I believe an example was used with Iron Man.  His
origin is most definitely tied into the confict between America and the 
Vietnamese, but as the years go by and Tony Starks age remains relatively
unchanged, the Vietnam Conflict will have to somehow be 'written' out of
Iron Man's origin.  It was mentioned that this could be done by deimphasizing
the location of Iron Man's origin when it is being retold.  This way, Iron
Man could be rewritten to have been created in the Gulf War or such.  

Character's such as Nick Fury, whose origin is so deeply rooted into the
'fact' that he fought in World War II, are alot harder to maintain.  This
is probably the reason for the formula that he takes to maintain his age.
I believe that the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards and Ben Grimm were at
one time suppose to have fought beside Nick Fury in World War II, but this
isn't brought up too much anymore, because it is more or less irrelevant
anymore. 

An interesting rework of the origin of the Fantastic Four themselves will
have to be made someday, because the main reason for thier being the 
Fantastic Four was Reed Richard's push to have the Americans be the first
country in to put people in space.  In Marvel history, the FF were the
first humans on the planet Earth in space.  This definitely dates the
FF in the real world to the 60s.  Right now, this is a believable feat,
but in 40 to 50 years, this won't be such a believable feat to the 
comic reader.  A possible solution to this problem would be to de-emphasize 
the idea that the FF were the first humans in space, and maybe make it
seem as if their flight was more out of some other sort of emergency.
But, the FF will not be able to claim to be the first humans in space!

Magneto's origin dates his character in much the same way, because he was
also a product of World War II, since his mutant powers manifested itself
in a concentration camp.  Someday, if the Marvel Universe wants to maintain
it's consistancy with its current readers, Magneto's origin will have to
be 'rewritten,' with Magneto's powers manifesting themselves at a different
time period, but under a similar stress situation.

Now a character like Spider-Man would not have this sort of problem.  His
origin was that he was bitten by a radioactive spider in chemistry class
could have happened in the 60s, which it did, as well as the 70s or any
other time the origin would like.

I hope everyone sees what I was trying to get at here.  It would be 
interesting to see what other people think of this and to give examples
of characters that are 'dated' by thier origin and to pose a possible 
solution to the problem.  It is interesting to note that Crisis on
Infinite Earths was a definitive way for DC to solve this problem for
its universe.  It was hard for a current comic reader to believe that 
Superman and his cast of characters existed during World War II and have
yet aged little themselves in the 40+ years since the war.

					Ron
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