Will Marvel`s fear of change and age eventually destroy them?

[BrianWilly]

Right, what he said.

 

[CaptainCanada]

If you were looking at something similar to superhero comics, look at Archie and its various spinoffs; nothing ever changes there, and they still sell.

As to the original post, the idea that not changing their iconic characters will somehow undo them, no; the reason the characters tend to keep to a certain core characterization is because they're most popular that way. The idea that more readers would be attracted if we were reading about the adventures of Spider-Man's daughter in the 616 title is rather unlikely; people want Spider-Man. You can tell all kinds of great stories within this framework, provide kinds of closure (the closure of a writer finishing an epic run, for example).

 

[Franklin Richards]

Why is it that whenever the FF's lineup changes they eventually go back to the original 4?

 

[BrianWilly]

As to the original post, the idea that not changing their iconic characters will somehow undo them, no; the reason the characters tend to keep to a certain core characterization is because they're most popular that way. The idea that more readers would be attracted if we were reading about the adventures of Spider-Man's daughter in the 616 title is rather unlikely; people want Spider-Man. You can tell all kinds of great stories within this framework, provide kinds of closure (the closure of a writer finishing an epic run, for example).

Twenty years ago, the idea that more readers would be attracted if they were reading about the adventures of Barry Allen's nephew was rather unlikely. Today, it's a fact. There's no iron-clad formula for what people will like.

There's a lot of great stories to be told and a lot of closure to be had with a "static quo," I agree. And at the same time, a lot of great stories will be regressed and closure undone. Notice that I don't say "might be" regressed and "could be" undone; the fact is that they will be. How many times has Peter Parker "reached an understanding" with formerly one-dimensional characters like Aunt May or with Jonah Jameson in touching and fantastically-written story arcs? Off the top of my head I can think of more than two for each character. How many of those developments are still relevant today? None. In a static quo, all developments are doomed to be invalidated or glossed over someday; characters who have grown past their roots or changed for the better are doomed to revert to comic personas that they should have outgrown years ago.

So why should we care about a story today if all it's going to be is retcon tomorrow?

 

[Varient]

And even then, guess what? Calvin and Hobbes ENDED. Their story has capped off, given a resolution and closure, and it's all the better for it. If the strip were still limping on today under a different artist and writer, I imagine you'd be singing a different tune. Or maybe you wouldn't be, I dunno.

Pardon Brian.

How did Calvin and Hobbs End anyway? I was out on an Alaskan Patrol,... Came back and it was Gone.

 

[Franklin Richards]

Can you still enjoy a baseball game knowing that the teams you are watching won't make it to the playoffs?

 

[BrianWilly]

Pardon Brian.

How did Calvin and Hobbs End anyway? I was out on an Alaskan Patrol,... Came back and it was Gone.

Voila

 

[Blader5489]

Voila

That's neither resolution nor closure.

I actually like one of the fake C&H endings better.

 

[Varient]

Voila

Thank you.
(Meh,... "Let's Go Exploring")

 

[Aristotle]

Semantics. The consequence of slowing age to a standstill in any comic universe always results in regressions of character, whether it's highlighted by a big event or not. X-Men. Spider-Man. The Avengers. Fantastic Four. The entire DC universe, more than once. I challenge you to find one single exception, wherein a status quo has not once been shifted back to the way it was years and years ago and character progress thrown out the window in order to keep these characters relatable or whatever excuse they use this week.

I don't think you're catching my argument correctly. I'm not saying these characters never regressed. I'm just saying it's clearly not an inherent necessity to the style. Just because some writers and editors are lazy, that doesn't mean every writer and editor is. You'd see just as much regression and laziness in real-time (Ultimate X-Men, Hellblazer, to name a couple) as you do in slowtime. It's the writers and the editors, not some built-in evil of the system. ****, 90% of the anime and manga I've been tortured with recycles the same five plots over and over again.

You're mistaking change with growth. Batman and Superman have changed a lot in their history, but grown much less. Batman changing from camp to dark, or then from dark to sci-fi, is not organic growth and development of story. All it is is a shift in genre or style. Batman himself is the same stunted 30-year old that he was since the 1940s. Sometimes writers will find new things for him to do or explore new places to take this stunted 30-year old, which is why those stories can still be good, but what's the difference between reading about Bruce Wayne's adventures ten years ago versus reading about his adventure's now? Nothing. Only some status quo changes that are eventually placed back to the way they originally were (Commissioner Gordon's "retirement," for instance), and some cast member shifts that get thrown out whenever the writers feel like they aren't "classic" enough (Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Azrael, the list goes on and on).

Now you're playing at semantics. From an in-universe perspective, the switching of genres and styles is definitely character development. Guys like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison have made careers on playing with that idea.

Supergirl hasn't even been able to stay same person for more than a decade, much less grow as a consistent character.

PAD's Supergirl was one of the best and most naturally developed characters of the 1990s. And post-COIE Kara Zor-El has progressed from a Paris Hilton idiot to a whiny insufferable Mary Sue to a mature young adult in just a couple of years.

Jimmy Olsen? Are you kidding? He's the classic prototype of a kid that the writers won't let grow up, and any growth is immediately undone so that he's constantly a fumbling kid sidekick.

You can't claim that a character never grows, and then talk about growth being reversed. Yes, his growth has been reversed all too often, but he has been a very vital and interesting character at several points in his post-COIE life.

The JLA? Are you talking about the same JLA that you yourself have complained has been letting go of the new and letting all the old back in?

Of course I am. I'm also talking about the JLA that has gone from the Justice League of America, to three or four different "satellite" leagues, to a big-guns League, to the Meltzer League.

And Nightwing, Robin, Teen Titans, and the JSA are like the prime examples of characters who have aged and grown and gotten all the better for it through the years, so that's really proving my point instead of yours. Or have you forgotten that half the JSA are made up of characters who were once young but are now sixty-years old?

Of course I haven't forgotten that. My entire point is that characters can age and develop in slowtime. They don't have to do it in real-time.

Your definition of slow time is that heroes would just be stuck in indeterminate teens or twenties or thirties forever, depending on the character, all the while mainting the illusion of forward-moving time.

I'm not sure where you're reading that. I'm as pissed as anyone that Spider-Man's an impotent little child again, after what should be about ten years comic-time of living, and I don't even like the character, because of what that regression represents. My definition of slowtime, literally, was "four years real-time to one year comic-time." Says nothing about indeterminate teens or twenties or thirties forever.

If we're in agreement that slowtime is acceptable as long as it's steady, I'm not sure what the beef is. DC has not actually hit the reset button since COIE. Batman's still been active for probably 15 or 16 years now, for example. Sure, they've hit the retcon button a hell of a lot, but time hasn't reset in the least. Marvel's never hit the reset button, as far as I know. So what's the problem?

Apples and oranges.

If C&H and superhero comics are apples and oranges, then manga and superhero comics are apples and thermometers. C&H is much more comparable to superhero comics than manga is.

And as much as I love Calvin and Hobbes, I wouldn't tout that strip as much of an evolving story at all.

The story evolved more imperceptibly than you might like to see, but the characters at the end of the run, compared to the same characters at the beginning of the run, are like night and day. Calvin's become almost more of a philosophical, existential, and socio-politically thoughtful avatar than a six-year-old. Hobbes is no longer simply a foil to Calvin, but a strong commentator in his own right. Dad has become a rounded, troubled, but optimistic ex-hippie modeled somewhat after Watterson's own father and Watterson himself. Mom is no longer the perpetually angry antagonist of the early strips and has become a warm, maternal, nurturing figure. Susie and Calvin are practically admitting their romantic feelings for one another. Miss Wormwood is almost a sympathetic figure. About the only characters to not progress at all are Mr. Bun and Moe. Even the stories themselves mature and evolve, as whimsical tales about catching a stuffed tiger by laying a trap with tuna sandwiches give way to stories about long-lost family members, violations of home and hearth, family strife, and deep philosophical and political questions.

All without aging anyone a day.

Calvin and Hobbes ENDED.

So did Aquaman. Doesn't mean anything.

Their story has capped off, given a resolution and closure, and it's all the better for it.

Resolution? Closure? Exactly which recurring plotlines were resolved or closed in any way?

If the strip were still limping on today under a different artist and writer, I imagine you'd be singing a different tune.

Of course I would be. I'm as big of an advocate for creator control and creators' rights as anyone. I don't think it makes sense anymore for characters that have been part of the company stables for decades, or for characters created in the last 20 years under much more clearly defined work-for-hire terms, but I think in general, creators' rights are very important. I would have killed Watterson himself if he would have sold out on a career of fighting the syndicates and the corporate shilling and excessive mass marketing and licensing that Jim Davis championed with Garfield, by letting someone else write and/or draw the strip. And I'd never want Watterson to continue longer than he felt he could.

But he didn't quit cartooning because he had no more stories to tell. He quit because he was tired of defending his creation from syndicate vultures and licensing hacks.

 

[BrianWilly]

I don't think you're catching my argument correctly. I'm not saying these characters never regressed. I'm just saying it's clearly not an inherent necessity to the style. Just because some writers and editors are lazy, that doesn't mean every writer and editor is. You'd see just as much regression and laziness in real-time (Ultimate X-Men, Hellblazer, to name a couple) as you do in slowtime. It's the writers and the editors, not some built-in evil of the system. ****, 90% of the anime and manga I've been tortured with recycles the same five plots over and over again.

I'm saying that it absolutely is an inherent necessity to the style. If your entire narrative direction is for your characters to repeat one period of his or her adult lives over and over again for as long as it makes you money then, well, guess what? You're going to end up with stories that repeat the same exact period of their adult lives over and over again! Dude, there are no exceptions to this. Even if you get a dogged writer who absolutely bites the bullet and implements true, active progression in a character's life, the unfortunate fact is that this writer is not going to be around forever and the next writer on the character is free to take away whatever growths he wants. Look what happened to Morrison's X-Men run, to JMS' Spider-Man stories, to Puckett/Dixon's Batgirl. For all the excitement and progress they brought to these worlds, they may as well have never happened.

I'm not saying that turning Batman from thirty-five to forty is the magic solution to characters being regressed all the time. What I'm saying is that a massive, irrefutable aspect of this equation is age. The presence of a stagnant age is the easiest tool for which to implement a stagnant status quo. It practically gives the creators a free pass in saying "Well, since Spider-Man has been twentysomething all this time anyway, nothing really changes if we just go back to a status quo from his twenties..." and that has been their defining excuse ever since. Everything still happened the way it did! Honest! But what if Spider-Man were definitively, inarguably thirty at the time of OMD? It probably wouldn't have been impossible for Quesada to implement his devil magic regardless, but they certainly couldn't justify a thirty-year old living the status quo of a twenty-five year-old man. That's the thing; every little bit that helps prevent the arbitrary regression of a character is pivotal, and the aging of a character beyond a prior status quo is not just the first step in doing so, it's a vital step. A character that doesn't age and age visibly will always give a writer an excuse to do things all over again.

Manga doesn't work in real time, either. The difference is that all manga has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not beginning, middle, more middle, repeat middle, beginning again, middle, beginning, middle...etc. And it all has only one author to regulate the course and direction of a story, no backsies, no takebacks, what happens is what happens.

Incidentally...other than the Ultimates -- which has its own problems -- the Ultimate universe is actually pretty solidly mired in slow-time. Bendis has gone on record as saying, for instance, that Peter will never actually graduate high school in USM. And Ultimate X-Men is pretty much completely indistinguishable nowadays from any other alternate universe X-series stuck repeating its glory days.

Now you're playing at semantics. From an in-universe perspective, the switching of genres and styles is definitely character development. Guys like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison have made careers on playing with that idea.

Then we're simply talking about two completely different things. I don't see "Next year we're going to make Batman fight cowboys and be more campy" as character development. I see "Next year Batman's going to become less paranoid and more trusting of his old relationships because of events that happened to him this year" as character development. There is a profound difference. You're talking about style, not characterization.

PAD's Supergirl was one of the best and most naturally developed characters of the 1990s. And post-COIE Kara Zor-El has progressed from a Paris Hilton idiot to a whiny insufferable Mary Sue to a mature young adult in just a couple of years.

I love PAD's Supergirl more than anyone, but the time that she was around wasn't even a fraction of a microcosm of what a longterm comic character would be. If she had twenty or, hell, even ten years of solid continuity with solid character development all that way, well, then we can talk. As it stands she had barely seven years of stories and then became yet another character that DC tossed aside in favor of using something from the past instead of continuing to evolve this solid character. Regression.

Case in point, the current Kara Zor-El herself is a reboot of a silver age character. She is a prime example of someone taking a look at something from long ago and saying, hey, let's try that again. And the current incarnation has had less even time around than Linda has. Again, if she's around in nine or ten years without suffering the same character regression that's occurred with everyone else in that sort of timeframe -- from Tim Drake to Kyle Rayner to Connor Hawke -- then we can talk. Hell, even as it currently stands, Kara has already had so many different characterizations and interpretations from different writers that you'd barely know which one is supposed to be her real canon personality.

You can't claim that a character never grows, and then talk about growth being reversed. Yes, his growth has been reversed all too often, but he has been a very vital and interesting character at several points in his post-COIE life.

No, that is my entire point. You cannot claim that a character has had any growth whatsoever when the writers constantly negate that growth. Making Jimmy into an effective and relatable reporter one year and then in the next claiming that he's just a ditzy coffee boy again is not growth. Current Jimmy is absolutely no different from Jimmy ten years ago. Again, an undeniable aspect of this is age. Jimmy in his late twenties would be a completely different character than Jimmy in his early twenties, which is why every writer intent on keeping that perpetual early twenties manchild makes it a pretty blatant point to never, ever, ever mention his age. In my opinion, all that does is draw more attention to his regressions, instead of less.

Of course I am. I'm also talking about the JLA that has gone from the Justice League of America, to three or four different "satellite" leagues, to a big-guns League, to the Meltzer League.

Same exact thing here. If it can't keep the growth that it has accumulated, then functionally it's no different from never growing at all in the first place. I actually like Meltzer's JLA lineup, but the amount of time that it spent sucking ferociously at the dick of silver age nostalgia merely held it back from being the team that it could have been, and we all know this.

I'm not sure where you're reading that. I'm as pissed as anyone that Spider-Man's an impotent little child again, after what should be about ten years comic-time of living, and I don't even like the character, because of what that regression represents. My definition of slowtime, literally, was "four years real-time to one year comic-time." Says nothing about indeterminate teens or twenties or thirties forever.

If we're in agreement that slowtime is acceptable as long as it's steady, I'm not sure what the beef is. DC has not actually hit the reset button since COIE. Batman's still been active for probably 15 or 16 years now, for example. Sure, they've hit the retcon button a hell of a lot, but time hasn't reset in the least. Marvel's never hit the reset button, as far as I know. So what's the problem?

First of all, Decimation is a reset button as far as I'm concerned, as well as OMD and Heroes Reborn. And it doesn't always have to be announced by the drums of big events or summer crossovers. X-Men: Reload in the wake of Morrison was an utter reset button, purging all the progresses of the past years in favor of an "iconic" (read: old and done) direction. Every time they change one of their war veterans to have fought in Vietnam instead of WWII, or in Kuwait instead of Vietnam, that is a reset button. How is that, after all, no different from a Crisis? Rebooting their origins on top of effectively de-aging them by a decade or so?

Secondly, the problem is this: where do we go from here? Your position as I understand it is that Batman should never grow old and should always remain Bruce Wayne, never passing on the mantle. Well, how the heck is he supposed to do that unless time literally stops for him? No matter how slow his timeline goes, at some point something has to acknowledge that he's older than he was before. Without it, all we're doing is the same old dance...like I said, faking the semblance of time without actually implementing it.

If C&H and superhero comics are apples and oranges, then manga and superhero comics are apples and thermometers. C&H is much more comparable to superhero comics than manga is.

No, this is just completely inaccurate. I've absolutely no idea why you would think that other than a complete misunderstanding what manga is, and this is not me praising Glorious Nippon; this is me saying that even something as arbitrary and horrible as Naruto has more to do with serialized superhero fiction than Calvin and Hobbes did.

 

[The Question]

Your position as I understand it is that Batman should never grow old and should always remain Bruce Wayne, never passing on the mantle.

I must say, I don't think I've seen him make that argument once.

 

[BrianWilly]

Short answer: No. Everyone loves Uncanny X-Men more than GeNext. Everyone loved the 616 more than 2099. Everyone preferred the Teen Titans to the Titans Tomorrow.

It's part of the genre. It's part of what we like about superheroes. I swear, some people just want to find things to ***** about.

That sounds exactly like someone saying that they want the current heroes to always be the currents heroes and never pass on the mantle and that the future should always remain the future and never actually arrive. But hey I dunno.

 

[Mr. Green]

Batman beyond was cool...

 

[kguillou]

Batman Beyond was very cool, i wish DC would make it an ongoing comic series...

 

[chamber-music]

Sign me up for Power Man and Iron Fist RIGHT NOW!!!

Old Skool Cage is classic.
Its one of the most unintential funny stuff Marvel has ever made. 80% of Cages rogues ended up dieing falling from a roof and his 70s jive talk is some of the most WTF stuff ever to come from a characters mouth!

 

[Ben Breeck]

The thing is, this is a problem that all of Western comics face. Marvel, DC, and probably others.

Have all of Image comics aged in real time? Because I can tell you, INVINCIBLE has been going strong for over 51 issues and Mark's still 18 years old and a freshman in college.

Given that he started out as a High School sophomore, I'd say he's done some aaging.

 

[Dread]

Given that he started out as a High School sophomore, I'd say he's done some aaging.

True, although I believe he started college within the first or second HC, which was 2-3 years ago. I was just using it as a for-instance. INVINCIBLE has character growth and development, but I was just noting how even that was working on a "slowed time" scale. While Invincible himself is virtually immortal to humans (Viltrumites can live for thousands of years; even his "half Mantis alien" brother Oliver will outlive most humans), no one on the book has aged 4 years in real time.

As has been noted, the dilemma isn't exactly with the lack of aging in mainstream superhero characters, but the lack of development. Aging is a symbolic by-product of that. A symptom of the disease. That isn't to pass the blame; curing symptoms to a disease can be a feat unto itself in the world of medicine.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

It funny how the 70s Luke Cage stories occur about a year ago in marvel time. So instead of being a hip blaxsploitation hero in the 70s we must ineviatbly read those stories as having occured in like 2007 with Luke Cgae being a lame dweeb who talks jive talk in the 21st century. lol.

By the way manga has done aging. Dragonball one of the most successfull animes started with its lead as a child, then showed him as an adult and father in Dragonball Z, He was then a grandfather in Dragonball GT and the last dragonball special to date featured the ghost of the protagonist watching his great great grandson competing in a martail arts tournament against his main foe/ally`s great great grandson. The series undoubtably lends some of its popularity to the close kinship you feel with a protagonist whose family we see expand.

Also marvel and dc`s belief that to protect icons you must prevent aging has been circumvented by one of the most iconic heroes...Judge Dredd. 2000ad, dredds home comic book has all its stories in real time so judge dredd who started in his thirties is now having to come to terms with the idea of old age and retirement. And the stories have never been better.

 

[Harlekin]

Or you could still accept those stories and Luke Cage as a hip baxsploitation hero.

I really don't see this big problem with the past. Move forward.

Luke Cage's early adventures take place in the 70s. Now his adventures take place in the 00s. Big whoop.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

Or you could still accept those stories and Luke Cage as a hip baxsploitation hero.

I really don't see this big problem with the past. Move forward.

Luke Cage's early adventures take place in the 70s. Now his adventures take place in the 00s. Big whoop.

Yeah but cool guys talked like luke cage in the 70s.

Only dorks talk in jive today.

When was the last time you heard someone cool talking like that?

 

[The Question]

Yeah but cool guys talked like luke cage in the 70s.

Only dorks talk in jive today.

When was the last time you heard someone cool talking like that?

And yet, Luke has been known to talk jive, and he's not a dork. I mean, really, the guy's bullet proof. He could burst your skull like a grape by flexing. You gonna make fun of how he talks?

 

[Harlekin]

Yeah but cool guys talked like luke cage in the 70s.

Only dorks talk in jive today.

When was the last time you heard someone cool talking like that?

I'm not sure you understand what I'm trying to say.

You shouldn't view those stories as taking place in 2007.

You should view those stories as taking place in the 70s, their proper context.

Who cares if the in-universe continuity doesn't match up on that front?

Why can't these characters be accepted as fluid?

 

[Iceburgeruk]

And yet, Luke has been known to talk jive, and he's not a dork. I mean, really, the guy's bullet proof. He could burst your skull like a grape by flexing. You gonna make fun of how he talks?

Ok i`ll concede on this....he`s a bullet proof dork. And yes i ma gonna make fun of the way he talks. He is a fictional character, he can`t do anything. And even if he could i would win because...oh yeah! He`s a dork.

 

[Iceburgeruk]

I'm not sure you understand what I'm trying to say.

You shouldn't view those stories as taking place in 2007.

You should view those stories as taking place in the 70s, their proper context.

Who cares if the in-universe continuity doesn't match up on that front?

Why can't these characters be accepted as fluid?

Because marvel`s official line is that the marvel universe proper chronologically began about 15 years ago. So luke cgae`s 70s jive stories must have taken place in the late 90s. Which makes very little sense.