Marvel Comic's sliding timeline & its problems

[EJA]

^But the sliding timeline approach, moving events from the past closer to the present, means that Magneto would've been an old man by the time he first met Charles Xavier.

An idea I've thought of is that instead of moving past events closer to the present, current events can be shifted into the past. Say, for the sake of the argument, the Age of Marvels began on Earth-616 in the year 1983; the general idea is that as of stories published in 2010, around 13 years have passed since FF#1, so stories published within the last year actually happen around 1996 on Earth-616. I don't think the length of time from FF#1 can be more than 15 years, personally.

 

[Turtletrekker]

^ Xavier is in a clone body.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^But the sliding timeline approach, moving events from the past closer to the present, means that Magneto would've been an old man by the time he first met Charles Xavier.

An idea I've thought of is that instead of moving past events closer to the present, current events can be shifted into the past. Say, for the sake of the argument, the Age of Marvels began on Earth-616 in the year 1983; the general idea is that as of stories published in 2010, around 13 years have passed since FF#1, so stories published within the last year actually happen around 1996 on Earth-616. I don't think the length of time from FF#1 can be more than 15 years, personally.

IIRC Prof. X and Magneto first met in Israel soon after that country was created (1948?) and fought off Baron von Strucker who was after some..... ( wait for it)....NAZI GOLD!!!!!!!

So Chuck's pretty old too.

Best just to forget the Magneto was a Holocaust survivor retcon. It was a lame idea anyway.

 

[EJA]

^ Xavier is in a clone body.

Neither Xavier nor Magneto were in clone bodies when they first met, nor where they in clone bodies when they first clashed in X-Men#1.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^ Xavier is in a clone body.

Neither Xavier nor Magneto were in clone bodies when they first met, nor where they in clone bodies when they first clashed in X-Men#1.

They never even met face to face in X-Men #1. Chuck sent the kids to fight Magneto, while he stayed home. Never saw Magento without his helmet, maybe he was an old man.

 

[Skellington]

Best just to forget the Magneto was a Holocaust survivor retcon. It was a lame idea anyway.

It's getting to that point, at least. If I recall, an issue of X-Men Unlimited from 1993 or so gave his year of birth as 1928. It's halfway plausible that he could have caused trouble for the X-Men as a senior citizen, but soon he'll have been 75 or 80 at the time of X-Men #1.

 

[Gaith]

I dont see any problems. If you retell the origin, you update the minor details. Seems simple to me. Dates, fashion and current events aren't that important to the characters.

But some might call that itself the problem. In real life, people are affected and shaped by the events and cultures which surround them. Keeping comic-book characters at relatively fixed ages may be good for sales and cultural longevity, but after a while you start to sacrifice artistic potential for character growth and development. I certainly wouldn't want to see a forty-something actor playing the same Tony Stark as RDJ in a 2030 Iron Man movie set in that present day.

OTOH, it's true that two of my favorite comics characters, Calvin and Tintin, never aged, but then neither of them were that anchored to the real world, nor was there much emphasis placed on continuity.

 

[A beaker full of death]

I don't have an issue here.
I think a more interesting development has been the obsolescence of these character types. Ben Grimm is a perfect example. He grew up on the lower east side. He was the epitome of the bowery boys.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOe3LSLrqJY&feature=related[/yt]

He comes from a background that today's comic reader can't relate to. Consequently he has changed. I recently read an FF and was shocked when the Thing called somebody "dude."

Similarly, most of the Marvel characters were New York archetypes of a certain era. Modern readers with mall sensitivities can't relate to them; indeed, modern writers don't understand them. So the characters have changed.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I dont see any problems. If you retell the origin, you update the minor details. Seems simple to me. Dates, fashion and current events aren't that important to the characters.

But some might call that itself the problem. In real life, people are affected and shaped by the events and cultures which surround them. Keeping comic-book characters at relatively fixed ages may be good for sales and cultural longevity, but after a while you start to sacrifice artistic potential for character growth and development. I certainly wouldn't want to see a forty-something actor playing the same Tony Stark as RDJ in a 2030 Iron Man movie set in that present day.

OTOH, it's true that two of my favorite comics characters, Calvin and Tintin, never aged, but then neither of them were that anchored to the real world, nor was there much emphasis placed on continuity.

These types of Comics aren't real life and they dont exist in the real world. ( any claim they do is tenuous at best) These characters were created to be eternal and relativly unchanging. ( and to creating income in perpetuity) They are also ink on paper, so they don't have to age. If there is a new Iron film in 2030 it will probably be a new take on the character, not the RDJ version. Which is the whole point of the sliding scale. An Iron Man comic or movie made in 2030 will include references to what's current, not 2008 and most certainly not 1963. But most likely he will be Tony Stark a guy with amazing engineering skills.

The "evolution" of these characters will take place in how the stories are told. Not not by aging them in "real" time or saddling them with a wife, kids and grandkids. Everry generation should be able to read about a Batman who is Bruce Wayne and a Spider-Man who is Peter Parker, not "Bruce Wayne III" and "Harry Parker". ( save that for imaginary stories and time travel)

 

[Davros]

^ Xavier is in a clone body.

Neither Xavier nor Magneto were in clone bodies when they first met, nor where they in clone bodies when they first clashed in X-Men#1.

They never even met face to face in X-Men #1. Chuck sent the kids to fight Magneto, while he stayed home. Never saw Magento without his helmet, maybe he was an old man.

In the early 60s when the book takes place it would have only been about 20 years since WW2 making Magneto around his 40s. Not all that old.

 

[Skywalker]

This is why I think they should have let the characters age and eventually be replaced by new ones. Oh well.

 

[Nerys Myk]

This is why I think they should have let the characters age and eventually be replaced by new ones. Oh well.

Thats makes little sense for the reasons I just gave. They dont have to age because they aren't real. I've no desire to read about a Batman who is the great grandson of Batman, he wouldn't be the same character that is now an icon. Somehow being Batman because my dad was isnt the same as kid watched his parents get murdered and swears vengance. Dates, fashion and "current events" are just ways of telling the reader this takes place "now" and are not set in stone. That worked fine for decades. Six year olds could grasp the concept yet "aging fanboys" can't. Sucks to be confronted by ones own mortality I guess.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

This is why I think they should have let the characters age and eventually be replaced by new ones. Oh well.

Thats makes little sense for the reasons I just gave. They dont have to age because they aren't real. I've no desire to read about a Batman who is the great grandson of Batman, he wouldn't be the same character that is now an icon. Somehow being Batman because my dad was isnt the same as kid watched his parents get murdered and swears vengance. Dates, fashion and "current events" are just ways of telling the reader this takes place "now" and are not set in stone. That worked fine for decades. Six year olds could grasp the concept yet "aging fanboys" can't. Sucks to be confronted by ones own mortality I guess.

Wait isn't Dick Grayson currently a Batman, and from what I read of it in the comics he was pretty good at it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

This is why I think they should have let the characters age and eventually be replaced by new ones. Oh well.

Thats makes little sense for the reasons I just gave. They dont have to age because they aren't real. I've no desire to read about a Batman who is the great grandson of Batman, he wouldn't be the same character that is now an icon. Somehow being Batman because my dad was isnt the same as kid watched his parents get murdered and swears vengance. Dates, fashion and "current events" are just ways of telling the reader this takes place "now" and are not set in stone. That worked fine for decades. Six year olds could grasp the concept yet "aging fanboys" can't. Sucks to be confronted by ones own mortality I guess.

Wait isn't Dick Grayson currently a Batman, and from what I read of it in the comics he was pretty good at it.

Yes, but he shouldn't be, hell he shouldn;t even be an adult!!!!! And most of those plots could have been done with Bruce under the mask. he's only going to fail if the writers need him to fail, because he's fictional. And Bruce is back from the dead now and back as Batman. ( I like the Batman Inc idea)

 

[Davros]

This is why I think they should have let the characters age and eventually be replaced by new ones. Oh well.

At least they could run another universe where they let the characters age normally kind of like they are having the Ultimate universe as a side line of stories. If only for a limited series.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Neither Xavier nor Magneto were in clone bodies when they first met, nor where they in clone bodies when they first clashed in X-Men#1.

They never even met face to face in X-Men #1. Chuck sent the kids to fight Magneto, while he stayed home. Never saw Magento without his helmet, maybe he was an old man.

In the early 60s when the book takes place it would have only been about 20 years since WW2 making Magneto around his 40s. Not all that old.

When you're a teenager or younger 40 is pretty fricking old. And lets not kid ourselves, those stories were aimed at the under twenty crowd.

 

[Gaith]

This is why I think they should have let the characters age and eventually be replaced by new ones. Oh well.

Thats makes little sense for the reasons I just gave. They dont have to age because they aren't real. I've no desire to read about a Batman who is the great grandson of Batman, he wouldn't be the same character that is now an icon. Somehow being Batman because my dad was isnt the same as kid watched his parents get murdered and swears vengance. Dates, fashion and "current events" are just ways of telling the reader this takes place "now" and are not set in stone. That worked fine for decades. Six year olds could grasp the concept yet "aging fanboys" can't. Sucks to be confronted by ones own mortality I guess.

So why not completely reboot the series periodically, to keep the characters fresh. If you have to retcon WW2 into the 1960s, chances are your continuity is broke beyond reasonable fixing.

 

[Nerys Myk]

This is why I think they should have let the characters age and eventually be replaced by new ones. Oh well.

Thats makes little sense for the reasons I just gave. They dont have to age because they aren't real. I've no desire to read about a Batman who is the great grandson of Batman, he wouldn't be the same character that is now an icon. Somehow being Batman because my dad was isnt the same as kid watched his parents get murdered and swears vengance. Dates, fashion and "current events" are just ways of telling the reader this takes place "now" and are not set in stone. That worked fine for decades. Six year olds could grasp the concept yet "aging fanboys" can't. Sucks to be confronted by ones own mortality I guess.

So why not completely reboot the series periodically, to keep the characters fresh. If you have to retcon WW2 into the 1960s, chances are your continuity is broke beyond reasonable fixing.

Comics have been doing "soft reboots" since the 40s. They used to retell Superman's ( and every other character) origin all of the time and each time it was set in the current time frame. Once the war over WWII referrences pretty much disappeared from characters backstories. Once a reference has become outdated you simply stop mentioning it or replace it with something current. The incontinuity "hard reboot" is the legacy of Crisis On Infinite Earths.

The idea that WWII has been retconned to the 1960s is pure fanboy speculation ( AFAIK) and is not something the editors, writers and artists at Marvel have concocted and ascribe to.

 

[Silvercrest]

This is why I think they should have let the characters age and eventually be replaced by new ones. Oh well.

At least they could run another universe where they let the characters age normally kind of like they are having the Ultimate universe as a side line of stories. If only for a limited series.

Yeah! They could call it, I dunno, Earth-Two or something.

 

[Gaith]

Comics have been doing "soft reboots" since the 40s. They used to retell Superman's ( and every other character) origin all of the time and each time it was set in the current time frame. Once the war over WWII referrences pretty much disappeared from characters backstories. Once a reference has become outdated you simply stop mentioning it or replace it with something current.

Sounds like the worst of both worlds - through constant revisions, each more weighted down by expectations if not continuity than the last, you lose much of a strong continuity's color, but you're still expected to do the hard work of following it, lest something important but arcanely complex happen!

No, thanks.