Time !
Good thoughts on time in the MU Tom. I kind of like the idea of Reed & Ben fighting in WW2. But I can live without it !

3 quick questions (off topic):

1. JMS & Coipel are doing a great job on Thor! When is #11 going to be released?

2. Any news on Dr. Strange getting his own monthly or bi-monthly book?

3. Any plans to do a reprint collection (Masterwork?) of the Lee/Kirby Inhumans stuff from Thor #146-152, etc. ?

Thanks !

Monday Morning Lunatic !

Posted by Mon Morn Lunatic on 2008-09-24 19:04:46

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Posted by coolhanddave on 2008-09-24 21:12:23
Hope this fits
First, I am taking a big leap and assuming that this blog on continuity is to address the gripes about the alteration in Spider-man’s history, even though many of the examples used have nothing to do with Spider-man

Now, I agree that there is a dichotomy in realistic story telling – to tell the story in real time and to use real life events as a back drop. However, to do both of these over decades is quite difficult. To tell these stories in a monthly series in 22-page issues with some stories carrying over into several months is nearly impossible.

On a side note, I want to put a check on myself for griping about Flash Thompson being a Vietnam and War on Terrorism Vet. My bad.

But back on point:

There is room to be liberal with the back drop of real events and how the characters interplay with those events. This is not to say that the other extreme of disregarding a fictional timeline because of the impossibility of incorporating real events and real time over decades and generations.

This does not preclude a character from aging at all. I think many fans can accept a character that ages, even if it happens very slowly. All things must conclude, even the Amazing Spider-man. No one expects that Peter would remain in High School, or College, forever. He had to age, but he aged slowly.

As to whether or not an adolescent or collegiate Spider-man is necessary for a younger audience to relate to - that is what Ultimate Spider-man is for and USM rocks. USM is great because Peter is aging very slowly and I think that’s a great tactic.

But what I’m about to say will seem to some quite radical:

Spider-man should die. Eventually.

I hope that a decade, or maybe longer, from now I will introduce my children to ASM and Peter Parker will have aged, but he will have a rich history that has a continuity that makes sense. He should have a continuous fabric of time without qualifiers or bizarre explanations of a marriage that never happened. At that time, they may not even take our Spider-man as the main Spider-man, they may accept USM instead. Who knows, by that time there may even be a new alternate version to Spider-man that fans will hold as the main storyline.

With a character like Wolverine, there is room to tell his stories out of chronological order because he has an untold timeline that goes in reverse, but eventually that timeline must go forward and at some point come to an end. Spider-man’s timeline has only one direction. Stripping the marriage out disrupted the continuity in such a way that makes his timeline circular.

But imagine a Spider-man with a finite timeline, a Spider-man with mortality. He would have a fully collected story, a full life to reflect on. The mortality of a character, to accept that he will age and someday die, makes him more real than any back drop of real life events could do.

I argue that to allow a character’s story to end naturally is more favorable than for it to eventually fade into obscurity and just disappear. We don’t want it to happen, but it happens to some of the greatest fictional characters (see the inevitable end to the Simpsons – Bart must be 23 or 24 by now). I can imagine that we all would hope to have our hero’s adventures go on forever, just as we would want to have our loved ones live forever. Nothing lasts forever…nothing. To allow him to age (although slowly) and to someday die, will make him as real as any fictional character one can invent.

The reality is that everything must move forward, everything.

Make mine Marvel.


Posted by coolhanddave on 2008-09-24 22:22:52
Reboot.
I don't think you need to kill off the MU, but at some point I think you will want to reboot the core MU. As you say, many of the "core" characters right now have origins firmly rooted the 60's and earlier which most readers today only know from history class. The Ultimates have proven that a modern re-imagining can work, but perhaps it just lacks the spirit of the current MU.

Posted by Hrungr on 2008-09-24 23:01:21
I agree
Magneto also has a get-out-of-jail card on the passage of time, as he was de-aged by Mutant Alpha.

I agree that not thinking about it too much is the best way of dealing with the passage of time. Though I'd love it if there was a panel in Fantastic Four where Sue asks Reed, "Honey, how old is Franklin?" and Reed starts to answer then get a confused look on his face before being distracted by the next crisis the FF have to deal with.

Posted by gruedragon on 2008-09-25 05:47:48
Yes, and...
By the same token, and by the virtue of time, Frank Richards and his siblings would be at least 20 years old. PowerPack would have LONG grown up (how are they still kidnergartners/elementary-school aged kids anyways?). Spider-Man would be 40-50 years old, and any kids they had would have probably been in their early 20's or late teens.

Time must move on.

Posted by Aziroth on 2008-09-25 08:44:44
:)
Well said. They are COMICS! Just roll with it! :)

Posted by pmpknface on 2008-09-25 09:07:10
continuity
while were still on the subject of continuity can you tell me which occured first modoks 11 or new avengers/hoods gang

Posted by tobys on 2008-09-25 10:36:10
Frank Castle
Frank also has a get out of jail free card, He died once and came back in punisher purgatory and this is still cannon as referenced at the begining of welcome back frank arc, his escape is that we can stretch the amount of time between dying and coming back or strecth the time he was immortal neither dead or alive if you follow me like is done with caps ice. And/or as a side effect of those adventures he no longer ages since. a third reason (im on a roll lol) is its been theorized WITHIN the MU that Frank may be an agent or avataar of death, this could mean he is cosmically granted effective eternal youth. What do you think of those 3 explanations Tom I like constructive criticisim and would love it if my ideas were incorporated in to cannon so its win win for me.

I dont know much about infinity formula but is it a stretch for Dugan and Gabe to have it thats only two more people on it and they i think are the only other howlers who have been seen not very aged.

Keep up the good work Tom I dont agree with everything you say but you a clever bloke and start interesting topic for discussion

Posted by tobys on 2008-09-25 10:42:09
"By the same token, the Vietnam conflict is so woven into the fabric of Frank Castle’s make-up that you really can’t pull it away from him. The same thing is true for Magneto, whose situation is even more difficult to reconcile given that he’s got a whole brood of adult-aged kids who also get tied to the timeframe of the Holocaust."

I don't agree that the Punisher's character is inextricably tied to Vietnam. You could fairly easily substitute a later conflict, and given the increasing reports of veterans suffering from mental disorders, it would probably fit very well.

For Magneto, it's already been established that he can control the flow of iron (and presumably other magnetic minerals) in the body. Since some scientists theorize that the oxidation of these minerals contributes to aging, it wouldn't be a stretch to think that Magneto could use his powers to slow his own aging process. In effect, he would be a super-antioxidant.

Posted by CylverSaber on 2008-09-25 11:11:37
I like to think that different characters move forward in time at different (and chaotic) rates. I also like to think that the reason it's never mentioned is because the subjectivity of time is a well-known law of physics in the Marvel Universe.

So if a superhero with a particularly delayed series wakes up one morning and sees that there's suddenly a different President in office, he's frustrated but not surprised. Y'know, these things happen.

This is not supported by anything in your comics, but it resolves all time issues for me. A kid can stay a kid for a hundred years, but for him they're not a hundred years- just a few weeks. A series' plot can jump forward a year, and still tie in with all the current comics. That year was just a few seconds for all the other comics, and the world around them didn't change in the meantime. No matter what sort of pacing the writer of a comic wants to use, I've got no problem with it.

So less than ten years ago for Peter Parker, it was 1962. Nick Fury isn't particularly old, even though he's been alive since WWII. And conversely, if a writer were to almost suddenly treat a character as an old guy, that'd make sense to me too.

On the flipside, the "fixes" drive me crazy. There was an issue of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man where we see blogs around the time Spider-Man was starting out. I couldn't stand that comic. I know it was the 60s then. The "fix" is messing with continuity that I don't have any problem with.

I love back-stories which accept the time periods they're supposed to be set in: the current Age of Sentry and Magneto: Testament, for instance, are both great. But if either of those pretended to be in the modern day, I wouldn't be able to enjoy them at all.

Posted by MoriartyL on 2008-09-25 12:16:55
aging
Most character ages are irrelevant since Heroes Reborn. Franklin reimagined them into existence more or less in their prime. Before that presumably the Beyonder did the same thing at the end of Secret Wars when a lot of heroes were killed. Before that Magneto and several mutants were deaged to babies and then reaged by Erik the Red. The Fantastic Four even had a story in which they were deaged as a side effect of one of their adventures.

Irregardless, the age of characters is a hobgoblin for the more obsessive fans. You have already demonstrated a willingness to wave a magic wand to do away with other unwanted story elements. Using magic, super science, or cosmic intervention of some kind to deage heroes is just as simple and has been used in the past as shown by the examples I listed.

Posted by izzatrix on 2008-09-25 12:34:15
To izzatrix
But its lame when they do that.

Poof...no more holy matrimony.

Poof...Harry is alive and without children.

Poof...the physiological change from the Other is undone, not explained, but just never happened.

Poof...one of the best scientists in the Marvel Universe has a dramatic decline in mental capability.

Poof...a once forward moving time line has become circular.

Also, I couldn't find irregardless in a dictionary.



Posted by coolhanddave on 2008-09-25 14:02:53
Real evolution
I don't know what kind of headaches continuity is giving you, I won't be irrelevant reminding we 're dealing with archetypes here. I can barely admit that three years of ASM is relating one -real life year, by example.That's why Nick Fury will always be able to crunch his biscuits. When someone interact with Nick Fury, the point is that the character, at one point of his life, is interacting with a warrior.The point is if he understands it or not.
Age doesn't mind, if you have an intensive life, three hours for some one is maybe one month for another one. In stories, we're not talking about age but facts from experiences. And trough that, about being responsible, about growing-up, being conscious and even about the fact being alive.I'm rather interested by what's make a character an adult, or an individual, rather intersted by discovering things I don't know yet than anything else.
What's getting interesting is the late relaunch of core characters, still in a context who's evoluting, with the next wave of new characters that lead an intersting story-telling play ground between the old and the news, the whom who hadn't been heroes yet, ...
I have more complications and anger about the take on of a particular character by a particular author who don't give a s..t about his backgrounds ( this character s.cks, let's get kill him, oh we can't with this one, he's just resurrected... 'and I want a story with...and then some one reply: we can't, he's dead/lost his powers/ get adoted in a specifical context,-NO, I WANT A STORY WITH DAZZLER WHEN SHE WAS WEARING STRINGS FROM THE 80'S...!!!! ) or that a character is suddenly ubiquous in each Marvel title.

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-09-25 14:02:55
and the main point with this different time-passing is that every secondary characters would have one day his moment of glory.

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-09-25 14:05:52
OHC for JMS/Coipel Thor please!!!

I'd like to see you deal with the Punisher issue - Ennis seemed to enjoy putting him into his sixties in the title - replaced by a copycat, perhaps? Maybe his son didn't die in crossfire after all.

Posted by Fetsur on 2008-09-25 14:53:33
Good subject
0: Seen as this is one of those subjects that I've often wanted to talk about, I'm going to ramble for a moment or two. Feel free to skip to the next post if you'd like, but I'm going for it. Best quote of the year, “The passage of time – it’s part of the price of doing business.”
1: Time... When it comes to movies, television shows, anything with real-life human counterparts there is only so much that can be done to delay the passage of time. Take the Harry Potter movies for example, seven school years have passed between the events of books one through seven, but in the Warner Brothers film series the actors will have aged roughly a decade or so. This is completely acceptable, but it would have been "questionable" for Warner Brothers to have allowed a longer passage of time to accumulate between the theatrical releases when you consider how quickly children age, grow, etc.
2: The Comic Book and Book Industry in general, thankfully, should never, and hopefully will never run into that problem. Unlike the Harry Potter book series, which explicitly stated that each book followed a certain school year, continuing from the one before (so that the space of seven years takes place within seven books), there should never be a definitive, "looking backwards, everything that you see takes place within one year" statement in the Marvel Universe. I lie, 500 issues or so would work for an "everything that you see takes place within one year" moment. (Something so high, everybody can find something wrong with it.)
If I might be allowed to explain why, then I will.
3: I didn't read World War III by DC, but I did read an interview where one of the writers stated that when he was thinking about it, he thought that if there ever was a Superhero World War, it would all take place very, very quickly. Maybe in the MU it would take a little bit longer, but it would not be a months and years event, in fact I believe that it is probably something that would take place in less then a week or so. Let's say that the Hand, Hydra, A.I.M., all of them, launched a physical global attack on the infrastructure of every major nation in the world. Millions on ninjas show up from Alaska to Zimbabwe, how long would it realistically take all the heroes and all the armed forces of those respective countries to repel such an attack. It would take days I would imagine, not weeks, nor months, but hours and days. Think of all the stories that would occur. Each story might have lasted anywhere between an hour or days, or a few minutes and a few seconds, but each story could be told in such a way that makes it a worthwhile piece of the puzzle. Every title in the Marvel Universe could have a twelve issue series associated with it, all depicting what those characters did during their events of the Invasion. The titles would realistically take a whole year to be released to the public, but the events would have the ability of lasting only, as mentioned before, as much as that characters involvement is. A year could pass in real-time, but in the Marvel Universe, it would have been barely any time at all. In a way, I think what Secret Invasion is doing, what Civil War did, and the others have done before it, is at the very least, showing Marvel just how they can pull off a super mega-event that lasts for months, while showing dozens upon dozens of different angles of the event which tell the entire story of said event, while still allowing for the fact that the actual event itself takes pace within a very, very short amount of time. Even non line-wide events, (basically every story other then the baseball games) probably take place in a very short amount of time unless explicitly stated. Usually just a fraction of time has taken place between issues, which is completely acceptable, and if that were not the case, then frankly it would probably become very silly, very fast.
4: There truly are certain characters that “need” to have certain things about their history stay the same. Cap will always have to have been in WWII, as will Bucky. Whether the rest of the Invaders, and by that I really just mean Namor, will have to keep that origin is debatable, but out of respect to what has come before, I’ll say that they probably should. The same with Frank Castle and Vietnam, solely because there isn’t any other conflict like it that would probably work as well as Vietnam does in the case of Frank Castle’s training as a part of his origin. Wolverine, from now until the end of time, has to have “Origins” as his foundational history, not just because it was that good, but because it just works so very well as a foundation for everything else that follows. (While still leaving a bunch of unanswered questions for later times.) Of note, I have a feeling that “Magneto: Testament” is going to do the same thing for Magneto, and as such, should also be regarded that way.
5: Mr. B is completely correct in my opinion when he says, “But to my mind, the best and only way to grapple with this issue long term is to not think about it too much—to simply accept that it’s one of the prices of continuous serialized publication for so many years.” I think it’s just easier to think about the passage of time between Avengers #1 and today’s current issues as occurring over a passage of time, but not a distinctive, set-in-stone amount. Do today’s issues of the Avengers happen over forty years after the first one’s? No. (More then a decade, I’d imagine so, roughly about that.) But I’ll bet money that someone at Marvel over the last decade has been making sure that when a writer writes, “It’s been five months since Magneto’s War on mankind.” It’s probably been five months in the book whether it’s been five issues or fifty.
6: I’m not sure if I agree that Reed Richards needs to be kept young, I always assumed that he was one of the oldest second generation heroes and would probably be in his early forty’s by now. Do any characters need to be kept a certain age? I’m not sure actually. During the next fifty years, I’d probably be pretty agitated if they (the MU characters) didn’t age a day, and I think that is a fair thing to say, even while I’m keeping in mind the notion of future generations getting the same amount of joy from reading these characters stories as I do. (On the plus side for them though, they’ll have a whole lot more back-issues to read then I did, and if you really think about it, each and every comic you’ve never read before, is a new comic to you.) To be honest, this is probably one of the biggest issues associated with character development within the comic book industry, and it’s one that truthfully, if every five years or so in real time, ages the characters roughly one year, won’t have to be dealt with (probably) during any of our lifetimes.
7: Wrapping up. “You can try to eliminate all contemporary references from your comics, but it’s next to impossible, and what you wind up with are stories that don’t have any relevance to anybody.” This is also, I think, a very true statement and is something that Marvel does incredibly well. Spider-Man Black. ‘nuff said.
8: Finally. I wonder sometimes if there is a correlation between character development and the passage of time or whether the two are placed together by accident sometimes. Thanks, and sorry, but no, you will probably never get those two minutes back, my bad.



Posted by Thomas More on 2008-09-25 15:34:01
Okay...
I agree with Coolhand that Spidey should die eventually. It would be nice to see his heirs (if any) take on the mantle of Spider-Man. Adds more realism.



Posted by Aziroth on 2008-09-25 15:50:29
Let Spidey die? No way.
That's an idiotic notion spun by people who don't seem to understand why they're really attracted to a character.

Posted by jszilla on 2008-09-25 16:34:13
Off subject.
Why not, I might as well add this too. Not that T.B.’s office has anything to do with this stuff.
Fox should do a new Generation X television series. Think 90210 meets Heroes.
Fox should do an X-Men television series. Think Heroes.
The original comic books should be adapted into character/team specific animated series… Much in the same way the Naruto anime and manga work. I know that different artists would make that difficult but I’d like to see some weekly Marvel animation series that wasn’t geared for young children. Not that the one’s that are geared for young children are bad, I’d just like to see more adult stuff.)
Love the direction Marvel’s own movie studio is going. Truly love it. I remember being a kid and talking about how cool it would be, and who we’d cast (everyone chose Patrick Stewart as Chuck). Leaves me really excited for where the future is heading. Maybe Fox might redo the X-Men less Morrison style. (BTW, I read all of All-Star Superman last weekend, truly fantastic, so it’s not the writer, just his X-Men work)
Messiah Complex was good, I feel cautiously optimistic as to where the X-line is going over the next year or two.
Put some clothes on Emma Frost, it’s beginning to make me think I’m looking at hentai and should hide it whenever someone’s around. (Kinda joking, but still…)
All the Marvel comic books aimed at children should be available for free on the internet. Partner with some after-school reading programs, spend some money on some servers, and help teach kids how to read. I bet some kids can’t afford, or their parent’s can’t afford to go to the local comic shop. (I’m sick and tired of Ed, Edd and Eddy or Yu-Gi-Oh XII being more popular among kids then Spider-Man too.)
The industry needs more people to read the books they put out and I don’t think free comic book day cuts it. You need to give people who would never, and will never go to a comic book store, to start buying comics. I appreciate the Marvel Digital Comics thing. It’s a start, but you’re not there yet. Partner with Apple or IBM and make a comic book section of ITunes, or something along those lines. Surely it couldn’t hurt the bottom line. You won’t stop people that go to a comic store from still going to that store, but you might get people who don’t buy them to start. We are living in a technological age after all, and I hear that Apple and the music industry are making a buck or two off that whole ITunes thing. A dollar a book might not sound like a lot, but I bet it could add up real quick. Would it really be that difficult to have a “legitimate alternative” to the you-know-what that is done by the you-know-who’s, of which you-see-zeros… (Kinda smart ass, my bad)
Oh, and one other thing. Thank You. Once a week, 52 weeks a year, can’t be the easiest job in the world, but it makes mine, and many other Wednesday’s a little bit better, and all I have to do is give up lunch once a week for it!)



Posted by Thomas More on 2008-09-25 16:46:27
Punisher as 60
That's one of the things I've loved about some of the artists on Punisher MAX, they've drawn Frank so it looks like he is pushing 60 (specifically Larosa on the first 6 issues). Now, granted this really only works because the MAX book is 99% isolated from the rest of the MU, but there is just something about Frank looking like an old, mean, brick s*** house that just works for me better than the character has ever worked.
And as far as the "contemporary references" go, my favorite one is from the Distinguished Competition: the death of Jason Todd. Most people remember the Robin death, but they forget that right after that the Joker becomes the UN ambassador from Iran at the direct behest of Ayatollah Khomeini. So that clearly puts the death of Robin sometime between '79 and '89. How old does that make Batman in 2008? Now, granted, they have their own continuity fixes, but it is another good example of the problem of referencing current events.

Posted by jaredgood1 on 2008-09-25 17:40:09
Death
I suggested letting Spider-man die as a far far away and logical conclusion to a life. To allow a character to age is to accept the fact that they will ultimately die...to be human.

That is how Spider-man started, he had a linear path towards maturing and aging. He went from high school to college to adulthood. That linear path was destroyed with the Mephisto deal.

Now, what we have for a history is what happens now as one point and everything that already has happened as points in time floating around and not tethered to a time line. Its more like the chronology of the Simpsons. My gripe is that we shouldn't have it both ways and that a linear path is preferable.

In part this definitely feels like a "Back to the Future Part II/Alternate 1985" situation. It just feels different.

To you jzsilla,

Do not suggest that I am confused as to why I like this character. I think I have made it abundantly clear why I like this character and have used that as the basis of my assault on the travesty that is OMD and BND.

To you sir, I say good day!

Publish both in '09

Posted by coolhanddave on 2008-09-25 17:54:46
By the way
My mom doesn't think I'm snarky.

Posted by coolhanddave on 2008-09-25 18:21:39
and your mom would be wrong...

Posted by Thomas More on 2008-09-25 18:38:55
never been young
according to Thomas More about Emma Frost, I just love the Valkyrie and I'm glad to see her back, is there a chance to see her armored again instead of the ballerina-style...?

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-09-25 23:44:56
coolhanddave wrote, "With a character like Wolverine, there is room to tell his stories out of chronological order because he has an untold timeline that goes in reverse, but eventually that timeline must go forward and at some point come to an end. Spider-man’s timeline has only one direction. Stripping the marriage out disrupted the continuity in such a way that makes his timeline circular."

D, I feel where you're coming from when it comes to changing continuity, and you have a right to gripe, but there were two paragraphs that I have to respectively sir, disagree with. The first paragraph, as repeated above has three points to it, of which I think all three are wrong. Firstly, “with a character like Wolverine, there is room to tell his stories out of chronological order because he has an untold timeline that goes in reverse, but eventually that timeline must go forward and at some point come to an end.” Everything up till has an untold timeline I’d agree with, but when you write, “that goes in reverse,” I’m left scratching my head. It doesn’t go in reverse, if anything it goes forward with flashbacks from all over the place throughout his history of a hundred and some years. Either that, or it seemingly picks a rudimentary point from somewhere throughout his past and then explains what happened during the next couple of days, weeks, etc… I wouldn’t say that’s exactly going in reverse, that would apply that it gets earlier and earlier throughout his life with each story and, well sir, that’s just not how Wolverine stories work. They fill in bits and pieces, while leaving bits and pieces out for other writers to explore. Kind of like a big jigsaw puzzle in a way, but it doesn’t by any means go in reverse. (Not even bothering with the come to an end, see next paragraph) Secondly, “Spider-man’s timeline has only one direction.” Except for every time Uncle Ben has ever been in comics apart from Amazing Fantasy #15… I don’t read Spider-man, but if his Uncle Ben has been in any other comic book apart from the one in August 1962, it’s not exactly a comic book with a one directional timeline. Thirdly, “Stripping the marriage out disrupted the continuity in such a way that makes his timeline circular.” There are so many problems with this sentence. For starters, you really should write, “in my opinion” before you wrote that. All I really wanted to say was, “says who, you, and you are what, the authority on Spider-man?” Also, disrupted the continuity in such a way that… Whoa, hold up, you’re judging a continuity change before you’ve been told the intricate details as to how and why? You’ve been told by nearly every creator that next year they’d explain what happened, how it happened, and what changed, where, when, why, and how. I don’t think it’s fair to criticize the continuity change until it’s been explained, for all you know it could be the best continuity change explanation story in the world and win awards after awards. And finally, the entire sentence, “stripping the marriage out disrupted the continuity in such a way that makes his timeline circular.” Whole-heartedly disagree, and so should you if you’d thought about it before you made your sentence sound perfect. Did OMD change a few things? Yes. Did it make the timeline circular? No, not even slightly. If it was January 31st when Mephisto did his thing, then it was probably February 1st when Pete woke up with a nasty hangover. Apparently, Mephisto made a thing or two happen differently, which will I would imagine be explained in the next year or so, through the occasional flashback as it’d be relevant to the story being told. That by no means makes things circular, if anything there was a ripple effect that altered things, but to give the impression that OMD somehow set a time-loop, paradoxical, or “whatever circular” to the fictional history of Spider-man is, well, wrong sir. I mean come on, have you never seen an episode of Star Trek where they alter the timeline? There is no making a timeline circular, someone goes back in time, changes something, and everything else changes accordingly. At worst there is a complicated paradox that takes a minute or two to explain. Maybe if the writers were planning on re-telling every single story since the wedding, that’d be a reasonable point to make, but they’re not. ASM isn’t taking place 30 years in the past, its taking place in the hear-and-now, somewhere around about the Civil War and the Secret Invasion, which is not exactly, well, a circular timeline thing to do.
Now D sir, onto the second paragraph. “I argue that to allow a character’s story to end naturally is more favorable than for it to eventually fade into obscurity and just disappear. We don’t want it to happen, but it happens to some of the greatest fictional characters (see the inevitable end to the Simpsons – Bart must be 23 or 24 by now). I can imagine that we all would hope to have our hero’s adventures go on forever, just as we would want to have our loved ones live forever. Nothing lasts forever…nothing. To allow him to age (although slowly) and to someday die, will make him as real as any fictional character one can invent.” You at least wrote “I argue”, and I want you to know I appreciate that. First part, “I argue that to allow a character’s story to end naturally is more favorable than for it to eventually fade into obscurity and just disappear.” I disagree, and I’ll cite the greatest hero ever, Captain Marvel as my argument against. He died after fifteen years of life, and yet because I’m far too young to have originally read it, or his stories, all the MU talk about the great Kree, Mar-Vell, in my opinion often kind of seems like a bunch of old timers kicking a dead horse. To anyone that originally read it I bet it’s probably one of the greatest moments in comic book history, however to me, I always felt like he was a character from the past that “faded into obscurity and just disappeared.” Which is fine to do, I guess, but as a member of the future generation at the time of his death, I kind of got screwed with that one, so it’d be nice when they cure cancer, if someone would go back in time and bring him back. Second part, The Simpsons inevitable end, sure, television series are finite, comic books are not, and I personally would find it very hard to believe that Homer Simpson will ever fade into obscurity, even if the television show does just, disappear from Fox one Sunday. (The day it does, the re-runs will begin on every other channel on cable, so I doubt you’ll never be able to get your Simpsons fix.) Third part, I think when people start relating fictional hero’s living forever and real life people living forever, they’re missing the key difference, ie. “fictional” and “real life”. “Nothing lasts forever… nothing.” Okay, Superman was created in 1932, Batman in 1938, Spider-man in 1962 and Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Marvel Girl, Angel and Charles Xavier in 1963. When can we come close to saying that these characters will last forever? There seems to be an assumption on your behalf that fictional characters should not last forever. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that these fictional characters will outlive us all, in fact I’m not actually sure I ever see a point in time where stories about Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, and the X-Men will ever stop being either relevant or published. My only hope is that there can be other teams and characters that are as popular by then as the above four are now. Finally, “To allow him to age (although slowly) and to someday die, will make him as real as any fictional character one can invent.” Again, you’re implying that you’re logic is law, but I just don’t get it sir. You seem to be implying that the aging and death of a character is what makes them seem real, so much so that you say, “as real as any fictional character one can invent.” So it’s not the choices and decisions they make, the sacrifices or acts of selfishness that they make, the way they simply put “are” that makes them as real as any fictional character one can invent? Instead it’s the simple life-death process that effects everything living that makes them as real as any fictional character one can invent... Just to put this in perspective, it’s the fact that Peter Parker can age and die that makes him feel “real” to you? Not the years and years worth of gut-wrenching moments or the amazing, spectacular things that he and you have been through together, nope, it’s the fact that he can die. By your own logic, sir, that makes Gwen Stacy “more real” then MJ or Peter, or for that matter any of the other “living” heroes still with no death scene in-sight, and that, sir, well, in my insignificant opinion, that just doesn’t make any sense. Respectfully.



Posted by Thomas More on 2008-09-26 02:02:35
I don't want to engage something polemical against you;I just enjoy the way you're polemicate yourself against OMBND, I think it's funny...
I could have a problem with what you're just said, and what's frightening me the most now is not that you're expressing yourself, it's that could be took in consideration now.
Some people make other people angry, depressed, poorest, dead and yes, as you pointed it some people make other people circular.
and when you said 'Spiderman has to die' I think you forget us all with him...
do you see what I mean ?

I had notice that effectively, despite I don't know you, that you're not the same since OMBND, and you had been really into armaggedon because you really sounds like it -this where I tought you were funny, frankly said- but your end-of-times-kind-of-talk sounds really to me like some kind of lack of distanciating...

maybe you just made Marvel Yours again, or...
you're Warren Ellis in disguise...

Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-09-26 09:30:30
re coolhanddave
I don't much care for magic hand waving either but it is a long established fact in the Marvel U. OMD wasn't the first time it was done. As for irregardless, you didn't look in the right dictionary. It's not standard but has been in use since the early 20th century.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/irregardless

Posted by izzatrix on 2008-09-26 12:44:05
Refinement of Rant
To make myself clearer, I guess some groundwork must be done.

Timelines occur in a straight line, as we were taught in grade school – they are linear. These timelines travel to the right departing from their origin or end point to the left. Each point to the right of the origin is a new story or point in time. In reality all the points that follow the original point make up the line and the line is dependent upon all of those points to become a line.

The left most point in Spider-man’s timeline occurred when Peter was bitten by a radioactive spider. Everything that occurs thereafter are points on a linear timeline that a placed to the left of the origin point (think of the number line used to teach us about negative numbers).

With Wolverine, the first point on his timeline that we are introduced to is somewhere in the middle with points in time to both the left and right of this point (when he fought the Hulk). When I said he can go in reverse, I meant that storytelling can go both from the left of his first point. There is still an origin point, just as there will be an end point (when a character dies, hopefully, and not when people lose interest in the character and no longer gets published).

Now, with Spider-man, a point in his timeline was stripped out. When this happens, it is not an isolated occurrence; it disrupts every point to follow it on the right of the timeline. When I used the word circular, I may have used an idiosyncratic definition in my reasoning. I guess I don’t mean to say that things will be looped, such that the day he awoke (let’s say a Tuesday because Julian dates shouldn’t apply) he will in fact be a day older or a day later (Wednesday). But the purpose of the removal of the Marriage point was to make the character young again. Although there has never been an age attached to Peter, we can all agree that he is less mature and less aged than he was before the Marriage Point was removed. So it is circular in the sense that he is frozen at a maturity level, a level that he circled back to from points further to the left of his timeline.

I won’t address your second point about Uncle Ben because I don’t understand it. The only time he has shown up after his death is as an apparition or from a parallel universe.

In response to allowing a character to die, I can imagine that certain super beings are an exception to this…Silver Surfer, Galactus, the Watcher, etc. Heroes like the Punisher, Spider-man, or Daredevil are more human than anything else. One of the prerequisites of being human is that you eventually die. I don’t know about Captain Marvel but I don’t think he’s human.

Now my gripes are about storytelling, whether in comic books, movies, novels, or oral tradition. Characters, particularly human characters have story telling constraints. A movie can only have so many sequels before the actors get to old to play the role, and we can all agree it is the rare exception when the original actor is replaced and the new actor performs with similar or superior quality.

Before you say Christian Bale as Batman let me use that as a point. The Keaton/Kilmer/Clooney Batman series is a different timeline than the Bale Batman, just as Amazing Spider-man is different from the Ultimate Spider-man. They have their own separate timelines.
Unfortunately, with the KKC Batman, he never got a chance to die – the story telling just got worse and eventually people lost interest. The Bale Batman was a retelling with its own timeline. He can continue until the character dies or fans lose interest.

Someday a new timeline will be created for Batman with new actors (it has been done a half a dozen times so far) and someday the same will happen for Spider-man in both the movies and comic books.

Yes, comic books are finite, they are just on a different timeline themselves than television shows are. Marvel can go out of business and stop publishing altogether. People could lose interest and no longer buy comics. It can happen. Comic books will not last forever, it likely won’t end in my lifetime but it CAN happen. The thing that transcends comic books is storytelling, new mediums come and go.

Now on to Death.

Death is the most real attribute a human being can have, the one none of us can avoid having. Although not likely, it is possible to live a life without love or hate or to go on adventures or live in complete solitude. But without the ability to die, there is no humanity. If you are created and you live forever, you are not human. Show me a human that cannot die and I will show you a wooden stake to put through its heart.

Peter Parker was a character that aged – from high school to college to life after college - and then suddenly stopped or regressed a little, and I speak in terms of maturity (who’s to say he is 29 or 31 now). If he doesn’t age, he won’t die. If he can never die, he’s not human…he’s Mickey Mouse.


Posted by coolhanddave on 2008-09-29 17:48:34
Misdirection
Mr. Brevoort, the incongruencies in the passage of time in comics, especially as related to the real world, is a different matter than changing the very nature of the starring characters and ignoring events as they are presented, which is what most readers who are upset are upset about. There may be some overlap between the two, but for most characters and most stories, it is very minor indeed.

By the way, I think it is silly an amazingly short-sighted that comic writers want to so closely couple their fictional universe writings (that have a vastly different fictional history) with the events of the real world. Considering that there are many characters with abilities well beyond the average human, and considering the number of world shattering threats they've faced, it is pretty preposterous to imagine that their world is "just like ours, except for musclebound guys in tights." There's absolutely no reason the MU, or any other comic universe, should be so treated. I can't be the only one that thought it was silly for MU characters, including consummate villains like Doom, were so devastated over the 9/11 attacks when entire cities (and even planets) are regularly being destroyed in their stories (or in the case of the villains, by their own hand!). If you didn't tie the two so closely together, the characters wouldn't be feeling so dated. Really I think its pretty incredible that so few writers or editors thought of treating a comic universe as an alternate history.

Posted by Illuminarch on 2008-10-01 09:33:20