It's been a few weeks since I posted anything, I hate Spring Quarter. Anyway I thought today I would bring up my biggest complaint with comics books as a genre, okay that's not true, DC's ridiculous need to reboot every few years is worse. But today I would like to go over the annoyance of how characters stop aging once they reach age 30. This wouldn't be such a big deal if younger characters didn't age, but they do, and eventually they are the same age as their idols. To make matters worse the narrative of comics is that they go on for years, and often bring up things that happened in the past. But the always say it was only a few months ago, which doesn't work if you create new characters, then age them multiple years. The most obvious example of this is Barbara's paralysis in 1988, the New 52 claims this was 6 months ago, but in that time Damian Wayne was born, raised to be a killer, and became Robin. Not bad for someone less than 6 months old.
Sure it's understandable that given their powers some of these characters will live longer. For example all God characters such as Thor, Hercules, and even Wonder Woman can live forever so long as they are not killed. The same goes for characters with healing factors like Wolverine, who is already over 200 years old. Also characters like Nick Fury and Superman can live longer than others, Superman because of his powers, and Fury's infinity serum. It has also been put on record Hulk will far outlive Banner as well. But what about all the characters whose powers don't affect aging? Batman for example has been around for decades, fathered 3 adopted sons and 1 biological son, half of which are roughly his age now.
As a child of the 90s I have lived through many a child hero, all of which are destined to be the next generation of heroes. Except that next generation never happens, in truth they end up aging and are then more often then not overshadowed by older heroes. So what happens to the futures we are often seeing in comics them? Futures that in many instances should have happened years ago. For example Spider-Man can't lead the Avengers if Iron Man never retires. Interestingly enough the X-Men are the only ones to address this issue. By killing off Xavier they left a role that needed to be filled by his pupils, which they did. Creating a new Mutant power struggle not based on Racism, but who is actually willing to join with the now far more accepting populace.
Though it is true my favorite heroes are the oldest of their respective universes, and with them aging in real time I may have been denied them in their glory days, but as I said before, new heroes would have raised up to fill their shoes, so instead of Clark Kent and Steve Rogers, I may have gotten Christopher Kent and James Barnes. Though these are bad examples because as I mentioned before, these characters actually don't age normally and may actually still be active today. So better example, rather than Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark we would have Terry McGinnis and Anthony Stark Jr.
Though the most annoying thing about this utter neglect of time has got to be technology and pop culture. If you read a comic from the 90s there are no cell phones, no Facebook, no Obama. Yet a comic from 2013 not only has all of these things, but technically they are still in the 1960s with them.
I may be reading too much into all of this, so I will leave it to you the readers to decide for yourself if our heroes should remain ageless or not. But I for one would love to see the Titans and Young Justice from my youth go on to become the Justice League, except Superboy, who cannot age. Or how about the Avengers led by Steve Roger's grandchild. Have something to say on this topic? Feel free to leave a comment below.
No comments:
Post a Comment