Do you think superheroes need to age in comics? Like Artie and Leach was little ass kids in Generation X. They were still little as kids along with Franklin Richards while living with the Fantastic Four. Meanwhile the members of Gen-X(the ones still living) have aged. Jubilee is a freaking mom but these 2 are still young. At what point do these characters start to age? I remember reading the back of old Spider-man comics and people wanted him to grow alongside them.

Aging in American comics seem to be an issue big-time. I’ve read that some creators are akin to consistency over aging for certain characters and that’s why after 24 years Bart Simpson it’s still in 4° grade and Ash Ketchum is still 10. I believe that comic characters should age in some fashion or at least to keep them up with the times. I’ve seen this happen to almost every character just to be taken back by a revamp event. I mean… see the current story in Superman Rebirth: post crisis Superman (who was pushing 40-something by the time of Flashpoint) was replaced with a 20-something guy in the N52 who died, thus making his pre-crisis version come back just to have his story merged with the N52 guy and rejuvenated somehow while having a wife and a kid. Comics make aging complicated because they have no finite point of ending. You don’t see this problem in Japanese manga. Take Goku, the main character of Dragon Ball Z. This series was published and animated over the span of 11 years and in that time we watched the character grown from a kid to a full fledged dad and grandpa. After the story was done, how did the author chose to revisit? by making stories between the gaps of his original saga. Spiderman’s case it’s been a little less traumatic (as a matter of fact any Marvel character has minor flaws in continuity and you can check up their stories with relative simplicity and point out the moments they evolved or aged) BUT what few issues there might be are clusterfucks of epic proportions, see “One More Day” for example, it was done just to get Peter to be able to date again. The editorial team took the character two steps back but it paid off in the long run for Peter since he’s no longer Peter Parker: 30-something married loser, he is now Peter Parker 30-something billionaire industrialist on par with Tony Stark.

*whew* I hope I didn’t ramble too much. Nice question! 

Posted in: Reviews & Appreciation