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Post by kirby101 on Aug 27, 2017 15:45:05 GMT -5
I think this is more of a problem for Marvel than DC. DC hit the reset button with Crisis on Infinite Earths and has done so again a few more times. And besides, DC was never entrenched in the single Universe/Timeline for all there books. Things at DC were always more mutable. Marvel on the other hand, since FF #1, had a shared Universe and Timeline where all books were affected. That worked well in the Silver and Bronze Ages. The characters progressed and aged in a real (if slowed at times) fashion and there were not so many books as to make it cumbersome. But as time went on, to keep the characters workable they had to shift the time line forward. Reed and Ben could no longer serve in WWII. Ironman couldn't be a captive in Vietnam. Bruce couldn't be working on an above ground nuclear test. Cap wasn't in ice for 15 years, it was now 60. The origins and backgrounds had to move forward with them. At the same time, all their adventures, all their fights, all their tragedies, still occurred. I think this is one of the main reasons I stopped reading new Marvel books(along with the event fever that dominated all the books for the last two decades). The characters were no longer the ones I read for 40 years. And the paradoxes of all their history still being in play got to big for me to ignore. There was an FF Annual in 1998 by Karl Kesel and Stuart Immonen. In an alternative universe the FF are the proper age if they are the same people who boarded that rocket in 1961. Other characters from the MU have died of old age or retired. That book had a big impact on me 20 years ago. It made concrete these feelings that the characters had changed and didn't fit with what made them special and relatable to me. I do understand the necessity of a sliding timeline, Clark can't crash here in 1939, but it also is something that made me leave them behind.   *I should add the idea for this thread came from Cei-U in a post from the retro Marvel thread. |
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Aug 27, 2017 16:06:48 GMT -5
Eh, I basically think of it as a different-but-somewhat-related character every time there's a new creative team.
I grew up with my parent's left-over comics from when they owned a store, so I started with a couple decades worth of comics, and I was always aware that there were multiple interpretations of any given long-lived character.
I can definitely see how this is a problem for people who started reading comics at a set point in time and *only* saw one take on a given character...
But I view the constant reinterpretation as a feature, not a bug. the creative process where any given writer/artist comes in and says "THIS part of THIS character interests me, but I'm going to downplay THIS part of what other creators have done because it doesn't interest me".. . That's one of the major reasons I like mainstream comics.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 27, 2017 17:24:04 GMT -5
I'm not sure if it's the reinterpretations. I liked a lot of those, Miller's DD, Starlin's Captain Marvel and Warlock, Moore's Swampthing....
It's the weight of the decades. Not so much that the characters evolved, they did regularly in the Silver and Bronze Ages. More that I can't keep all those stories as a shared history if they are now half my age and weren't around when the things that happened to them happened. The paradoxes of the timelines erode my foundations with the world they live in.
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Post by badwolf on Aug 27, 2017 20:08:49 GMT -5
To be honest I don't really think about it. I suppose what I see is a compressed timeline more than a sliding one. I have no problem believing those characters' origins still happened the way they were originally portrayed.
Or maybe it's because I'm still living in the 80s.....
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Aug 27, 2017 20:25:16 GMT -5
I'm not sure if it's the reinterpretations. I liked a lot of those, Miller's DD, Starlin's Captain Marvel and Warlock, Moore's Swampthing.... It's the weight of the decades. Not so much that the characters evolved, they did regularly in the Silver and Bronze Ages. More that I can't keep all those stories as a shared history if they are now half my age and weren't around when the things that happened to them happened. The paradoxes of the timelines erode my foundations with the world they live in. Ok, that's fair. I'm used sliding timelines model myself - I view it as a vehicle for reinterpretation - but I think it's probably a bad idea overall. Superheroes should be more timeless and mythic. |
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Post by berkley on Aug 28, 2017 0:23:08 GMT -5
I probably don't read enough of the newer comics that feature modern versions of these longstanding characters to really have an opinion but I don't think it would bother me as long as I was interested in whatever they were doing with them currently. If, like you said, the writer is effectually saying "THIS part of THIS character interests me, but I'm going to downplay THIS part of what other creators have done because it doesn't interest me", then if I'm on the same wavelength when it comes to that character I won't think too much about the timeline stuff.
A negative example would be Mark Waid's Doctor Doom (at least from what I've heard about it - haven't read anything myself): from what I understand, his version is perfectly legitimate and based on certain aspects of the character that have been present right from the start - but they happen to be just those aspects that I find least interesting. ID rather read about the Doom as ambivalent antihero that you grudgingly admire rather than the over-senstive egomaniac obsessed by his rivalry with Reed Richards.
However, I don't think this is what's happening with a lot of the characters: the current version of Dr. Strange, for example, doesn't seem to me to be based on anything much from the character's past history. It looks to me like it's based more on the wisecracking Iron Man movies than anything from the Ditko or Englehart Strange (the ones I'd be most interested in) or even the Thomas or Stern versions.
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 28, 2017 6:22:07 GMT -5
Somewhere along the line Marvel stopped mentioning Presidents and events like WW2 , so it is less of an issue. I ignore it , pretty much.
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Post by mikelmidnight on Aug 28, 2017 12:21:59 GMT -5
DC is the one I always think of with the most problematic sliding timeline, because of (a) the characters who are nailed down into the 1940s chronologically, and (b) the vast number of kid sidekicks who are now adults.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 28, 2017 15:16:09 GMT -5
Good point mike. With Nightwing a full grown adult, how old is Batman?
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Post by mikelmidnight on Aug 29, 2017 12:02:30 GMT -5
Another issue, which we got ameliorated due to the Crisis but eventually would have become serious: when the JSA were first revived, they were only 20 years older than the JLA. The Earth-1 heroes were in their 20s and the Earth-2 heroes in their 40s. By the time of the Crisis, the Earth-1 heroes were still in their 20s but the Earth-2 heroes in their 80s. How long would that have been sustainable?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Aug 29, 2017 12:30:04 GMT -5
There are limited options if you're going to have a character that last for generations. You can have them age, ala Gasoline Alley, but then you don't really have the same characters. And for all that the Gasoline Alley gang didn't really age naturally.
You can simply set it outside time. Don't mention current events. Don't tie to actually things (wars). But the cat was already out of the bag on that with both DC and Marvel.
Or you can have a sliding timeline.
I guess there is a fourth option. Write good stories and give a hang about the silly continuity.
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Post by Duragizer on Jan 16, 2018 0:49:34 GMT -5
I don't like sliding timelines, either. They render what should be dynamic universes static, and static universes inevitably stagnate once every story that can be told within them has been told. That's when repetition and gimmickry disguised as innovation creep in.
Though Byrne and his rabid fanboys would be loath to hear it, I prefer change over illusion of change, and would rather see Peter Parker get married, have children — have both the marriage and parenthood stick — then see him grow old and retire rather than have him indefinitely stuck in his twenties, battling Doc Ock into eternity.
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Post by chadwilliam on Jan 16, 2018 1:40:14 GMT -5
Fred Hembeck's response to a then recent issue of The Adventures of Superboy depiction of The Boy of Steel meeting JFK in 1962 in spite of a 1964 issue of Superman already having had The Man of Steel encounter him at around the same time.  |
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Jan 16, 2018 8:23:19 GMT -5
I don't have a problem with Marvel's sliding timeline at all. I can ignore it for the most part, and if it ever becomes conspicuous while I'm reading, one only needs to squint a little to make those old stories fit. To me, it's more or less a common sense thing, when reading comics featuring characters that have been around for decades.
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Søren
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Post by Søren on Jan 16, 2018 8:37:38 GMT -5
Its the seemingly infinite timelines and universes that is putting me off getting into DC or Marvel stuff. I don't know how the hell anyone new to the stories is meant to know what is going on with who or what is 'correct'. What wrong with liner times? People age. I accept superheroes might age slower, or if setting is futuristic tech might help that but to keep relaunching a character seems silly.
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