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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2018 9:04:23 GMT -5
I just ignore the "sliding timelines" and enjoy the book and/or books that you're reading and that's important to us here.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2018 9:26:04 GMT -5
I don't really care. They are fictional characters. I enjoy reading them. They should not have to age. Why is it a problem in comic books but not other fiction?
Should James Bond have stopped being published/in movies so he could age? Should the Hardy Boys series ended decades ago? What about the Simpsons? What about comic strips?
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Søren
Full Member
I trademarked my name two years ago. Swore I'd kill any turniphead that tried to use it
Posts: 321
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Post by Søren on Jan 16, 2018 9:42:09 GMT -5
Maybe needs to be that its ignored completely or have them age, its the parts of both that gets it confusing, to me anyway lol
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Post by MDG on Jan 16, 2018 9:43:20 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.  I remember thinking it weird in Superman: The Movie when "Rock Around the Clock" was playing in the Smallville scenes, because Superboy stories always had a depression-era vibe. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2018 10:13:26 GMT -5
Batman: The Animated Series had the right answer. It was an amalgam of retro & modern. It felt timeless.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2018 10:22:16 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. I agree. Does it really matter if Capt America has been frozen for 20 years, 100 years?
Or at DC...a combination of magic & science keeps the JSA young & vital for decades.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2018 11:53:09 GMT -5
I don't really care. They are fictional characters. I enjoy reading them. They should not have to age. Why is it a problem in comic books but not other fiction? Should James Bond have stopped being published/in movies so he could age? Should the Hardy Boys series ended decades ago? What about the Simpsons? What about comic strips? The difference with things like Bond and the Hardy Boys is that they are sold as a series of episodic stories that mostly standalone. You don't have to have seen Thunderball to enjoy Skyfall and the stories feature the same character but aren't part of the same story. Same with the Hardy Boys. I could read one Hardy Boy book, or twenty in any order skipping around and it wouldn't affect the way the stories play out or are enjoyed. When you have to place your stories in a shared universe and portray it as one long never ending story, that's a different animal. The others (with the exception of some comic strips) don't try to do things the way the Marvel Universe or DC Universe does it, and that's where the crux of the problem is with comic universes and mass audiences. -M |
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Post by mikelmidnight on Jan 16, 2018 13:35:08 GMT -5
I agree. Does it really matter if Capt America has been frozen for 20 years, 100 years? Marvel has it easier because they had a lull (unlike Superman and Batman which were published continuously), and they don't have 'elder statesmen' superheroes lingering around. They can make pretty minor modifications while still keeping the core of the continuity intact (and I don't really care if, for example, some character transitions from being a Korean War to a Vietnam War to an Iraq War vet). |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2018 13:53:46 GMT -5
I agree. Does it really matter if Capt America has been frozen for 20 years, 100 years? Marvel has it easier because they had a lull (unlike Superman and Batman which were published continuously), and they don't have 'elder statesmen' superheroes lingering around. They can make pretty minor modifications while still keeping the core of the continuity intact (and I don't really care if, for example, some character transitions from being a Korean War to a Vietnam War to an Iraq War vet). Right. Marvel's main Big 3 from WW II can be explained easily. Cap was in ice. Namor is Atlantean/Human hybrid (who knows what his lifespan is). Torch is an android.
I do like DC's multiple earths for this reason. You can have it both ways IF you want. Heroes that have aged & had children & retired on one earth & heroes that are still young on another earth for the purposes of modern stories.
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Post by Duragizer on Jan 16, 2018 15:13:39 GMT -5
Should James Bond have stopped being published/in movies so he could age? Should the Hardy Boys series ended decades ago? What about the Simpsons? What about comic strips? Oh, The Simpsons definitely should've ended decades ago (albeit for completely unrelated reasons). |
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Post by rberman on Jan 16, 2018 16:09:29 GMT -5
Maybe needs to be that its ignored completely or have them age, its the parts of both that gets it confusing, to me anyway lol You'll find examples of both. There are "Superman got old" stories like Kingdom Come published the same year as "Superman is still young" stories. It's neither necessary nor possible to fit all of the stories into a single continuity without contradiction. It's collaborative fiction with hundreds (thousands?) of authors choosing and rejecting story elements from a buffet of concepts, according to the needs of the moment. Just keep reading, and you will figure out how it all works. If you are new to comics, then get recommendations as to which old stories are worth reading, and which are not worth your time. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 16, 2018 16:22:16 GMT -5
Maybe needs to be that its ignored completely or have them age, its the parts of both that gets it confusing, to me anyway lol You'll find examples of both. There are "Superman got old" stories like Kingdom Come published the same year as "Superman is still young" stories. It's neither necessary nor possible to fit all of the stories into a single continuity without contradiction. It's collaborative fiction with hundreds (thousands?) of authors choosing and rejecting story elements from a buffet of concepts, according to the needs of the moment. Just keep reading, and you will figure out how it all works. If you are new to comics, then get recommendations as to which old stories are worth reading, and which are not worth your time. The problem is the publishers are trying to sell readers on entire lines of books where you as the reader are compelled to read the entire line to get a single story. The focus isn't on telling stories or even selling stories, it's on selling the universe, which makes it harder for entry and accessibility, and extremely difficult to get a complete story with a satisfying ending that can stand on its own anywhere in the publisher's output. This is the edge that the movies and tv shows featuring the same audience have with modern audiences, they still have complete stories (in the form of a single film or a season) to offer customers and remain accessible even when they connect series or films. They are marketing to a mass audience interested in entertaining stories, Comic publishers are marketing to a niche audience with a collector and completist mentality. -M |
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 16, 2018 16:31:25 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. But the 1940s issues were addressed with the invention of Earth 2, so the Bruce Wayne of the late 50s 60s was not an adult taking on the Batman role in the late 1930s. while his counterpart's world was literally set on--what would be on "our current" calendar--an older period of time, so when Earth 2 Robin aged, it had no bearing on "our" Dick Grayson's slow aging. That was a major problem solver for DC which worked well into the 1970s/80s. On the other side of the street, Marvel would retcon certain Golden Age characters from time to time, but the main Silver Age characters were aging a year perhaps every five or seven, as seen with Peter Parker, who entered college in 19 65, but graduated (almost) in 19 78, or Rick Jones, who seemed to be a teenager for nearly 20 years. At least Earth 1 Robin (if we mark his stories beginning in the Silver Age launch year of 1956), he's already off to college by 1969 ( Batman #217, 12/1969), so for a young teenager in '56, he was pretty much growing up at a normal pace over a decade. |
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Post by Paste Pot Paul on Jan 16, 2018 16:34:44 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. Of course you can see this actually working in Eric Larsen's Savage Dragon, which has had 25(or thereabouts) years go by in the last 25 years of publishing the book. 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. I used to feel this way too, there is a large part of me that wants all that continuity and realism, "this happened in Cap 113 and I want it to still be true" kind of rubbish. However when I think of reading comics as a kid, there were plenty of 2nd or 3rd part stories I picked up. All it ever did was make me determined to get the earlier books. I "got" the story, I enjoyed what was in front of me, I moved on. Simple. Look at cartoons, I was watching Brave and Bold this morning. Bats gets to play with everyone in that show. So there is an episode with Kamandi. Kids dont go...duh who is this guy and which earth is he from and is that an alternate future story deriving from.... No,they go...hey cool story with the talking lions and Gorillas. They get the cool stuff and care less about all the mumbo-jumbo-continuity-crap. Maybe we should too, like a story arc for what it is and not sweat the How-to-tie-it-all-together rubbish |
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Post by rberman on Jan 16, 2018 16:46:40 GMT -5
You'll find examples of both. There are "Superman got old" stories like Kingdom Come published the same year as "Superman is still young" stories. It's neither necessary nor possible to fit all of the stories into a single continuity without contradiction. It's collaborative fiction with hundreds (thousands?) of authors choosing and rejecting story elements from a buffet of concepts, according to the needs of the moment. Just keep reading, and you will figure out how it all works. If you are new to comics, then get recommendations as to which old stories are worth reading, and which are not worth your time. The problem is the publishers are trying to sell readers on entire lines of books where you as the reader are compelled to read the entire line to get a single story. The focus isn't on telling stories or even selling stories, it's on selling the universe, which makes it harder for entry and accessibility, and extremely difficult to get a complete story with a satisfying ending that can stand on its own anywhere in the publisher's output. This is the edge that the movies and tv shows featuring the same audience have with modern audiences, they still have complete stories (in the form of a single film or a season) to offer customers and remain accessible even when they connect series or films. They are marketing to a mass audience interested in entertaining stories, Comic publishers are marketing to a niche audience with a collector and completist mentality. For sure. It's the push and pull of established spenders who enjoy the continuity vs the increasing impenetrability of years of continuity. The Marvel films are starting to have the same problem; it's been ten years since the first Iron Man movie, which is an eternity in the entertainment industry. They now have the burden of making a new film (say, Avengers: Infinity War) which builds effectively on the weight of the previous twenty-odd MCU films while being interesting to newbies as well. Continuity-heavy comic books have the same burden but multiplied both over the number of years and the number of titles. Storywise, starting over with new characters, new universes, and new stories makes the most sense, which is what new creators prefer to do anyway. But financially, Disney, Time Warner, and the other corporate owners have a vested in the old trademarked characters staying financially vibrant. Once again art and commerce lock horns. |
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