And why not NOW? It beats holding off too long and having to create some sort of CRISIS to fix everything!
I don't like when the characters age.
This is why I'm writing ULTIMATE GASOLINE ALLEY where Skeezix, Walt and the rest of the crazy gang are all young again, fighting interdimensional aliens, and wearing colorful costumes, all while talking in, like, new and improved Bendis-Speak. Just like Frank King intended for Gasoline Alley from the beginning.
"If you just want the characters to start aging now for you-- don't you think that you're being just a little selfish? You're denying the next generation of readers what you have-- young, vital, iconic superheroes."
Because, clearly, grown-up superheroes still wouldn't do grown-up things like have children.
Grown-up heroes do, however, often behave like children.
You know, I actually liked the Larsen essay.
I don't care for his assumption that my kids will even want to have an "iconic" Spider-man to read. I suspect that by the time my kids are of comic-book reading age they'll be reading stuff that can be THEIRS instead of the same stuff that I read redrawn. And the 30-year-olds will be complaining about the new Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh reboots that are coming out...
ULTIMATE POKEMON-- lesbian jello wrasslers you keep in your pocket!
Of course, you could create concepts that are based on the idea that the characters age and in a decade you'll have a new set of characters to sell and play with.
Say, Benji Parker, Peter Parker's son is Spider-Man, has a different costume, different style, similar set up, maybe even people think it's the same Spider-Man with a new look and attitude.
And maybe a new Fantastic Four led by Franklin Richards and featuring the eternally out of place Thing, this time as the the wisened yet still grumpy and clobbering uncle Ben.
Does Batman HAVE to be Bruce Wayne, coudln't it be Dick Grayson? Bruce could fund, advise, run Wayne Industries(or whatever it's called now).
Bruce Wayne could play the Alfred role. Why not?
And this way each generation gets a new permutation of the NAME, your dad had Bruce Wayne, you've got Tim Drake or Dick Grayson.
It's not like the hardcore fans would turn their noses up at Dick as Batman, they'd grumble, but it's not like it's Joe Blow From Kokomo. It's an obvious through line. Robin is in training to be Batman when Batman retires. Thus, Batman is around forever.
People claim to be attached to the characters but really they're attached to the brands and you could, if you really wanted move the brand to a new character.
It takes nothing away from the previous version, or the original version. Nothing more than has been already taken by reboots and fucked up storylines(Peter's a Clone, no, he's not! Batman has his back broken and is replaced, Superman becomes two idiotic looking Supermen).
And the 30-year-olds will be complaining about the new Pokemon and Yu-gi-oh reboots that are coming out...
At the same time that the original fans of the "Ultimate Marvel" titles will no doubt be complaining about the Marvel's new line of "Ultimate Ultimate" comic books, on the grounds that the latest generation of "hot name-brands" are disrespecting the sanctified creations of Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Millar.
Bendis and Millar, of course, will respond to this state of affairs by criticizing anyone who dares to call Captain America "Cap," and by expressing outrage at the fact that a white actor will be cast to play Nick Fury in the Ultimate Avengers movie.
I wonder if other mediums have the similiar problems. Who's out their angling for a James Bond at 70?
Batman Beyond.
Robin of Locksley (or whatever) will always be Robin Hood.
Josh Carpenter (or whatever) will always be Jesus Christ.
Green Lantern could be anyone with a free appendage (oh, god, now all I can see is a limbless MAGIC COCKRING solving crime with the aid of his alien Prince Albert).
Some characters are easier to franchise out than others.
//Oo/\
Who's out their angling for a James Bond at 70?
Quite a few more Sean Connery fans than you might think, including none other than the latest 007, Pierce Brosnan himself, who began his career as Bond by suggesting, in more than a couple of interviews, that Connery should be brought back to play James Bond's dad (possibly even under the name "James Bond Sr.").
Along with Brosnan's other suggestions (Anthony Hopkins as a Bond villain), these interviews indicated to me from the outset that, whatever other problems the Bond franchise might have, Brosnan was never one of them.
>> Of course, you could create concepts that are based on the idea that the characters age and in a decade you'll have a new set of characters to sell and play with.>>
SPIDER-GIRL already sells badly -- why would you want the whole line to be like that?
There are good strips that proceed in real time, but in almost all cases, they're self-contained, so the creator doesn't have to worry about whether, by having Kitty Pryde grow up, he's messing up the family dynamics in FANTASTIC FOUR by forcing Franklin to age too.
One of the advantages of comics is that they don't have to age -- there are no actors getting older -- and as a result, Charlie Brown can stay Charlie Brown because he works that way, and we don't need to see the concept of Archie and his teenage hijinks get broken in four years as Archie goes off to college and then the Army and then a middle-management job in Lodge Enterprises.
This is not peculiar to comics -- Nero Wolfe was 40 years old in all of his books, even though Rex Stout wrote them over a period of forty years, and they were all set in what was then the present day. And Nero is by no means unusual in that, either.
The concept of a character growing up and getting old and being replaced isn't a bad one, and can make for good stories. But if you run a whole line that way, it gets awfully same-y if SPIDER-MAN is May Parker, legacy hero, and the FF are legacy heroes and IRON MAN is a legacy hero and the BLACK PANTHER is a legacy hero and on and on. JSA is much more interesting if it gets to be about the generational legacy and that's rare, rather than JLA being about the same process, but with different heroes.
As Erik points out, if you go generational, you remove the characters from the emotional power of those origins -- if they're all following in someone else's footsteps, that's kind of a drag, particularly since books like that don't seem to be embraced even by a large number of the readers who claim to want them. They want to see Spider-Man grow up; they don't care much about Jay Garrick on the one end or Mayday Parker on the other.
And the argument that new characters -- not just legacy heroes, but new ideas -- will arise to replace the originals isn't that compelling either, both because it presupposes that it's easy to create characters who are as compelling and attractive to readers as Supermman, Batman and Spider-Man, though history indicates that it isn't -- and it involves discarding characters who do work well because you've chosen to age them even though you don't have to. DC Comics is not interested in discarding Superman, confident that they can easily create another character that works as well, both because the number of people who ever have created a character that works so well is ridiculously low, and even if they could get new characters who were as popular, why not just do both?
I'd be delighted to see an ongoing series that postulated that the characters
I'd be delighted to see an ongoing series that postulated that the characters get old and life changes, because it'd be a fun book to have -- but I suspect I'd be bored stupid by an entire line of such books. Plus, when I imagine such a book, I imagine it being one that matches my peculiar tastes and sensibilities. But since I'm not terribly interested in the worlds of SUPERMAN/BATMAN: GENERATIONS, A-NEXT or 2099 (they're not bad, per se, they're just not what I'd wish for), I expect that if we did see the characters age and change and be replaced, readers would have the same kind of reaction -- and mostly what we'd hear is how everyone was doing it wrong and fucking the characters up.
I like Spider-Girl and I like the Super-Sons, but I don't think I want to see them replace the characters they derive from. And that's only two examples.
kdb
I don't think Spider-Girl sells badly just because she isn't Peter Parker.
The book sells poorly because it's not in continuity and lets be honest here, the creative just isn't that good.
I bet most fans would be quite happy about Peter and MJ having a kid who could potentially grow up to be his successor. JMS hinted about such possible future in ASM #500, and I'd love to see them have children but sadly I can't see it happening under the current Marvel regime.
>> I wonder if other mediums have the similiar problems. Who's out their angling for a James Bond at 70? >>
There have certainly been spin-offs -- James Bond Jr. is one example, and we've seen new generations of Bonanza, Maverick and others. But they don't seem to have the same appeal. We may be interested in the question of what characters we like do when they move on from the context they were created in, but while AfterMASH would probably have done big business as an occasional series of reunion movies, nobody much wanted it as an ongoing series.
We are on occasion interested in seeing Rhoda move back to New York or Lou Grant move over to drama, but are we interested in seeing the wacky adventures of Mary Richard's children? The public rejected two shots at a series for a grown-up Tabitha Stevens, and if Kristy MacNicoll returned to TV as the matriarch in EIGHT MORE IS REALLY ENOUGH, I think the odds against it are high.
In a setting-based series like ER, cycling through cast members seems to work (or it seems to work for that one show; it seems a fairly perilous balancing act), but I think that's the main mistake fans who want Marvel and DC characters to age and be replaced make: They're interested in the settting, the universe, so they assume that's the real appeal, rather than the characters. They're interested in generational-Superman in theory, but they don't take into account that the wider audience isn't, or that the odds are good that they themselves wouldn't care for the second generation, let alone the fourth or fifth.
kdb
The book sells poorly because it's not in continuity and lets be honest here, the creative just isn't that good.
Agree with you on the first part, disagree with you on the second part.
I quite like Spider-Girl, in spite of the second-person narration and the fact that its artwork has never been to my taste (although Pat Oliffe does do a decent job of recreating a lot of Steve Ditko's signature style), if only because so many of the typical "teen superhero" conventions are turned on their head, simply by having Peter Parker's daughter be a bit smarter than her father was at her age, since she's shared her secret with her parents, and when she gets in trouble that's too big for her, she's not too proud to ask her friends for help.
JMS hinted about such possible future in ASM #500
To paraphrase House of Pain or possibly Ricky Martin):
He ain't goin' out like that,
He ain't goin' out like that.
(He ain't goin' out!)
That...story is not how Spider-Man ends.
//Oo/\
>> I don't think Spider-Girl sells badly just because she isn't Peter Parker. The book sells poorly because it's not in continuity and lets be honest here, the creative just isn't that good.>>
Those same creators sold quite well on Spider-Man, though. So on the one hand, it seems there's something that works about Spider-Man that survivs creators you don't care for, and second, if you don't care for what they come up with when creating a new generation, why would you want to see them (and their fellow creators of the moment) do it for everything?
Plus, it seems an awful risk to say, "Hey, this didn't work because we didn't commit enough -- the problem isn't that people don't want to see this, it's that we didn't burn our bridges well enough."
>> I bet most fans would be quite happy about Peter and MJ having a kid who could potentially grow up to be his successor.>>
I bet many fans would be happy with it, but that it would not necessarily work out as you envision, both in terms of "most fans" and in terms of future fans, who might be less interested in starting to read about a forty-year-old Spider-Man raising a twelve-year-old protege -- especially with all the other books engaged in the same kinds of transitions at once. If that was what they wanted, sidekicks wouldn't have gone out of fashion.
Plus, there's a big difference between introducing a character "who could potentially grow up to" and committing to a character who does -- and doing it for the whole line, universally. The hints are nice, because you can imagine it working out in a way you'd enjoy, but the reality would more likely be something most fans wouldn't embrace.
kdb
We may be interested in the question of what characters we like do when they move on from the context they were created in, but while AfterMASH would probably have done big business as an occasional series of reunion movies, nobody much wanted it as an ongoing series.
And yet, Frasier Crane managed to surpass his origins in Cheers, both commercially and critically, when he was spun off into his own series, although I'd be inclined to believe this is the exception that proves the rule, since I'm hard-pressed to disagree with your main points here.
I often wonder why in these discussions of legacy heroes one never hears mention of The Phantom. A character who was created as a legacy hero, and yet despite several comic series, cartoons and a movie has never been particularly popular here in the U.S. ever.
The American public tends to be fascinated/enamored of the concept of "the self-made man" the guy who builds his own path. Superman and Batman fit that mold, The Phantom doesn't and neither would son of Batman or cousin's sister's brother of Superman.
Legacy heroes are the comic book versions of George W. Bush following in Daddy's footsteps. And really who wants to read about that?
The Phantom has always been The Phantom, though. He's never gone from Peter Phantom to Mayday Phantom to Miguel O'Phantom, has he?
By which I mean there's little or no appreciable difference between Phanny and his offspring, is there?
//Oo/\
Not that I necessarily disagree with Larsen's point, but "selfish" goes on my list with "iconic" and "respect" as one of the words that instantly invalidates any argument made about fictional characters.
>> And yet, Frasier Crane managed to surpass his origins in Cheers, both commercially and critically, when he was spun off into his own series, although I'd be inclined to believe this is the exception that proves the rule, since I'm hard-pressed to disagree with your main points here.>>
Yeah -- I could have named him as easily as Lou Grant; Lou Grant simply occurred to me first.
Even though Frasier can spin out into his own series (which, in comics, parallels more to, say, the Black Panther or Wolverine or the Silver Surfer having a popular series), does anyone think that the Frasier series should introduce a successor character and then that character could take over Frasier's radio show ad then have a kid that would grow up to take over the radio show who would then adopt someone who'd grow up to take over the radio show -- and it would all be just as popular?
If the cast of FRASIER was unaging and immortal and people kept watching it for sixty years, I doubt the producers would ditch the cast and replace them with successors in the name of realism.
kdb
I liked what Erik said, and I like what Kurt's saying. As a kid I enjoyed Superman for the core of what he was, not the details of the age. On the major comics characters you really do run the risk of gutting what makes them more than a brand or spokesman if you age them- unless the way they end is an intrinsic part of their mythology. The example I always go to is the Arthurian tales. When Mallory did his version he generally kept in the most resonant parts of the stories that endured. Those stories evolved as they passed around too- such as, Gawain was a much more prominent figure early on who was supplanted by Lancelot after the French started telling the tales (shocking, I know). Storytellers added their own developments over the ages, some stuck and some didn't, just like what happens with Superman, Batman, etc. Companies just need to be willing to quickly admit when a direction isn't working and just drop it. How Arthur dies is fixed, but there was always room to keep filling in middle adventures. And some concepts become outdated and have to be dropped later (Re: Anyone Captain America was Smashin' back in the 40's), but we shouldn't change what works for surface reasons, or because we can't think of anymore stories.
"Those same creators sold quite well on Spider-Man, though."
20 years ago, though. And most people I know who read and like it are not kids (who it's aimed at) but hardcore fans of DeFalco and Frenz's original run. But the digests apparently sell well, so maybe it's getting the audience it deserves at last.
Me, I always found that DeFalco went to far in making Peter miserable, to the point that when he initially got fired by Owsley it was a blessing, though the Skroce run after the clone saga was better than I expected for a while. He has a tendency to make his characters too put upon- Stan's Spidey, however bleak things got for him, would always end a storyline looking forward. DeFalco's Peter would stand still, staring at the ground, wallowing in guilt and shame.
>> I often wonder why in these discussions of legacy heroes one never hears mention of The Phantom.>>
Because he's a cheat, at least when it comes to this sort of discussion. The Phantom was itroduced as a legacy hero, but then treated the same way all the others are -- Kit Walker's been the Phantom since 1936, and has aged no more than Superman or Batman.
There have been tales of past Phantoms and of future Phantoms, but for anyone who wants to see a hero grow up and pass on the mantle, the Phantom's no more an example of it than Superman. There were 20 Phantoms before him, but the 21st Phantom has been the hero for the entire run of the strip.
He's actually set up to do the generational thing, and it wouldn't change much, since he's already 20 generations removed from the instigating evens that created the Phantom ID -- and yet they STILL don't age and replace him, because they think he works as is. The "legacy hero" aspect is his mythology, his context, but the series setup doesn't progress.
kdb
And Stan and Steve's Spider-Man (and John's, too, thinking about it) would just as often end with what I like to call the "Shall I Have A Wank Or Shall I Slit My Wrists" panel.
"Is this the price I must always pay for being -- Spider-Man?!"fapfapfap
"Peter! Where's my K-Mart catalogue?!"
"..oh, darn..."
//Oo/\
"if Kristy MacNicoll returned to TV as the matriarch in EIGHT MORE IS REALLY ENOUGH..."
Busiek, you are a sick, sick man. 
>> "Those same creators sold quite well on Spider-Man, though."
>> 20 years ago, though.>>
And if they'd aged Spider-Man, then JMS wouldn't be able to hint about his legacy in a way that Sam enjoyed -- he'd be writing that 45-year-old Spider-Man, in whatever shape he was after twenty years of aging under a variety of talents. Heck, JMS might have walked into a situation where Spider-Man was already facing retirement (not as a SHIELD scientist, but as a badly-brutalized Spider-Man) and his ten-year-old child is stepping into things in whatever shape she's in after years of whatever Howard Mackie, JM deMatteis and others had done with her.
No knock on Howard and Marc, but I have a sneaking suspicion there wouldn't have been a Spider-Man series to take over by then, even if new creators wanted to tell stories about Mr. and Mrs. Spider-Man and the precocious Spider-Baby for years.
kdb
>> Busiek, you are a sick, sick man.>>
And damn proud of it.
kdb
Y'see, "precocious Spider-Baby" really IS the end of Spider-Man, because it's the end of Peter Parker's story ("an" end, really, but that's not for here).
Mistake or not, Peter Parker HAS been aging since that first panel of AF#15. The problem here isn't, as Larsen would have it, that grown-up readers want the character to age, it's that they want him to REGRESS.
//Oo/\
"I wonder if other mediums have the similiar problems."
They do. There are always a group of hardcore fans that want to see this sort of thing. They're attached to particular characters and want to keep following them. Or they're very into continuity and want to keep the fictional world as consistent as possible.
The difference is that in other media 99.9% of the audience could give a darn about stuff like that. Here in comics the voice of the diehards is a lot louder (and many of them are actually creating the books).
Did Larsen have to give John Byrne royalties when he wrote that?
>> The problem here isn't, as Larsen would have it, that grown-up readers want the character to age, it's that they want him to REGRESS.>>
I think both are factors. There are people who want to see the characters "go on to the next step," whatever that is -- and in Spider-Man's case, that's usually parenthood -- and then the next after that and the next after that. There are people who think Spider-Man's broken as is and want to regress the series back to a setup they think works better (which may or may not mean wholesale regression; in some cases it's just the return of one or two key elements), and there are people who want it to stay the way it is now.
To my mind, it's less about the general concept of aging, and more about progressing through stages that change the series set-up. Peter Parker moving from high school to college was aging, but in terms of set-up change it was virtually no change at all. Franklin Richards has a few years yet to age before he constitutes a change in the family dynamic. Change is not necessarily bad, but neither is it necessarily good -- if whatever engine powers the series still works, it's fine, if the changes are made in such a way that the series engine works in a different way but still works well, then it's also probably fine; if it alters the series engine in a way that harms the series without compensating benefit, not so good.
This is why I think the idea of "make 'em all age" is a bad one -- it doesn't allow you to treat each series individually, where it may be that some deal with aging easily (X-Men withstands it well, because it doesn't matter if Cyclops is 18 or 38, and the series concept affords cycling in new characters easily), while some deal with it less well (Fantastic Four, as a family set-up, undergoes large shifts in dynamics if you move the characters on to the next stage, whatever it is). Some, like Thor, virtually ignore the whole problem -- Jane Foster was really the only element that tied the Thor series to slow-aging, and she's long moved out of any role where that matters. She's even done fast-aging, as she became a doctor virtually overnight.
But each of these series has their own needs, and they all need to be considered separately. The shared universe is the frosting, and when it gets mistaken for the cake, problems start to arise.
kdb
>> Did Larsen have to give John Byrne royalties when he wrote that? >>
John wasn't the first guy saying it, either -- Neal Adams was there before him, talking about de-aging Dick Grayson without calling attention to it, Stan Lee's "illusion of change" comments were made around the same era, and even Mort Weisinger used to explain to readers why the Superman cast wasn't going to age.
kdb
Did Mike O'Brien have to give Byrne royalties when he woke up this morning?
I think ageing isn't neccessary unless you make it an issue your book faces. The Teen Titains have been teens for over twenty years now and for at least the last couple of years they've made legacy a big part of the book. Every other page it's "I'm going to be Superman" this or "one day I'll be the Flash" that. That's all well and good but if you keep talking about that for several years it get's old.
As to Spider-Man I think things are fine as they are unless you become a lazy writer and decide that it's just plain wrong for him to be married. Splitting up him and MJ AGAIN is NOT character advancement, it's cheese. Artificial cheese at that. They don't need to split up or have a kid or anything. All Spidey needs is to be in a FUN book again, which is why the JMS run is so friggin LAME.
Don't want to age heroes I say fine. As long as I don't have to keep sitting through gimoungous crossover events just so they can kill off Wonder Woman.
Oh and Kurt they get away with it on the Phantom by keeping the time period the same as well, and they've had the story where Kit dies and his son takes his mantel, it's just that they then turned around and told more Kit stories afterword.
"There have been tales of past Phantoms and of future Phantoms, but for anyone who wants to see a hero grow up and pass on the mantle, the Phantom's no more an example of it than Superman. There were 20 Phantoms before him, but the 21st Phantom has been the hero for the entire run of the strip."
True, he is a cheat in that sense, but I was refering to him in terms of not being the originator of his identity rather than personal progression during the course of his series. Like the movie put it he's the guy taking on the family business rather than the guy who started the family business. And I tend to feel that the latter resonates with more people.
Granted, that's sort of a tangent to most of the conversation at hand.
>> Oh and Kurt they get away with it on the Phantom by keeping the time period the same as well, and they've had the story where Kit dies and his son takes his mantel, it's just that they then turned around and told more Kit stories afterword.>>
The strip seems to be taking place in the present day at the moment, not in the past. And they've done stories where Superman and Spider-Man pass the mantle along, too, without actually stopping telling current-Peter stories, but I don't think that's what we-want-aging fans are asking for.
But there certainly are series that maintain their particular continuity by becoming period pieces -- Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone books, for instant, began as contemporary-setting stories, but Kinsey ages slowly and Grafton keeps the time consistent with that, so the books are now taking place 15 years or more in the past. Or at last they were last I noticed.
kdb
>> Like the movie put it he's the guy taking on the family business rather than the guy who started the family business. And I tend to feel that the latter resonates with more people. >>
I think what resonates varies. If you build a series about the guy taking over the family business, you can make that work -- if you build a series about the guy who starts the business, that can work too. A wholesale shift of the latter to the former, across a whole interconnected line, is likely a bad idea, though, to my mind.
kdb
I want to do a Reality Show called "I'm with Busiek" in which Busiek and I travel around and school fans and pros alike with Busiek superior debating skills while I make snide remarks from the side lines.
That would be bitchin' fabulous.
I thought Kristy McNicoll was on "Family" not "Eight is Enough." Other than that, I think it's hard to argue with Kurt's point.
Crossover! She marries Willie Aames (which would be weird, since he was on both shows...).
kdb
Life with Willie Aames would be weird, period.
If Bibleman isn't proof enough of that, just check out his antics on Celebrity Fit Club.
The ladies dig Bibleman though. I wonder if he ages or whether the mantel was to him or anything...
To paraphrase House of Pain or possibly Ricky Martin):
He ain't goin' out like that,
He ain't goin' out like that.
(He ain't goin' out!)
...Cypress Hill.
Sorry, that was bugging me all the way down the thread!
The funny part is that right after OMAR typed that, he turned off the computer, manipulated his limp organ between two fingers, and placed the gun in his mouth, kind of like a cold metal cock, and blew the warm brown feeces that rested in his skull instead of brains all over his mother's basement walls. Ah, poor OMAR... if only he had done something with his life...
Oh, and no, I don't give Byrne any money. Why would I? But DC cuts me a check for Transmet.
Wouldn't James Robinson's run on Starman be an example of a legacy hero that did work?
Yes, but it seems that DC have misunderstood the reasons it did work and so we're left with the retconning madness and continuity deluge we have at the moment.
Starman worked though because it was always finite. It was quite happy to shift as it went along. That didn't however mean everyone was happy with changes to Gavyn and Will.
In order to pull off legacy properties, you need talented, inventive and mature writers and editors -- not a legion of retarded manchildren who want [or are only able] to regurgitate their favorite stories. It's a minor miracle that funnybooks even have a STARMAN.
>> Wouldn't James Robinson's run on Starman be an example of a legacy hero that did work?>>
Sure. On the other hand, we didn't see Jack Knight get born and grow up -- it wasn't a transition in an ongoing series, but a revival of a long-defunct one.
kdb
I think it was Archie Goodwin who described superhero comics as "soap operas with fight scenes replacing love scenes".
The difference, of course, is that soap operas do not even pay lip service to the "illusion of change" concept. Indeed, they practically revel in sending their characters through the wringer.
That being said, the biggest obstacle to having characters age is not the idea that Batman or Spider-Man will eventually become too old to fight crime. It's that many comics creators aren't interested in telling stories with new characters...instead, they want to play with the toys they enjoyed when they were younger.
The thing is, those stories weren't great because the writers "loved the characters". They were great because the writers TOLD GREAT STORIES.
Thanks for the Cypress Hill save, James.
Heyyyy...HOWARD MACKIE was (and may still be, Iuno) from Cypress Hill.
Ha! It all comes back to him.
//Oo/\
>>That being said, the biggest obstacle to having characters age is not the idea that Batman or Spider-Man will eventually become too old to fight crime. It's that many comics creators aren't interested in telling stories with new characters...instead, they want to play with the toys they enjoyed when they were younger
I don't think it's about comics creators not wanting to write new characters, though. I mean, a new superhero story almost inevitably introduces the reader to a new character, or three. But the new characters don't stick around. So, while every new team on a book introduces a new character, nine times out of ten, that character ends up discarded, forgotten, or sidelined in favour of yet another flavour-of-the-month character. And so the status quo is maintained.
>>>This is not peculiar to comics -- Nero Wolfe was 40 years old in all of his books, even though Rex Stout wrote them over a period of forty years, and they were all set in what was then the present day.
Out of curiosity, (and obviously not having read the books mentioned) did Nero Wolfe get to reunite with characters from previous adventures in later stories? Or was it more like the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys books where each adventure was self-contained, and populated by people that disappeared into the aether once the story was done?
>> That being said, the biggest obstacle to having characters age is not the idea that Batman or Spider-Man will eventually become too old to fight crime. It's that many comics creators aren't interested in telling stories with new characters...instead, they want to play with the toys they enjoyed when they were younger. >>
While there's undoubtedly some truth in this, I don't think it's anywhere near the "biggest obstacle." I doubt it's in the top ten.
kdb
>> Out of curiosity, (and obviously not having read the books mentioned) did Nero Wolfe get to reunite with characters from previous adventures in later stories? Or was it more like the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys books where each adventure was self-contained, and populated by people that disappeared into the aether once the story was done?>>
He did, on occasion, meet characters he'd met years previously in other novels. They hadn't aged either, usually, though time had passed and the previous meetings were referred to.
kdb
It's ironic that he uses Spider-Man as an example, when it was Stan Lee who first decided to age Peter Parker in real time. Also ironic is how he says wanting characters to grow and change is selfish... funny, I'd say it's more selfish to want them to stay exactly as you remembered them when you were growing up. Every generation needs something new and different.
Plus, Spider-Girl (where Peter Parker is in his '40s, and completely retired from crimefighting) sells quite well to the youngsters, in the Scholastic Book Fairs and such. So take that Erik, you rigid old fanboy.
SPIDER-GIRL already sells badly -- why would you want the whole line to be like that?
You ought to know there's more than just the direct market Kurt. Spider-Girl does very well in bookstores and other mass market venues, according to David Gabriel, Marvel's Sales Manager.
I think the answer is, there isn't just one way to do an ongoing comic. Just because Archie is static, doesn't mean Spider-Man has to be. Some people want their characters to never change, others get bored with that kind of book. So trying to make up some kind of rule like Erik is doing, is just silly.
>> You ought to know there's more than just the direct market Kurt.>>
I do, yes.
>> Spider-Girl does very well in bookstores and other mass market venues, according to David Gabriel, Marvel's Sales Manager.>>
It's a good book, too. Even counting its digest sales, though, it's no threat to AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, nor a solid argument to convert the whole line into that.
kdb
>>Quite a few more Sean Connery fans than you might think, including none other than the latest 007, Pierce Brosnan himself, who began his career as Bond by suggesting, in more than a couple of interviews, that Connery should be brought back to play James Bond's dad (possibly even under the name "James Bond Sr.").>>
Beyond the fact that this would go against canon set by Ian Fleming (Bond's parents both died in an accident which to some extent shaped Bond into the narcisstic character he is today), I think this is a perfect example of people who DON'T want to see their characters age. This is why the role has such an actor turnaround, and will continue to do so. (Beyond Roger Moore who just wouldn't LEAVE.) Bond is an iconic figure with a very specific image in people's minds.
However, the Bond franchise is a completely different medium than comics, so I don't think Bond can be used specifically for this argument. ie. We only see him every two years (if that); the writers aren't obligated to churn out new stories on a monthly basis.
Do I want to see Matt Murdock become Geriatric Daredevil (though that cane he had in the early years might come to be of use then)? No. But when my 5-year old nephew gets old enough to read comics, will he want to read mine or will he want a character of his own to build his fandom around? I don't know.
Having not read many, well hardly any really, comics perhaps
I, very out of my league, am wrong for suggesting this but wouldn't the simple answer be to get rid of continuity in/and main titles?
Have stories return to a smaller one-shot format instead of long complex arcs and series.
If a writer writes a good story with a fav character other writers could take it and run or he could continue it. If the reader dislikes it then can find someone else writing a tale that better suits them. If the story doesn't do well in sales it can fade out be taken off sale and if soemone wanted to reference a specific part and start anew they could( like something everyone loves happens in the tale but the rest sucks so they could take that great moment and work it somewhere else disregarding the suck).
If a writer wanted to tell an end story of an icon or an aging tale or something with new characters or hero's kid, he could.
If some other writer didn't want to follow these things he could start at a different point.
Writing could rotate and sales would go happily along with who liked what and if comics were more one shot and self contained you'd have the chance for more different stories instead of one over 12 issues or repetitive ones.
Readers could then enjoy what ever they please and pick their own favorite icons or stories to follow.
>> Having not read many, well hardly any really, comics perhaps I, very out of my league, am wrong for suggesting this but wouldn't the simple answer be to get rid of continuity in/and main titles? >>
First you'd have to assume that this whole aging thing is a problem that needs to be solved. Continuity, to the extent they use it (and the varied ways in which they do) has its appeal, and throwing that appeal out to solve a problem that they don't think is a problem costs them something but doesn't gain them anything they care about.
In the Nero Wolfe novels, Rex Stout could have solved the problem that Nero and Archie don't age by eliminating either any contemporary references that established a date for the stories, or any references to past adventures that happened years ago, but he apparently liked having those things and didn't care about the aging thing.
It's much the same with the big comics publishers. To one degree or another, they usually like having a degree of continuity, and they're fine with just ignoring the aging thing. So that's a solution that works for them.
kdb
Fair enough...the biggest obstacle to aging characters is probably the licensing department.
Another issue is the fact that none of these characters exist in a vacuum. You can't just decide to age Daredevil without aging everyone he comes in contact with (which is EVERYBODY, really)
I sometimes wonder whether or not the SA creators actually expected their characters to still be published after 40 years, or more importantly, that the same people would be reading them.
Perhaps Gerard Jones had the right idea...comic universes NEED re-inventing, after 15-20 years, to keep them fresh. You might lose a few readers in the transition, but you can gain new readers too....
So who wants to explain current Black Panther continuity to me?
Marvel hates Christopher Priest?
(Sorry, personal gripe coming through.)
Basically, it's a "stealth reboot", like Ellis did with IRON MAN and Straczynski tried to do with STRANGE. It seems like any story that was published before Hudlin's #1 probably never happened.
If he refers to prior stories at all, I'll be surprised.
But as Paul O'Brien points out, despite this "Year One" theory the events of the latest issue of BP address what happened at the end of issue #6.
Mr. Alonso, if you hate superhero comics and their fans so much, go back to DC and make the comics you want to read, okay?
Well, the Bond franchise is being reworked to an extent; Charlie Higson (of FAST SHOW fame) is about to complete the second novel detailing the teenaged adventures of James Bond. The first, SILVERFIN, sold pretty goshdarned well.
>>Well, the Bond franchise is being reworked to an extent; Charlie Higson (of FAST SHOW fame) is about to complete the second novel detailing the teenaged adventures of James Bond. The first, SILVERFIN, sold pretty goshdarned well.>>
But this is DE-aging a character that really has no canon baggage to carry with him. He GROWS to be the iconic figure we know; as long as events that Ian Fleming established are kept, a writer has a much better time of writing a young Bond than any screenwriter will have of writing an old Bond. The Bond franchise as it stands is really just a collaboration of set pieces- tuxedo, car chase, big explosion, fantastic opening sequence, tons of beautiful (and often barely-clothed) women, a martini, gunplay, ridiculously over the top villain, elaborate save-the-world-ending. But along with that, we have a very specific image in mind of who Bond is, and I think that includes age.
Tinker with his childhood all you want, because that won't change our mental image of the current Bond. But put a 70-year old Connery in the role and there are going to be a lot of people who are going to say, "Wuh??"
Then again, as I mentioned, book form and film form are two entirely different mediums, each with their own set of problems and limitations.
>> Tinker with his childhood all you want, because that won't change our mental image of the current Bond. But put a 70-year old Connery in the role and there are going to be a lot of people who are going to say, "Wuh??">>
I don't even think that would be true -- seeing an elderly Robin Hood in ROBIN AND MARIAN (who plated that again?) worked fine, and in comics we've seen "elderly Batman" and "elderly Superman" stories and there's even an ongoing series with a middle-aged Peter Parker.
I think a movie featuring a cranky, elderly James Bond as a Cold War relic on one last adventure would work fine. The "aging" idea, though, is about moving the whole continuum forward, not for a single story, but as a regular ongoing thing that replaces whatever the main continuity is.
CONFESSIONS OF A TEEN SLEUTH, the new parody novel revealing the "truth" of Nancy Drew's life and her adventures as she aged, is a lot of fun, but I doubt we're going to see it become the standard portrayal for her.
kdb
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