I side with those who like to see some development in characters and not a simple rehashing of old plots and story lines.  I think it can be done without killing off major supporting characters or life changing events such as marriage.  An example of this to me was Dick Grayson becoming Nightwing.  One thing to keep in mind is when those of us 30+ years old started reading comics there was not a proliferation of readily available trade and essential volumes to read the classic stories of our favorite characters.  In the case of Spiderman there was Amazing SPiderman and Peter Parker The Spectacular Spiderman which were the same character.  Now there are several versions of Spiderman one can read on a monthly basis, with Spiderman in the Marvel Universe Proper having 40 years of continuity, the Ultimate Spiderman where he is still in high school, and a line of comics geared to even younger readers in the Marvel Adventure line.

Much the same can be said of all the Marvel books when Stan was in charge. The illusion of change was ever present, but real change was rare. Even when Peter Parker moved from High School to College it had little impact on the adventures of Spider-Man -- which, after all, was what the book was about.

Think of Biff in "Back to the Future". He is cast in the same mold as Flash Thompson, and is, indeed, a jerk as an adult. The problem with Flash was less that the character aged (except in the sense that that is an overall problem), but that various writers tried to turn him into a nice guy. Even his looks changed. The Flash Thompson we've seen since College bears little resemblance to the guy Ditko used to draw.

And lest anyone feel the urge to suggest the aging originals could be replaced by "legacy" character, lets consider the squawking when that happens! And, indeed, how many times it would happen! What Roman numeral would Batman be up to, at this point?

ahhh ... nevermind

"To paraphrase, someone asked if he Morrison and others are such writing geniuses why don't they do any work outside of comic books? Well, why isn't George Lucas doing broadway plays, or television shows? That isn't what he does. He does movies. Ellis does comic books. It is that simple."

Not to beat up on Ellis because the guy probably does love comic books, but the reason George Lucas doesn't do Broadway plays or television shows is that he's sitting on a pile of money roughly the size of Pike's Peak.  Ellis is not and given the far greater amounts of money to be made in TV and movies and Ellis' frequently expressed frustration with the comic industry, it's fair to ask "What is he still doing here if he dislikes it so much?"

Mike