A year ago or so, I had a conversation with a young man of about 20 or 21 who was complaining about characters not aging when "the world around them does age." He was a customer at my LCS who apparently read a lot of comics and yet had not grasped the idea of the sliding time scale.

"Why shouldn't they age?" he asked me. I tried to explain how it ruins the characters, takes them away from what made them interesting in the first place. "But it's not realistic," he complained. I was ready to shout out, "They're superheroes!" but instead I asked who his favorite character was. "Hal Jordan," he said. I pointed out that Hal would be in his 70s now if he had aged from the beginning. I asked if a 70-year-old superhero would still be his favorite. I asked if he wanted his kids, if he ever had any, to be able to read about the same Green Lantern he enjoyed. He finally admitted I was right.  

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You just did something people do a lot. I have caught myself doing it!

Hal Jordan debuted in SHOWCASE, Sept/Oct 1959. He was, at that point, a top test pilot, well established at his trade. Before that, he'd been in the Air Force. Cast in the mold of Chuck Yeager, Hal might even have been a fighter pilot in WW2. This pushes him well into his 20s when we first meet him, and possibly even older. Make him 29, like Superman, and this puts his birth year as 1930, so today he would be 82!

Even those of us who are in favor of the "sliding timeline" and use the character's "actual ages" to argue against real time, often shave a few years!

...a ninety year old Batman would be interesting.

At least those idiots are consistent in their lunacy. What really drives me berzerk are those who insist that (especially) teenage characters age, with the implication that they should stop at a certain arbitrary point. If you demand that Peter Parker reach his mid to late twenties, what's the point of having him grown older to begin with? Why is keeping him perpetually 26 logical but not 16?

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Wasn't it Roger Ebert who said teenagers used to go to movies to see adults having sex, now adults go to movies to see teenagers having sex?

Those who are well past the proper age for reading superhero comics, but who cannot allow themselves to enjoy them in simply a nostalgic kind of way, insist that the character become "adults" so that they, these readers, can justify continuing to read the comics.

A 45 year old who reads the adventures of a 16 year old high schooler -- well, he's some kinda perv, right?

But a 45 year old who reads the adventures of a 20/30 something with a wife and a career and a mortgage -- well, that's more like REAL LIFE. (Especially the parts about being bitten by a radioactive spider and getting its "powers".)

Stan and Jack and Steve experimented with aging the characters. In the case of Kirby, it was less a conscious decision than it was a manifestation of the way his art was changing. In the case of Ditko, it was something with which he disagreed, and ultimately was part of what led to his leaving Spider-Man. But in both cases, it wasn't long before the brakes were applied again, firmly. (In the case of the FF for instance, Franklin Richards, who, being a baby, was the most obvious indicator that time was NOT passing "normally", was shipped off to Whisper Hill to live with Agatha Harkness. )

But the "pattern" had been set, and fans and later fans-turned-pro began insisting that Lee and Kirby and Ditko "always intended" time pass in the Marvel Universe. (Even the term "Marvel Universe" was a sign of this. This is not FICTION! It is ANOTHER UNIVERSE!)

When "rules" were suggested, there would invariably be writers and editors who would deliberately flount them. Fanzine stuff. And that brings us to right where we are.

(Typed on my iPhone. Editing later, when I'm on the computer.)

THE PRESENT, when most of the stories took place. And that was always NOW. It didn't take me long to realize all the stories were written in the present tense. As an adult, contemplating a career in comics, I realized this little convention meant all the stories took place "now" NO MATTER WHEN THEY WERE WRITTEN. This is why, reading those Superman and Batman reprints that introduced me to the characters, I did not guess they were stories first published as much as a decade earlier. (Admittedly, this was also helped by fashions and automobile designs not changing all that dramatically.)

THE PAST, which was "before'. Rarely a specific amount of time "before". Whenever a reference was made to a previous encounter with a villain, for instance, it was usually simple "last time…" or "months ago…"

THE FUTURE, which most often was the DISTANT future, not just tomorrow or next week. Centuries hence. And time traveling characters were not bound to the relentless march of real time. They might return a month, a week, a decade later, and for them it could be no more than a day. (Which is why I was vaguely troubled by an AVENGERS ANNUAL, beautifully illustrated by Dave Cockrum, which gave us an OLD Immortus, reviewing his life. Why? Why have a character from the Future be seen as elderly? Sure, he'd get there eventually, but didn't this effectively take him out of play? His younger self would still be running around, but what interest would he be, since we'd seen the END of his story?)