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Based on...?

We do have some excellent examples of what occurs when the primary characters we all know and love are aged in something approximating real time. There is JB's Generations saga and Tom Defalco's MC2 Spider-Girl universe. Silver Age DC did any number of stories dealing with their characters marrying, having kids, and dealing with raising them.

All of these are properly set aside from the main storytelling universe in which these characters live. Even the JSA was given it's own world in which to explore their characters later years, safe from having to gray the temples of the Superman character on the bedsheets, action figures, video games, films, tv shows, and jars of peanut butter.

Aging characters is an excellent way of telling meaningful stories and channeling real dramatic impact, in part because it is honest. The characters in Wrath of Khan aged and it made for a better film. The subsequent films made use of this theme of advancing years as well, and it worked because the actors were aging as well. We travelled with them on that path, as they felt the pain that we all feel as the clock ticks inexoriably onwards.

There was a palpable dramatic impact to a scene in an issue of All-Star Comics from my youth in which the JSA members are all fighting amongst themselves and the battle is brought to a standstill when Superman flies through the wall and orders them all to stop. The caption mentions that he was the first amongst them, and he commanded significant respect on that count. It worked in large part because it was true. No reshuffling of story events. No tapdancing. No reboots. Superman was the first super-hero, and that mattered.

Unfortunately, with the passing of time, that cannot be the case. I may have been the last generation that could read the characters in some state approximating their original conception and carrying that forward.

In order to do Superman as a young man today the creators can either simply refuse to acknowledge the passage of time or constantly reboot him younger and younger each time. I believe the Nu52 iteration is only supposed to be 22 years old or so. Good for the idea of keeping the characters bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, evergreen in the eyes of the readers and the marketers, less so for writing stories that reflect the human condition, where, y'know, aging does in fact take place.

In the perfect world of comic books that I would like to read, Marv Wolfman could write his 20 year old Titans and have Dick and Kory experience all the trials and torments that come with that, while at the same time, Batman comics could choose to go with set-up or not. Dick could be 13, 15, 18... whatever age the current writer wanted. Readers who bawled their eyes out on message boards complaining that they want to read about Batman stories that take place NOOOOOWWW and not when Dick, who we all know to be 20, was 13, 15, whatever, would be told to relax. The stories are fine. The Batman stories you're reading do take place now. Writer A has one vision. Writer B another. The editors checked to make sure both visions were well-written, imaginative, and engaging. Everybody's fine. Breathe. The ever-demanding Game of Implications would be benched, and the all-consuming need for continuity hit in the back of the head with a shovel which would then be used to bury it in the shallow grave it deserves.

Failing that, the simplest answer is not to age the characters. That is not the way the publishers have chosen to go, however. A constant, never-ending tumult of reboots, resetting the clock to wherever the current staff feels it should be set is the order of the day and for the forseeable future, and all because everything has to fit, and flow seamlessly from one issue to another, across the entire line, across every genre and every experimental publishing effort. Everything must fit. It must. There can be no other way. None. None whatsoever. When discrepancies arise, it is a Crisis!! Quickly, Universes must DIE!!! And when it's all over, and it's safe once again for the minutaie-trackers and little George Olshevskys of the comics world to come out, the whole thing begins again, in ever shorter and shorter cycles.

Yeah, that's so much better...