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Mike Norris
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4274
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| Posted: 09 July 2013 at 9:35am | IP Logged | 1
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In Checking my CA Essentials, the Lee-Kirby version makes no mention of Pearl Harbor. The splash features "1941", which might indicate when the story takes place. Roy Thomas has the Invaders being formed prior to December of 1941, I doubt an archivist like Roy would place it later. IIRC, it was Steve Gerber who placed Cap's origin after Pearl Harbor. But that was retconned away.
Edited by Mike Norris on 09 July 2013 at 9:36am
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133334
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| Posted: 09 July 2013 at 9:44am | IP Logged | 2
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IIRC, it was Steve Gerber who placed Cap's origin after Pearl Harbor. But that was retconned away. •• Along with a lot of other elements Gerber "added" -- like an older brother who was killed, and Steve Rogers being from a wealthy family!
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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 09 July 2013 at 10:59am | IP Logged | 3
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BRIAN: I was never a Barry Allen-Flash kid. He didn't interest me. I was
11 when he died and Wally took over. As a child, I found Wally West
much more interesting. I read his adventures and really got into the
character. I was 19 when Impulse entered the scene. He didn't interest
me, but that was okay. He didn't interest me because he was just like
my friends' kid brothers.
SER: The Barry Allen FLASH stories prior to CRISIS were a nadir for
the character, I think. That's not a reflection on Allen. I think you could
have still revamped him with a new artist and writer (like was done with
Wally) and even depower him rather than kill him, so his speed was
more manageable.
Creators started depicting characters like Hal Jordan and Barry Allen
as boring, middle-aged men -- no wonder kids weren't interested. But
there was no reason you couldn't depict them as the relatively young
men they were meant to be.
I thought JB's Superman looked and felt younger than Curt Swan's but
he was still eternally 29 -- he just looked and acted like it! And in a way
that was perfectly in character rather than desperately "kewl." Clark
ditched the blue suits, and Lois had the latest fashions.
I recall a story that poked fun at Barry Allen for his crewcut, which had
been in style when he debuted. Give him a modern (but in character)
hair cut and don't depict him as a guy stuck in the 50s.
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Peter Martin
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 17 March 2008
Location: Canada
Posts: 15955
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| Posted: 09 July 2013 at 2:23pm | IP Logged | 4
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Trying to update haircuts is a dangerous game, as evidenced by Superman's mullet.
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James Gouldsmith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 December 2012
Posts: 96
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| Posted: 09 July 2013 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | 5
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The question of aging is a subset of the question of change itself. If you disallow the character from aging, integrity demands that your character can't change from one story to the next unless you're willing to accept a 12 year old Robin with 70 years of combat experience. If you refuse that, then how do you determine how many fights against the Joker he should remember and that should 'count'?
The best solution I came up with is to simply reboot the entire universe every ten years, January of each new decade. There doesn't have to be any big Crisis, just wrap up the current tales and start over with the new version next month.
Of course, this has problems itself - what if little Timmy's first comic is the last of a decade's run, for instance - but it has a lot more advantages, imho. You can synch a character to the times better, you can change outfits easily, you can have real character growth most importantly.
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Stephen Robinson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5835
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| Posted: 09 July 2013 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | 6
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PETER: Trying to update haircuts is a dangerous game, as evidenced by Superman's mullet.
SER: I rank that with Uncle Ben's ponytail as an "out of character" update. Yes, that hairstyle was popular (sadly) but it's not anything Clark Kent would wear. Jonathan and Martha Kent were alive during World War II during the JB run, but now, they probably married during Vietnam. That doesn't mean they were former hippies (not *everyone* who lived through that time were, after all).
JAMES: The question of aging is a subset of the question of change itself. If you disallow the character from aging, integrity demands that your character can't change from one story to the next unless you're willing to accept a 12 year old Robin with 70 years of combat experience. If you refuse that, then how do you determine how many fights against the Joker he should remember and that should 'count'?
SER: THE SIMPSONS handles this well. It mentions events from past episodes and never attempts to reconcile it all with the fact that Bart and Lisa are still in grammar school.
I should stress that characters not aging only really bothers aging fans -- not the original target audience. When THE GREATEST JOKER STORIES came out 25 years ago, I devoured the issues and two of my favorites were the first Joker story from BATMAN No. 1 and "The Man Behind the Red Hood" story. The latter's plot hinges on the Joker having been active for 10 years... yet Robin was present in the first Joker story and is still very much a "boy wonder" in the "Red Hood" story. Did this even register with me? If so, I just didn't care.
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John Bodin
Byrne Robotics Member
Purveyor of Rare Items
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 3911
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| Posted: 09 July 2013 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | 7
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I really enjoyed the recent "Young Justice" series on Cartoon Network, and I thought the way aging was handled with the 5-year jump between season 1 and season 2 was well done.
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Jeremy Simington
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 10 April 2011
Location: United States
Posts: 687
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| Posted: 09 July 2013 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | 8
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Re: complaints that characters like Barry Allen and Hal Jordan were boring and had to be replaced by new, hipper characters.
This reminds me of the line by Jessica Rabbit in WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT: "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way." The Flash and Green Lantern aren't boring, they're just written (and edited) that way.
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James Gouldsmith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 December 2012
Posts: 96
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| Posted: 10 July 2013 at 4:31am | IP Logged | 9
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Then again, the problem with simply writing them better is you gotta explain why these guys with personalities like bricks are now acting differently.
The giant discrepancy between real time and comics time is the real problem, and its largely unsolvable, imho. You can either choose a static universe where events 'don't matter' or change stuff that somebody somewhere thinks is a vital element to the character. Either choice disappoints someone.
But, if you're taking the view, as I and all the comics companies currectly do, that superhero comics are essentially an invisible camera recording the soap opera of an actual person's life somewhere out there in the Multiverse , then that real and actual person will experience change.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 10 July 2013 at 5:32am | IP Logged | 10
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Then again, the problem with simply writing them better is you gotta explain why these guys with personalities like bricks are now acting differently.•• Only if you define "writing them better" as including all the elements -- such as aging -- that have not traditionally been a part of the characters. If, on the other hand, you define "writing them better" as actually following established structure, there is no problem. +++++ The giant discrepancy between real time and comics time is the real problem, and its largely unsolvable, imho. You can either choose a static universe where events 'don't matter' or change stuff that somebody somewhere thinks is a vital element to the character. Either choice disappoints someone. But, if you're taking the view, as I and all the comics companies currectly do, that superhero comics are essentially an invisible camera recording the soap opera of an actual person's life somewhere out there in the Multiverse , then that real and actual person will experience change. •• And the kids who were the original target audience will continue to be marginalized, and the ennui-engorged "adults" who worry about all the WRONG things will continue to grow bored and bitchy and demand the destruction of the form, as long as THEY are satisfied.
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
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Posts: 12717
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| Posted: 10 July 2013 at 5:52am | IP Logged | 11
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Superheroes don't need to grow up. Anyone reading comicbooks past their mid-teens should face the fact that they have grown up and gracefully, charitably leave to the next generation of children their own fair chance to discover and enjoy the same characters.
The only real change should be in readership... onto the next set of kids, and the next, and the next, and the next....
Superheroes need only experience, as JB has put it, the illusion of change.
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James Gouldsmith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 31 December 2012
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| Posted: 10 July 2013 at 7:24am | IP Logged | 12
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I'm not seeing any justification for the position that certain types of characters in one particular medium must remain static. Its essentially the same argument that musicians shouldn't artistically grow beyond the type of music they made for their first demo tapes, or that MASH should've stayed true to the largely just-for-jokes message of the movie, or that Picard should've stayed as stiff-necked and I personable as he was in the first couple of TNG seasons, just because of the various types of media they're in.
Y'all don't realize it, but you're all also basically arguing *against* the Marvel Revolution of the early 60s, imho. If characters shouldn't change, then why should they have character traits that demand emotional progress if not actual resolution? What's to be learned from a Bruce Banner that's eternally angry for no real reason if the reader can't follow his progress as he learns the reason for that anger and deals with it?
Y'all are basically arguing for stories with no real content and that don't teach anything; that the Reality TV model of empty entertainment just for having something happen in front of your eyeballs is what's best for superheroes.
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Topic Closed)
