But I called this a myth, and myth it is. As I sat at my drawing board a moment or so ago, reviewing today's completed pages, I looked up and across the room at the shelf that holds all (or almost all) of the Batman collectibles I have accumulated over the years, mostly via the Warner Store. Most prominent among these is the 2 ft tall figure of a Carmine Infantion style "Silver Age" Batman. He stands not far from a similar sized representation of a Curt Swan Superman of the same vintage. Like the Batman figure, the Superman figure is surrounded by smaller statues, showing different periods of his long history.

This is what proves that the notion of "growth" is a myth. Superman and Batman of the Silver Age only superficially resembled the characters created at the dawn of the Golden Age. When first introduced, both were vigilantes with no hesitation about killing bad guys. Superman was even portrayed as seeming to take a somewhat sadistic delight in coming up with particularly nasty deaths -- tossing bad guys into airplane propellors, and like that. Batman killed, and also casually violated what we could today call the civil liberties of the villains he chased. Yet, by the time I was introduced to these characters, less than 20 years after their "births", both had mellowed to the point of being almost unrecognizable, when compared to their beginnings. Both were deputized members of their respective cities' police forces, for instance.

What is significant, is that both -- along with other characters, such as Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, etc -- were adapting to the world in which they lived. Superman in the 1950s reflected the world of the 1950s. Batman did the same, and the same again for the 1960s. Yet none of these characters adapted thru what we would today call "growth". None of the characters were seen to age in any visible way, for instance. Robin was introduced, aged 10, in 1940, and if he was a day older when I "met" him in 1956, he did not show it. Jimmy Olsen was eternaly youthful, and Perry White crept no closer to retirement age.

What changed, then? What made it seem "necessary" that these character not merely respond to the changing world as fictional characters had for years -- James Bond was just a few years short of retirement age when introduced in "Casino Royale", but this was never mentioned again as his series of books grew longer and longer -- but actually change the way we mere mortals do, by getting older and experiencing dramatic, life altering events in their chronicles?

First, there was a distinct change in the readership. Younger fans began to drop away as the 70s approached, and seeing this the companied -- without even realizing it at first -- began tailoring their product for an older audience. Stan Lee and his cronies at the embryonic Marvel Comics clearly had an older audience in mind, tho Stan was savvy enough to layer his tales so that kids could still find a way into the adventures of Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. (Stan, in fact, tapped a subtle and brilliant gold mine when he elected to make many of his new characters "kids" themselves, mythical teenagers who, mostly, battled older villains. No accident that the teenaged Spider-Man fought people two and three times (and more!) his age, in the form of Doctor Octopus, or the Vulture, or the Sandman. No mere chance that the X-Men, teenagers all, battled a "brotherhood" of badguys all of whom were, as originally portrayed, older than them.*)

Next came the influx of fans-turned-pro, who brought with them, often in excess, the thinking they'd had when readers, seeking now as the creators to answer the questions they used to ask. Questions which, traditionally, had been neither asked nor answered.

It the early part of the 1970s we began to see this distinct sea change pick up speed. The lives of the characters began to unfold before our eyes in something very close to "real time" -- and sales, which had been dropping slowly but steadily for many yeas, began to drop even faster. Is it just a coincidence that the more "growth and change" the books contained, the lower the sales they commanded? Is there a direct connection between the "growth" in characters and the loss of readership? After all, a college age Peter Parker is not the guy I "met" in 1963, and he would not "speak" to a thirteen year old as the guy in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 1 spoke to me. A married-with-children Parker speaks even less to a young audience.

Superman, Batman and the rest appealed to large audiences (tho Batman's comics did not sell as well as Superman's, despite the number of readers who claimed him as their "favorite") for decades, changing to keep up with the times, as far as fashions, cars, politcs, and general story themes -- but not changing themselves. Not until those fans-turned-pro began making more and more of the decisions. Then Robin aged almost overnight and got shipped off to college. That was one foot on the banana peel.