Since the cat is already out of the bag, how do you put it back without maintaining the tent-pole characters in two continuities: one for "mature" readers (the current audience, such as it is) and one for "all ages" or whatever the target is (12-16?) where Parker is a teen and Aunt May is hocking her a piece of her good silver to buy him a replacement Carl Zeiss lens for one broken when his camera bag fell during a battle with Green Goblin?

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Just write comics the way Lee and Kirby did. That's what Byrne, Stern, and Miller did in the '80s.

I know some people fear alienating the aging fan base, but some of these people are the same ones who'll buy every issue of Captain Fonebone while complaining about how awful it is on the DC message board. They're hooked. And they aren't leaving.

JB mentioned James Bond earlier on, and I can think of another 'mainstream' example (I'm sure all of you can too) -- Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder series, which has only gotten more popular as it's gone on, which has the character change in some ways (he no longer drinks, he's married, he has different friends now than he did in his first novel) without the character really changing that much at all (he's still cynical yet heroic, and he seems to be the same age he was in his first appearance, even though time has passed around him and thirty 'real' years have passed). The cast of characters changes around him, generally for the better (the Irish mobster Mick is one of the great supporting characters in American detective fiction IMHO, and it was startling to realize, when I re-read Scudder novels in sequence, that he doesn't show up until about the seventh or eighth novel).

Readers buy lots of series in which time passes and yet doesn't pass, or passes very slowly, but I can't ever recall reading a review of a Scudder mystery that complains about the fact that Scudder should be pushing 75 by now. With some series, the passage of time is part of the pleasure (say, the Aubrey and Maturin books, or Hornblower) whereas in others it definitely isn't.

It's odd that comics got locked into the belief that change/aging is necessary for an adult take on things when it seems pretty obvious that it isn't. Indeed, I'm actually impressed when Block or, say, Robert Crais in his Elvis Cole and Joe Pike books manage to leave the history of the character intact (ie. Cole and Pike were in Viet Nam) while plugging ahead with stories of characters who would realistically have to be twenty or thirty years older than they're presented.

Cheers, Jon

Archie is one of the few survivors and they're a mere shadow of their former glory. 

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Excuse me? Last time I saw numbers, Archie Comics sold something like 850,000 units per month. Per month. And they sell thru venues like newsstands and grocery stores, when Marvel and DC have either given up or never even had a toehold.

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Just a couple of years before that, they were saying they were selling 100,000 copies an issue, so the numbers just don't add up for me.  And if they are selling 850,000 units per month, then it's extremely strange that absolutely no one is trying to go after their audience. 

But, assuming for a moment that 850,000 number is correct, then we have our next generation of comic readers.  They might not grow up to be Spider-Man readers, but they'll grow up on comics.

But I don't think it is correct.  With numbers like that, it should be as plentiful as a Silver Age Superman issue, yet I see fewer and fewer venues selling them.  The local convience stores around here all sell DC and Marvel comics, but Archie comics are no where to be seen.  So that 850,000 figure just smells mighty fishy to me. Perhaps it's what the Archie line sells a month, that would bring it more in line with the figures they announced only a couple of years earlier.

QUOTE: Just write comics the way Lee and Kirby did. That's what Byrne, Stern, and Miller did in the '80s.

Byrne and Stern? Yep.

Miller? A lot more iffy.

"Now, nothing of that remains but the wise-cracking*, the money problems* (occasionally), and the powers."

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Newsflash:  That's all you really need!

A couple of years ago I had a habit of setting up booths for selling comics in shopping malls.  This wasn't quite like a comics store.  This was me selling comics to people who have NEVER picked one up, and of all ages.  Aside from the latest stuff, I would take some older books with me - just not too old or expensive stuff, considering I was dealing with newbies.  If we stick with the Spider-man example, here's the scoop:  The pre-clone saga Michelinie books sell.  The new ones hardly do.  And something else I've noticed:  Someone who did buy a new Spidey book rarely came back for more.  Those that picked up an older one would start looking for more that came both immediately before and immediately after that issue.  In both eras, Peter is (I would assume) in his mid-twenties and married.

So where's the difference?  I've already had my say in my last post.  Figure it out for yourselves.

Trevor Colligan: there`s a member on this forum I believe who as a signature that says something like, "ultimate spider-man? no thanks, i`d rather read the original than some copy" . that kind of attitude bothers me, if you`d like to read the original series, fine by me, but you`re missing the point of ultimate spider-man, ultimate spider-man is what spider-man should be, a teenager of this year.

If you mean me, you'll see my quote is a little different - and really, it's more ON your side than against it. If you mean someone else, then they need to get their own material...

Back on topic, I think the problem is that people insist on seeing these characters as being complete, real people. They're not. They're a deliberate collection of specific attributes to support stories of a particular type. Stories which were told very successfully before I was born, less successfully since and they started to muck with the recipe.

All the angst-ridden Vampire roleplayers out there can whine about realism but, y'know, Kandor.

But make him older, especially make him a married man with a kid (even, or especially a dead one) and those elements no longer work. 26 year old Peter Parker who acts like 16 year old Peter Parker is not an "EveryTeen" character, he's an immature schmuck. (When I returned to working on Spider-Man after a long absence, one of the first things I noticed was how fans and pros alike tended to refer to Parker as a "loser". I argued against this, never having seen him in this way -- but the more I thought about it, the more I realized they were right. The teenaged Parker, who still informs my view of who and what Spider-Man should be all about, was constantly out of his depth, constantly struggling to deal with problems the world threw at him -- and Spider-Man. Problems beyond anything a "normal" teen would have to deal with. No way could he be called a "loser". But transfer those characteristics to someone who is pushing 30, and yes indeed, this guy becomes a big whiner, and a "loser" by anyone's definition.)

Okay, you need to do some homework before this discussion can continue. Both Marvel and DC have tried on more than one occasion to make forays into the areas of the marketplace effectively "owned" by Archie, and both have failed. Archie is there because they got there first, and staked out a territory that is enormously popular for them today. But it's not a territory that allows for much "new material" -- especially when those trying to make those inroads have made no real efforts to understand the marketplace.