The Comics Rack

Digression The Third

One of the interesting parts of working as a retailer was the conversations that comic fans would start up with any of us in the store or, in the worst case, anyone who would listen. Speculation about what was going to happen to "(fill in the blank)" was the norm, but other conversations would range from the strengths of this writer or that artist to full blown discussions over the history and continuity of the various comic companies. One particular topic is covered below (at least my side of it):

In the early 80s, both Marvel and DC ran into a problem. It didn't have to do with sales: Marvel was the head hog at the trough (with a reported 70% of all comic sales at one point) while DC was limping along with its what was left of the market (sales they had to share with all the other publishers combined). It didn't have anything to do with distribution: the direct market was a chugging along quite nicely and was in the midst of a growth phase that wouldn't give out until the mid-90s. No, the problem was age.

Originally, comics had been published using the pulp magazines as a model. Characters were tried out and, using sales as an indicator, were either left the same, changed, revamped or cancelled. Continuity? Who would care what happened from issue to issue; only sales mattered. Nobody ever really thought that a comic character would last five or six years, much less 50. But, to the surprise of all, they did and, over the years, both Marvel and DC took different approaches to the problems presented by characters who were getting a bit long in the tooth.

For Marvel, who hadn't published super-heroes continually since the 30s (unlike DC) they simply revived a couple of the old stalwarts in the 60s with little or no explanation (Captain America: when in doubt, freeze; Sub-Mariner: who knew how old he was anyway?; and the Human Torch: updated as a new character) and then left it to the writers and artists to bring Golden Age characters into the continuity as they saw fit. DC, on the other hand, had published the adventures of Superman and Batman continuously since their inception and, in order to solve the problem of aging, simply did a reboot of their two flagship characters in the 50s when they also introduced updated versions of most of their Golden Age characters-a move that began the Silver Age of comics.

While the two solutions to the aging problem worked in the 60s, by the 80s, comic fandom was much larger and more demanding than the fans of the earlier times: they took continuity seriously. Fans wanted to account for the passage of time and spent lots of time trying to figure out how old Superman really was (the Silver Age incarnation had a childhood that kept on moving up in time to basically "freeze" the character around 30 years of age). If Reed Richards and Nick Fury fought the Nazis in World War II, how come they were not contemplating retirement? Some Golden Age characters were portrayed as old while others seemed to be young and vibrant...how come? And did time pass for super-heroes or did it stand still? These questions, and others, caused both Marvel and DC to look at the way they were handling their super-hero lines and, just as in the 60s, they both took different approaches to the problems caused by the passage of years.

At first, Marvel took an editorial policy that each monthly comic represented the equivalent of about a day, or less, of real time. This meant that the Marvel characters aged very slowly and fans shouldn't worry about their own observations of the passage of time, Christmas and New Year's Eve nonwithstanding. When this did not prove to be enough, sometime in the early 80s, Marvel Editor In Chief Jim Shooter wrote a memo that eventually was leaked to the fan press. In the memo, Shooter suggested that the best way to approach the passage of time was to change the characters in the Marvel continuity. In other words, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Peter Parker would cease to be Iron Man, Captain America and Spider-Man and that new characters would take over these super-hero identities! Thor no longer Don Blake? Someone else acting as the Fantastic Four? Needless to say the fan press exploded, angry letters poured into Marvel and the memo was later explained away as a suggestion for short 3 issue runs of some of the books in an attempt to generate new reader interest. Eventually, the creators of the various books came up with their own ideas to explain the "why" of the aging question, Marvel never addressed the problem in a company wide manner and the problematic portions of the continuity simply got updated over time.

DC, of course, took a slightly different tact to the problem. For a short time, the powers that be sort of danced around Marvel's explanation for the passage of time. After all, most of the DC characters were already grown up and, outside of Dick Grayson, didn't change with the passage of time. This tact didn't last for long, however, and in an attempt to both update and streamline the DC Universe, DC released Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985. Crisis was groundbreaking in scope and, unlike Marvel's Secret Wars in 1984, was a company wide crossover that had major implications and change for all the characters (and Earths) in the DC Universe.

Today, I'm not quite sure how the passage of time is being handled. Problems seem to arise every 20 years or so and it would seem that its nearly time for character aging to become and issue once again. Of course, the fan base is much smaller than it was in the 80s and, from what I've read, the fans of today are relatively new to comics and don't have a lot of knowledge about the origins of their favorites (or how old they may actually be). For me, I don't really care if Superman, Wolverine or Captain America are 25 or 150: all I've ever wanted out of comics is a good story that is well drawn and I'm a happy camper!