Has there been any solid validation, of publisher's aversion to"aging"characters

[Cerulean Scarab]

With Rebirth technically over and we await the slowly churning Doomsday Clock to resolve the current continuity, I cant help but think back on the New 52. I liked a lot of it at the time, but in retrosepct, it was a massively silly idea to try and consolidate decades of comics history into a measly 5 years. Batman only had an exception made to explain his army of child soldiers, but even then they had to fudge it and say Tim wasnt really Robin.

While theyre fixing it now, this isnt the first time things like this have happened, and it probably wont be the last. Marvel has been guilty of it too. Theres this weird aversion of making superheroes seem old. And I dont know why.

When I was a kid, super-heroes were just "grown ups". I didnt think of their age at all, they could have been 25, or 50. When I was a teen, as long as the heroes were cool and the stories were crazy, I was happy. (I started really reading comics right before Infinite Crisis. Batmans age was less important to me than the fact he was fighting an army of ninja manbats. And over at Marvel, Spider-Man just emerged from a cocoon with fist spikes and night-vision) and as an adult, well, Im not far removed from the older characters.

So with all the effort over the years to de-age heroes and make them seem younger or "more relatable", I guess Im asking, has there ever been any evidence that de-aging characters actually makes them more popular? Or that aging characters makes them less popular? Are there concrete examples we can look at that say "the longer a hero stays early twenty-something, the better"? I prefer older heroes with a respectable legacy, but Im curious to understand the mindset that leads to things like New 52 and One More Day, and publishers vicariously chasing youth through their IPs

[Lee Stone]

The main factor involved, as witnessed by Marvel adopting 'Marvel Time' in 1968, is keeping the characters marketable for licensing.
Aging them, retiring them, replacing them, etc. makes it hard to have a marketable IP with a distinct look.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

It depends on the character and the stories being told with them.

If you are telling the stories of a Superman married to Lois Lane with a 10 year old son, then you don't want him in his late-20s/early-30s. Same goes for a Batman whose backstory involves the broad strokes of his publishing history. If you don't want to incorporate their backstories, as Didio tried to do with the New 52, then you can certainly make them any age you want. However, since the main draw for people following the long-running superhero universes is the fact that these are continuing adventures of the same characters that have been published since their debut--by creating entirely new iterations with little to no connections to their past adventures, DC had inadvertently severed the connection many fans had with those characters, causing them to flee in droves when the new stories failed to surpass what they had burned down to replace.

However, characters like Spider-Man are primarily defined by where they are in their lives. Spider-Man is about the dealing with the new responsibilities that come during the transition from adolescence to manhood. The further away from that idea Marvel took the character, the more creators struggled to figure out what to do with him. It's similar for Robin. The moment any of the Robins grow up too much, they can't really be Robin anymore and they need to become something else.

[Restingvoice]

They're icons. Like Mickey Mouse or Mario, they've been around forever and always around that same recognizable age, always fighting the same type of enemies. That way they can sell them forever with every new generation.

Which is why I think character aging, development, and death is a lost cause. The Titans generation grew up but now they're stuck in a certain age and a certain status where they are not allowed to be as old as Justice League generation or as respected because they have a status quo set for the classic generation. People already know death and replacement is never permanent.

This is also why I reject the creation of new superheroes as main characters. They already have so many and I know they're not going to invest the same attention as the classic. Once in a while they get lucky and struck gold, but they need to be at the right time and fulfill the right needs.

I always feel like they will have more chance writing it like Disney comics. Each short stories have meaning, but separate from each other. That way they can maintain that iconic status quo, write a world where the character grew up, do whatever they like, and people will not question the continuity. This way casual readers can also jump in at any time, there's no need to track down issue number whatever to read a back story, tales can be collected based on theme, any reader can pick whichever story and version they like, and there will be no debate on characterization because they know each version is different.

Eventually certain version will prove more popular, but as long as they keep it as a one shot and remember to not do a complex continuity, it will be fine.

When you announce that all characters exist in the same universe, you naturally invite people to ask for consistency. We know from experience they don't want to bother except when it's profitable, and the authors also don't like to be restrained. So a continuity free anthology will work best for these eternal icons.

[bat39]

'Comic book time' is a fact of the medium. I have no quarrels with it. However, it shouldn't stretch the suspension of disbelief too far.

Its as possible to believe that a 30 year old Superman went through all the adventures of the past 80 years of publication, as it is to believe that a 40 year old Superman did so. But when you squeeze in a 10 year old son, born some time into Superman's career to boot, then you'd better go with a 40 year old Superman.

That was precisely the problem with the New 52. They tried to have their cake and eat it too when it came to franchises like Batman and Green Lantern, where they wanted to preserve some amount of backstory. The result was a situation where Batman had 4 Robins in 5 years, or there were 4 human GL's in 5 years. (And Damian being 12 years old when Bruce and Talia would have only met 5 years ago in-continuity at most just takes the cake!)

[Carabas]

The fact that comics in America are a niche medium that very few people are even aware of still exists, whereas the European and Japanese, Korean... comic book industries are mass mediums read by millions says enough about DC and Marvel's need to keep everything the unageing (or worse, go through years of ageing and deveopment only to have everything be reset to factory conditions, again and again and again) and all set in the same universe, I think.

Comic book characters in the rest of the world largely come into categories:
You have those that live and age and eventually die or have a permanent happy ever after, never to be seen again.

And you have guys like Asterix, who have been in continuous publication longer than Marvel exists, and do not age, change, have arcs, grow as a person... They just are, forever unmutable. And they're generally not primarily aimed at adults and 100% child safe, and have virtually zero continuity. You read a story published in the 60's? Good, you're now completely up to speed for the latest instalment.

[Carabas]

'Comic book time' is a fact of the medium.

Ah, but it isn't. It's a part of certain comics series. You won't find one ounce of it in something like 100 Bullets. It's only intrinsically a apart of the way DC and Marvel have decided that superhero stories must be told. And even then books like Watchmen prove them wrong. Comic book time only becomes an issue when you're both too greedy and.or scared to let a character end, and at the same time insist on having intricate continuity and passage of time in your book.

[Lee Stone]

Matter of fact, in the current comics climate, where trade paperbacks being kept in print is a normal thing now, there really is nothing keeping Marvel or DC from letting their heroes age or change.
They can just reprint the trades over and over again.

[Carabas]

Matter of fact, in the current comics climate, where trade paperbacks being kept in print is a normal thing now, there really is nothing keeping Marvel or DC from letting their heroes age or change.
They can just reprint the trades over and over again.

That is what the rest of the world does. It's what DC-Vertigo, Image, Dark Horse... do.

It's not what the Big Two do. Tradition is one hell of a stepping stone.

[WebLurker]

Honestly, while we may complain when the Big Two undo progress that we like in the name of not changing the characters, do we really want the characters to age? Do we really want them to stop publishing new stories about our favorites? As much crap that comes with the sliding timescale, the illusion of change, and the Big Two's belief that their characters can never grow beyond their factory setting, I think in all honestly most of us would have to answer "no."

[Carabas]

Honestly, while we may complain when the Big Two undo progress that we like in the name of not changing the characters, do we really want the characters to age?

Yes!
Like they do with Judge Dredd.

Or even permanently die for good. I'm fine with that. Hitman is probably my favourite DC comic, and if somebody brought it back I wouldn't read it. Not even if it was Garth Ennis. I still haven't read that Section 8 mini he did.

Do we really want them to stop publishing new stories about our favorites? As much crap that comes with the sliding timescale, the illusion of change, and the Big Two's belief that their characters can never grow beyond their factory setting, I think in all honestly most of us would have to answer "no."

[Dr. Ellingham]

Do we really want them to stop publishing new stories about our favorites?

No one does. But this argument is really about legacy characters. Legacy character fans want all the originals to go away to repeat the inherited mantle / take-over story, over and over and over.

[Dr. Ellingham]

Im curious to understand the mindset that leads to things like New 52 and One More Day, and publishers vicariously chasing youth through their IPs

It's not youth specifically, but keeping them evergreen.

It's fairly self-explanatory - fictional characters don't have to age, and the sandbox they play in has never been real time.

And there's no benefit to that anyway. People don't read in real-time; back-issues and collected editions are forever.

[Carabas]

No one does. But this argument is really about legacy characters. Legacy character fans want all the originals to go away to repeat the inherited mantle / take-over story, over and over and over.

I came to superhero comics long after Hal Jordan and Barry Allen had kicked the bucket. When I got here Wally and Kyle were well established at THE Flash and THE Green Lantern, I never was interested in inherited mantle/take over stories.

It's not youth specifically, but keeping them evergreen.

It's fairly self-explanatory - fictional characters don't have to age, and the sandbox they play in has never been real time.

And there's no benefit to that anyway. People don't read in real-time; back-issues and collected editions are forever.

People don't read in real-time; back-issues and collected editions are forever, therefore there is no reason to not let the characters age and even die for real.

[Ra-El]

Yes!
Like they do with Judge Dredd.

Or even permanently die for good. I'm fine with that. Hitman is probably my favourite DC comic, and if somebody brought it back I wouldn't read it. Not even if it was Garth Ennis. I still haven't read that Section 8 mini he did.

Do we really want them to stop publishing new stories about our favorites? As much crap that comes with the sliding timescale, the illusion of change, and the Big Two's belief that their characters can never grow beyond their factory setting, I think in all honestly most of us would have to answer "no."

You should read Section 8, is really good and in any way undo or go against anything that happened on Hitman, that is one my favorite too.