How old are your superheroes?

[Ulysses]

Heroes have archetypal age. There are only six ages. Baby, child, teenager, adult, senior, eternal.

[Gero4568]

Superman - 35-40
Lois - 35-40
Jimmy Olsen - early 30s
Kon-El - 19-ish
Chris Kent - Early 20s
Jon Kent - 10

Batman - 40-45
Dick Grayson - 25-30
Selina Kyle - 35-40
Barbara Gordon - 25-30
Tim Drake - 17-20
Stephanie Brown - 17-20
Damian - 10-13
Alfred: 65-ish

Diana: 35-40
Donna Troy: 25-30
Cassie Sandsmark: 17-20
Steve Trevor: 35-40

Barry Allen: 30-35
Wally West: 25-30
Bart Allen: 15-18

Hal Jordan: 35-40
John Stewart: 30-35
Guy Gardner: 30-35
Kyle Rayner: 25-30

[SecretWarrior]

[Zero Hunter]

To me all the Legion members are in their early to mid 20's unless they were created to be "new" kid. Like in the last run I would say most of the Academy kids were in their mid to late teens while the members of the Legion itself were all 20+.

[Tzigone]

Yeah, their ages have bounced around, but that one doesn't work for me. Dick was 15 when Hal became GL and 18 when John appeared (as a college gradate) in 1971. Wally, who was 13 or 14, hadn't graduated high school yet. Even Kara, who aged faster than the other teens, only aged 7 years in that time. But, like I said, they bounce around, so we can all pick favorites.

It's Kara that messes with my head - can't settle on anything for her.

[Adekis]

I really like Young Superman. So my favorite pre-Flashpoint design for the Man of Steel is the Superboy look from the late '70s, when the likes of Mike Grell, Joe Staton, James Sherman, and others, drew Kal less as a kid, and more as a young man, in keeping with his older Legion peers. I also love the Golden Age and the New 52 Supermen; in a lot of ways they're the versions of the character I most claim as "mine," nostalgically. I wish Rags Morales had gotten to do more of the pseudo-Golden Age "First Wave" style Superman he clearly thought he was signing up for with Morrison (only to find out that he was wrong within mere issues). On the Golden Age side, Shuster rarely drew Superman as particularly youthful in the art, but Siegel described Superman as "a young man" in captions during those early days.

So I'd put my ideal Superman around age 27, having started his public career as Superman at age 21, after graduating college and dating a mermaid for a while. That's older than he's meant to be in the Legion stories, but I think you can look at some of that art and you'd be able to say "25" if other pre-Crisis artists hadn't conditioned us to think that "Superboy's" entire facial bone structure magically changes to be really lantern jawed around when he becomes Superman, sometime after his eighteenth birthday but while he was still in college, if I remember my Silver Age lore right. :P I'd dismiss that whole thing and just give my "Young Superman" the "Older Superboy" look.

To describe the rest of the Superman sub-world:

Kal/Clark: 27
Lois: 29

Clark and Lois are more professional friendly rivals and a good team when they join forces, than they are love interests. Lois has a little more romantic interest in Kal-El than in Clark Kent, but our boy Superman, ever the realist about the potential for unintended coercion when the most powerful man alive is involved, has never made a move on anyone unless as Clark. Lois may one day force the issue, however, and Superman has gone to at least one possible future where they're married with two kids.

Jimmy: 23 and Clark's best friend in the world.
Perry: like 60
Cat Grant: 31
Luthor: 35
Guardian Clone: physically 31
Kon-El: physically 16
Newsboys: Kon's age
Jose Delgado: 26
Maggie F. Sawyer: 31
Bill Henderson: 34
Casey: 24
Serling Roquette: 37 (because I've fancast Jodie Whittaker and you can't stop me)
Jenet Klyburn: 30
Steve Lombard: 41
Kara: 17

Side not, Kara, in my ideal world, isn't called "Supergirl" because of the systemic infantilization of the female gender, she's just actually a teenager and chose the name for herself. She's a kid and kind of revels in her youth. Whether or not she'll be stuck with this later out of public inertia is something she and Clark have discussed. On a similar note, whenever Kal time travels to the future, all his 30th century friends insist on calling him "Superboy", so... he does have some kind of point.

Batman's sub-universe has a whole different thing going on though. It doesn't take me much prodding to agree that a Young Batman and a Young Superman would go together really well, especially if both were drawn in pseudo-Golden Age style by Rags Morales, Supes to resemble early Action Comics, Bats to resemble First Wave. In a vacuum though, I frame the Batman world very differently, agewise, and not really with regard to what's going on in Metropolis.

Bruce: 46
Dick: 26

While Bruce is the common grouchy, hyper-disciplined Batman, Nightwing acts more like the dashing, Bronze Age Batman.

Jay: either 16 and Robin or 19 and Red Hood
Tim: 14 and Robin (if Jay isn't Robin)
Babs: 30 and Oracle
Jim: like 55
Cass Cain: 16 and Batgirl

Thunderworld

Billy: 10
Mary: 13
Freddy: 12

This has nothing to do with his age, but Freddy hates Nazis so much you guys. He hates Nazis more than any other super-hero does, and any time there's Nazis to fight and time to bring him in, he gets a phone call out of respect for how much he's done to fight them and how sad he'd be if he was left out. I just love how much the Blue Cyclone hates Nazis, you know?

Darla: 8
Pedro: 14
Eugene: 9
Captain Marvel: 35

Alright, I think I'm hero aged out for the moment.

[Slim Shady]

Age is one thing I've never got too hung up on. I don't need an exact age, a ballpark figure is fine.

But if I had to, I like Morrison's Batman approach of a decade in comics is year. So for me that puts Batman and Superman in their early 30s. The next ones like WW and Flash and Hal Jordan, I put around that same age or a couple of years younger. This gives me my Robins from early 20s down to 13ish.

[Tzigone]

Bruce: 46
Dick: 26

While Bruce is the common grouchy, hyper-disciplined Batman, Nightwing acts more like the dashing, Bronze Age Batman.

Jay: either 16 and Robin or 19 and Red Hood
Tim: 14 and Robin (if Jay isn't Robin)
Babs: 30 and Oracle

Thank you for these ages - I really do hate fic and continuities that make Jason Dick's peer rather than Tim's. Or even half way between them. It's just so incredibly wrong to me. The gap between Tim and Jason isn't incredibly important (later it says two years, but reading in the '80s, Jason might even have been a few months younger than Tim), but the the gap between Dick and Jason is important to me. Dick must be an adult when Jason becomes Robin to me.

[Adekis]

Thank you for these ages - I really do hate fic and continuities that make Jason Dick's peer rather than Tim's. Or even half way between them. It's just so incredibly wrong to me. The gap between Tim and Jason isn't incredibly important (later it says two years, but reading in the '80s, Jason might even have been a few months younger than Tim), but the the gap between Dick and Jason is important to me. Dick must be an adult when Jason becomes Robin to me.

Haha, glad you like it! My ideal "If I was Boss of the World" scenario for Batman has Jason still as Robin, because Joker's plan to murder him didn't go off, but I included the clause to age Jay up just a few years if Red Hood was too important to lose. I agree that Jay should be a lot younger than Dick and closer to Tim's age - and that's partly because I want Dick to be older, to fit that Bronze Age style, and partly because I think of Arsenal as pretty young after seeing the TV Young Justice, and don't want them too far apart. The last reason for a younger Jason is because of that scene where he attacks Tim. Always felt like they'd have to be pretty close to the same age in order for him to take it that personally, poor bastard.