Spider-Man: Life Story By Chip Zdarsky & Mark Bagley

[CentralPower]

I think as of right now his official age is 29, since he became Spider-Man when he was 15, we know Spider-Verse happens 12 years after that, and there has been at the very least 2 years since then, because of the whole 8 months between Secret Wars and the start of Worldwide, and then the year Scorpio is locked away.

This sort of math always breaks down. In a year or two, it will hold up less. In 3 or 4 years, it will not matter at all, largely because of the sliding time scale.
(That is simply the nature of comics.)

2013 was more or less the last year that the old 4:1 rule (4 years of page time : 1 year of real time).

Slott stated “13 years later” after Spider bite in the relaunch issue after Superior. So he was 28 at the rise of of Parker Industries before Secret Wars. Safe to say he is at least 29 by now. I have a feeling the time skips around Secret Wars could be retconned to be shorter.

Which "side" of a time-skip something happens on can help to telescope events. (IDW's "Transformers" comics used time-skips to cover the natural lag of monthly comics. For example, a three year time skip actually "covered" a year-long series that was actually set over the course of a few weeks, and a good chunk of the next series. IDW actually kept real-time for ~7 years. But, that takes editorial discipline, and they abandoned it.)

That means that Peter now Post-OMD was born in 1988-1989, the year after ASM Annual #21 IRL, and he got bitten by the spider three years after 9/11, which means he MJ and Gwen hit their college years around the Obama Presidency and the recession...can you imagine what that means. How does Goblin dropping Gwen off a bridge, you know lunatic flying around Manhattan on a glider look in a Post 9/11 era...

Changing sensibilities are another problem, beyond the question of "how much stuff can possibly happen to a character in ~15 years"? This sort of question is why hard reboots can be healthy. But, hard reboots, or even fuzzy changes (for example: swapping out ham radios for laptops) require changes that some fans cannot accept.

This is probably why Quesada has pushed against the idea of a strictly cohesive universe. (What would we rationally expect the NYC of Marvel to look like, considering everything that happens there in even one family of titles, never mind everything.) But, again, comic fans cannot accept this.

Whereas Miles Morales does feel like, read like a member of Generation Z, and going forward he will have to be the high school kid of each generation, which is going to be harder to do but not impossible.

Miles reads like an outlier for that generation, being smarter than average. (Most teenagers, of any generation, are not as tolerable as Miles.)

Writing kids is difficult. Even if the writer can pull it off, the audience is likely to misread it. (DC's Jason Todd Robin was probably the most realistically written kid character in comics. But, it was misread as "the character is a snotty little punk at best, and probably a psychopath" rather than "he is a damned teenager, of course you do not like him". That misreading has since been validated, and defines the character long after he has aged on-page).

[Revolutionary_Jack]

This sort of math always breaks down. In a year or two, it will hold up less. In 3 or 4 years, it will not matter at all, largely because of the sliding time scale.
(That is simply the nature of comics.)

2013 was more or less the last year that the old 4:1 rule (4 years of page time : 1 year of real time).

Old stories come forward in time, recent stories recede into oblivion. 3 year old arcs become a few months, maybe weeks as time pass. Yeah that's what happens. It helps if you have solid generation markers. Like with a married Peter, you can basically slide up and time, at a minimum they would be married for more than a year, so you can write them still-in-the-throes of newly wed or you know you can do it up to three years later and make them a little more experienced in the married thing.

2019 is the last time you can do Life Story and for it to still have some meaning

Changing sensibilities are another problem, beyond the question of "how much stuff can possibly happen to a character in ~15 years"? This sort of question is why hard reboots can be healthy. But, hard reboots, or even fuzzy changes (for example: swapping out ham radios for laptops) require changes that some fans cannot accept.

I actually think a hard reboot would be right for Marvel. You can create a new timeline that lasts for the same 50 years plus that the original one has, and when that loses steam, you can then reboot the universe again.

This is probably why Quesada has pushed against the idea of a strictly cohesive universe. (What would we rationally expect the NYC of Marvel to look like, considering everything that happens there in even one family of titles, never mind everything.) But, again, comic fans cannot accept this.

The fact is that the Internet makes it harder than ever to accept that. The Fleeting Demographic Rule, or the "illusion of change" depended on comics readers and most consumers not having access to, or knowing that information about continuity/timelines/stuff. With the Internet, the cat is out of the bag. The argument that the internet represents a small vocal minority...that's true for movies and games and other stuff but it's not true for comics readers where I do think the internet represents the readers, since comics command a small audience and 616 Marvel commands a smaller audience than stuff like Ultimate Marvel did.

[Inversed]

In terms of comic length and time jumps, one example I use is for Runaways, the current run takes place about 2 years after Gert's death, which happens right before Secret Invasion. This implies that supposedly EVERYTHING that happened between Secret Invasion and Secret Empire was just 2-3 years, which we know is impossible.

But that isn't a huge deal since Runaways is such a niche and standalone part of the Marvel Universe it can get away with stuff like that if it suits their story. Spider-Man is Marvel's biggest property, so I think its alot more fair to judge how they may handle time being passed, of course making some exceptions, like exactly *when* everything would happen due to the sliding timescale. Spider-Man's history taking place over ~15 years I think does make sense overall, the amount of growth between each issues/eras fluctuates, but it still connects.

[Snoop Dogg]

you know what would make the sliding timeline easier to understand
if books like runaways stopped giving specific timespans

hard reboots are bad for the big two

[your_name_here]

you know what would make the sliding timeline easier to understand
if books like runaways stopped giving specific timespans

hard reboots are bad for the big two

Correct. They need to stop giving dates & just use “now”, too.
But then again, it’s comics. Just go along for the ride and don’t worry about in-universe time or it’ll never make sense.

[Kevinroc]

Outside of AUs, Marvel will never say Peter is over 30.

[your_name_here]

Yeah, keep him relatable. Early 30s at the most.

[Miles To Go]

Outside of AUs, Marvel will never say Peter is over 30.

The only comic so far to visibly age him is MC2. Even the RYV Peter looks pretty young despite being canonically in his 40s.

No telling what age newspaper Peter and MJ are, but the art makes them look late 30s.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

you know what would make the sliding timeline easier to understand
if books like runaways stopped giving specific timespans

That's the job of the editors and EIC to put a stop to that, not the writers. And you know

...hard reboots are bad for the big two

The Crisis Reboot on the whole worked pretty well for DC. To the extent that when the New 52 tanked, they basically restored and embraced the Crisis as Status Quo and so on. In either case, the problem for Marvel, is that because their comics and stories are set in a real city and so much of it is tied to actual history, it's harder to do that then DC because there you just have fake cities like Gotham, Metropolis, Central City, Coast City, Star City, Bludhaven.

Correct. They need to stop giving dates & just use “now”, too.

You mean "some time ago", "a few years back", "several months ago" and so on...it'll look pretty cheesy.

But then again, it’s comics. Just go along for the ride and don’t worry about in-universe time or it’ll never make sense.

The bigger problem is that Marvel is more integrated these days than they used to be. Everything is centered on the Avengers and SHIELD and other super-teams and so on. Every big hero is on multiple teams, you have one event and crossover per year, sometimes more than one. Before it wasn't like that. Everyone used to be in their own small corner, team-ups and so on were standalone, brief, one-off events with no story consequences carried on.

It's easier to do sliding time scale and so on when you don't have common shared narratives and experiences.

In the case of Marvel, some things won't change. Captain America will always be a World War 2 soldier/propaganda hero who got thawed in ice. The de-thawing might happen earlier, might happen later, but yeah, Cap is the guy who fought the last consensually agreed good war. Magneto will always be a Holocaust survivor, and him and Charles Xavier met some 15 years later during the Cold War. So going forward you are going to need to make Xavier and/or Magneto immortal.

Other details...Uncle Ben used to be a serviceman who fought in WW2 and once glimpsed Captain America. Flash Thompson is a Vietnam War veteran. So those stuff is changed and altered. As is that famous story where Matt Murdoch defended a Vietnam War veteran (which Stan Lee considers his favorite issue ever written).

[Mister Mets]

Yeah, keep him relatable. Early 30s at the most.

The problem is that once you establish his age in a comic, you can calculate it for later appearances.

[Inversed]

you know what would make the sliding timeline easier to understand
if books like runaways stopped giving specific timespans

hard reboots are bad for the big two

I think the only reason Runaways in particular gave the timespan so that the Gert and Chase romance wouldn't seem even more awkward than it already was, given the age differences.

Normally timelines are kept vague and open to exactly how much occurred between each time, with the few exceptions, like say for Spider-Man, where we know that the end of Scorpio Rising (#11/767) and the beginning of Threat Level Red (#794) take place over the course of a year since that's an actual plot point. And thus you can use this information to piece together other storylines, like how both Civil War II and Secret Empire took place within this time frame as well.

And I agree, at this point reboots are a bad idea, it just always complicates matters over what to bring over, what to re-explain, etc. Not to mention with the internet making so much information on all these stories and characters really easy to look up, it's not like you have a way of not knowing everything. It's why I wonder if Marvel or DC would ever try doing a "Ultimate Universe" again in this day and age.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

It's why I wonder if Marvel or DC would ever try doing a "Ultimate Universe" again in this day and age.

60s,
The Ultimate Universe was inspired by the whole "It's the 21st Century" thing, so there was an additional context it had that it didn't have today. And even then it was basically the third attempt. A few years before they did Heroes Reborn, a year before USM, you had John Byrne's Chapter One. Those were planned as legit attempts to overthrow and reboot the Marvel Universe but it didn't work, mostly because it had nothing to offer to non-casual readers.

Doing a continuity reboot and fix isn't worth it if it's not going to bring in new readers. Ultimate Marvel wasn't a reboot but an entirely new continuity and universe, and unlike Heroes Reborn and others it definitely felt like what if these characters appeared today in the 21st Century. And it's basically worked so well that, Ultimate Spider-Man at least, still holds up. So there's no need to do that, not until you get a sufficient generation shift or change in zeitgeist.

Marvel has always been shaped and defined by culture and social changes. Captain America is a World War II propaganda character invented before America's entry into World War II. The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Lee's entire revolution was definitely informed by the generation gap and shift away from the post-war era. Miles Morales was inspired by the election of Obama.

[CentralPower]

Old stories come forward in time, recent stories recede into oblivion.

Not quite. Prominent or defining runs come forward, the rest fades.

We remember...."Demon in a Bottle" because it was defining. But, Ellis' (more recent) "Iron Man" run is also defining.

More older content fades. But, we have to work harder to remember it because....it faded. And, the defining stuff that carries forward skews our memory.

I actually think a hard reboot would be right for Marvel.

If it did not happen 5 years ago, it ain't gonna happen.

I agree that it would be a good idea. And, the resulting fantrums would be *awesome* to behold. But, it ain't gonna happen.

The argument that the internet represents a small vocal minority...that's true for movies and games and other stuff but it's not true for comics readers where I do think the internet represents the readers, since comics command a small audience and 616 Marvel commands a smaller audience than stuff like Ultimate Marvel did.

Ultimates started off strong. But, it consistently shed readers and was moribund by 2007 or so. (My memory of when might be a little off. But, it was viable for well under a decade.)

Some of this is also unique to *Marvel* fans, not comic fans. Traditionally, DC fans are more accepting of change, if only in principle. A DC fan may not like a given change (either to a series, or the entire line). But, they accept the idea of change, and that some runs may be discarded.

For whatever reason, Marvel fans have a harder time with this. And, Marvel is getting sick of it.

This implies that supposedly EVERYTHING that happened between Secret Invasion and Secret Empire was just 2-3 years, which we know is impossible.

That is actually consistent with the old 4:1 rule. A kid starting high school in fall of 2008 would read about a year's worth of Marvel page-time by the fall of 2012.

Those events could easily by fit in to a few years. It would be a *hectic* few years. But, it could be done.

The Crisis Reboot on the whole worked pretty well for DC. To the extent that when the New 52 tanked, they basically restored and embraced the Crisis as Status Quo and so on.

Not quite. DC was supposed to sort things out after they moved their offices in 2015. That still has not happened. DC is aggressively pushing the idea of an organized multiverse. But, they have no apparent purpose for the increasingly convoluted and contrary lore.

There are individual series that are worth reading. But, there is no reason to assume those series will last more than a year.

nd I agree, at this point reboots are a bad idea, it just always complicates matters over what to bring over, what to re-explain, etc. Not to mention with the internet making so much information on all these stories and characters really easy to look up, it's not like you have a way of not knowing everything.

When done correctly, a hard reboot simplifies things. Readers know which runs have been discarded, and can then just move the hell on. Most of DC's problems in the 1980s centered around Hawkman, a character that has become synonymous with feckless editing.

Superman's hard reboot did not come until ~1 years after the original "Crisis on Infinite Earths" (in 1986). But, it was easy enough to understand because it was a hard reboot that could be explained in a few sentences. (There was also less need to appease crying fans in the 1980s. It was understood that you had to accept change and move on with your life.)



Right now, Marvel is betting on the movies to lure in new readers. But, how to keep them?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Not quite. Prominent or defining runs come forward, the rest fades.

We remember...."Demon in a Bottle" because it was defining. But, Ellis' (more recent) "Iron Man" run is also defining.

Is "Demon in a Bottle" still defining? Because the Iron Man of the movies did well enough without adapting it. It did borrow more ideas from Ellis' Extremis Run and other concepts.

More older content fades. But, we have to work harder to remember it because....it faded. And, the defining stuff that carries forward skews our memory.

In the case of Iron Man and other titles defining content is few and far between, but in the case of Spider-Man, there has always been defining content in different eras.

In the case of Spider-Man, a lot of defining content happened in the first 150 issues, which was the entire high school and college era, and it includes Peter's first fights with his big rogues, his great romances (Betty, Gwen, MJ). Issues #150 to around #220 is less defining but then you had the Stern-DeFalco-Michelinie era which is defining since this included the Hobgoblin, Felicia Hardy, MJ and Peter's second romance which led to marriage, then Kraven's Last Hunt, then Venom and Carnage, then after that the Clone Saga...which brought Norman Osborn back leading to a number of key stories as he became top goblin. Then you had JMS' run which was defining and had Morlun, who ultimately became the villain of the Spider-Verse events, and it led to Spider-Man becoming New Avengers and so on.

So what do you for a character who had defining moments in multiple eras and multiple ages and stages? How do you decide which happened when? In the case of the X-Men,obviously the Claremont run is defining, moreso than the earlier eras. In the case of Fantastic Four, the Lee-Kirby run, then the John Byrne run, and I guess the Jonathan Hickman run are defining. But Spider-Man has been unusually rich in terms of periods.

Some of this is also unique to *Marvel* fans, not comic fans. Traditionally, DC fans are more accepting of change, if only in principle. A DC fan may not like a given change (either to a series, or the entire line). But, they accept the idea of change, and that some runs may be discarded.

DC have always done the reboot and universe relaunch thing. Like the Superman of Siegel-Shuster, and the Batman of Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson is not continuous to the characters you have today in the comics. Nor is the Wonder Woman of William Moulton Marston. In the Golden Age you had a Flash and Green Lantern that was different from Hal Jordan and Barry Allen who came later. And Post-Crisis you had Kyle Rayner and Wally West. I personally think it was a huge mistake to bring Hal Jordan back. I mean yeah redeem him, say he wasn't behind the whole Parallax thing, and make his death this tragic thing...but bringing him back to an audience that was attached to Kyle Rayner and especially John Stewart from the cartoons, was a terrible mistake brand-wise...and all it amounted to was that lousy Green Lantern movie. And the cool thing was that when the Crisis happened, you had stories like Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow which was the end of the Silver-Bronze Age Superman, so the audience that grew up with that take on the character had an ending and closure.

And you know DC everything is set in fake cities with little ties to real places and history. But Marvel has always been "the world outside your window" and that means that timeline will always be an ongoing problem.

When done correctly, a hard reboot simplifies things. Readers know which runs have been discarded, and can then just move the hell on. Most of DC's problems in the 1980s centered around Hawkman, a character that has become synonymous with feckless editing.

And today, the only Hawk character people care about is Hawkgirl. A character that originated as his love interest, and then made into his superhero partner, and ultimately overshadowed her boyfriend.

[Snoop Dogg]

The only reason to do a hard reboot is to escape continuity, which is pointless because A. Good writers use continuity as a tool, and don't make it a burden on readers trying to understand what's in front of them - B. the continuity you're trying to escape will just come back anyway as you publish dozens of books every month and creators have more incentives to rehash older, famous stories.

The longest and biggest fictional universe in history is what makes the line unique. It is a badge of honor. It is not a problem except when the less talented clearly make it so. And if they do shift to a reboot, it will just be an exercise in frustration as fans of less vital properties and characters have to wait for them to be reintegrated (or they just might not be) much of the old continuity eventually being brought back anyway, creating a more complicated continuity than if you just left things alone.

It would especially be of no benefit to Spider-Man, a franchise with a generally linear overall narrative that can still be briefly summarized despite there being decades of material.