Avengers Ages (616)

[CrimsonEchidna]

Trying to apply any sort of consistent time scale to Marvel is an exercise in futility.

Pretty much. Like I know Peter more or less debuted the exact same age as the OG X-Men, with Johnny Storm hypothetically being about a year older than them. And yet characters like Scott, Jean and Hank are definitely written as if they're older than Pete and Johnny now in the present. lol

Not to mention even with some of the "younger" characters like Magik, X-23, Squirrel Girl, and the Young Avengers crew it feels like Marvel can't make up their mind if they're actually in their 20s now or just their late teens.

[9th.]

I just consider all the older Avengers characters to be in the 30s and 40s except for Steve and Thor. It hurts my brain less that way.

[9th.]

Pretty much. Like I know Peter more or less debuted the exact same age as the OG X-Men, with Johnny Storm hypothetically being about a year older than them. And yet characters like Scott, Jean and Hank are definitely written as if they're older than Pete and Johnny now in the present. lol

Not to mention even with some of the "younger" characters like Magik, X-23, Squirrel Girl, and the Young Avengers crew it feels like Marvel can't make up their mind if they're actually in their 20s now or just their late teens.

They're early 20s in my eyes, I believe Laura had her 20th or 21st birthday already iirc.

[BitParallel]

They aren't using the 1st Gulf War (which is more like 30 years ago) or any real war anymore. In the recent History of the Marvel Universe they created a Viet Nam War analog called the Sin-Cong War. That way all the characters with ties to the Viet Nam War have a fictional war that also moves on the sliding timeline.

I know, but in this panel Tony was talking about his first “official” contract. It has nothing to do when he became iron man.

It's an example number - if the panel is from a five year old comic, the date mentioned in that comic would need adjusting by five years - hence 1971 becomes 1976.

What issue are those panels from?

These are old, 2005-2006. Extremis

[Digifiend]

They're early 20s in my eyes, I believe Laura had her 20th or 21st birthday already iirc.

20th. She's still too young to drink alcohol (you need to be 21), which Old Man Logan was disappointed about in Laura's Civil War II tie-in because it meant she had no beer in the fridge.

[Digifiend]

I know, but in this panel Tony was talking about his first “official” contract. It has nothing to do when he became iron man.



These are old, 2005-2006. Extremis

15 years ago? Long enough for at least a couple years to have passed in-universe. He was born in the mid-80s now. If no time had passed in universe it would be 1986, but I think 1984 is more accurate. Which makes him 36 (my age!).

[GenericUsername]

That's just wild to imagine. Because when I was a kid, he was my dad's age. It's just so weird.

[Witchfan]

Black Widow's first life was 1928-2017. She was killed in Secret Empire and then cloned. She is now on her second life.

[Jabare]

Black Widow's first life was 1928-2017. She was killed in Secret Empire and then cloned. She is now on her second life.

wait wait wait.....come again

[JudicatorPrime]

The Scarlet Witch series changed their birth to the 1990s Yugoslavian Civil War.

This illustrates perfectly why trying to figure out a character's age is a bit of a Sisyphean endeavor. Ben Grimm and Reed Richards are both Korean War vets. Doctor Doom is Reed's college roommate, so their ages should be similar. That puts all three men in their Nineties. Iron Man and Rhodey were both in the Viet Nam conflict. Even if they were teens in the late 60s early 70s, they'd still be pushing 70 years of age now.

Marvel's sliding time scale doesn't explain everything and really just mucks up things even more for some characters. It's best to reboot origins and redefine age as they go. Everyone can't be immortal, long-lived or a clone. But sadly, that seems to the more common explanation for an increasing number of characters.

[Frontier]

Black Widow's first life was 1928-2017. She was killed in Secret Empire and then cloned. She is now on her second life.

I wonder if she's biologically 20 or 30 now...

[davew128]

This illustrates perfectly why trying to figure out a character's age is a bit of a Sisyphean endeavor. Ben Grimm and Reed Richards are both Korean War vets.

WWII actually. Xavier and his step brother Cain were Korean War vets.

[PCN24454]

This illustrates perfectly why trying to figure out a character's age is a bit of a Sisyphean endeavor. Ben Grimm and Reed Richards are both Korean War vets. Doctor Doom is Reed's college roommate, so their ages should be similar. That puts all three men in their Nineties. Iron Man and Rhodey were both in the Viet Nam conflict. Even if they were teens in the late 60s early 70s, they'd still be pushing 70 years of age now.

Marvel's sliding time scale doesn't explain everything and really just mucks up things even more for some characters. It's best to reboot origins and redefine age as they go. Everyone can't be immortal, long-lived or a clone. But sadly, that seems to the more common explanation for an increasing number of characters.

Rather than rebooting everything, wouldn't it be better to just have a static timeline like Harry Potter? It doesn't need to be real-time, just consistent.

[Tulku]

Agreed that it is tough to set ages with any sense of accuracy. I would think that the Two-Gun Kid is one of the easier ones. His days as a Western hero were in the 1870s. He was a lawyer at the time, so if you figure in some years education, he was probably born in the early to mid-1850s. Now he did time jump to the "present" (and let's not argue what year the "present" was...) but then went back. We don't know for certain that he returned to exactly when he left, but it must have been pretty close---he was able to pick up the threads of his old life, being a lawyer, marrying his sweetheart, etc. He goes on like that until "Blaze of Glory" which was set in 1885. Roughly speaking, he was probably in his early to mid 30s at that point. He died, got revived and has been back in the "present" for a decent time. I think it is safe to say that he is "currently" in his mid-30s. Let's call it 35 and not nit-pick a year here or there.

[JudicatorPrime]

WWII actually. Xavier and his step brother Cain were Korean War vets.

Good catch, thanks. I used to own the Captain Savage & Leatherneck Raiders book where Ben Grimm appeared during WW2 as an ace pilot, but for some reason I kept thinking that Marvel had foregone that story as canon and moved his service date up to the Korean War. But I guess not. So Ben, Doom and Reed are all close to 100 years old, if not slightly older. It kind of makes you want to revisit the old "How old was Reed when he started dating Sue?" thing.