Aging in the DC Universe

[Aahz]

I would not mind characters aging. I would not mind characters passing on their mantles and what have you. The character could be around as a mentor until they finally pass away.

I simply don't see that work on the long run.
You might be able to pass the mantle down once or twice, but I think if you at some point when you reach the 4th, 5th or so incarnation you end with diminishing returns.

Btw. just changing the main character will not really prevent them from telling the same stories again and again.

[Dred]

And it's not like those stories are lost forever with a reboot. You can still buy pre-Crisis books after all.

This is peak irony.

[sifighter]

I simply don't see that work on the long run.
You might be able to pass the mantle down once or twice, but I think if you at some point when you reach the 4th, 5th or so incarnation you end with diminishing returns.

Btw. just changing the main character will not really prevent them from telling the same stories again and again.

But isn't that the problem we are facing now without the actual aging? First we had Azrael in knightfall, then Batman: Prodigial, then Dick wore the suit again after Battle for the Cowl, and then it was Commissioner Gordon after Endgame. Stuff like that is why comic readers become so confident that change can't be permanent.

[SiegePerilous02]

I simply don't see that work on the long run.
You might be able to pass the mantle down once or twice, but I think if you at some point when you reach the 4th, 5th or so incarnation you end with diminishing returns.

Btw. just changing the main character will not really prevent them from telling the same stories again and again.

I think stuff like Dick permanently (at least in one version) becoming Batman II could work. Once we go down the line and Bruce's grandson's cousin's roommate becomes the new Batman though, it's like...who gives a crap? It's so far removed from the original idea you might as well just go create a Batman expy at Image or something instead. Never mind the fact that we have this whole fictional universe with various untapped corners waiting to be invented, the idea of just narrowing it down to mantle sharing in the same few IPs over and over again is pretty dull. New sci-fi and supernatural/horror stories would have trouble taking off, but we'd have a JL with a Super, a Wonder, a Bat, a Flash, a GL, etc. on it doing the same thing their predecessors did.

And there is also the monthly model wouldn't necessarily be saved by this, since kids would just rather spend their money on video games, streaming and maybe someday being able to go the movies again rather than buy a 20 page pamphlet for $5 a pop.

[Alpha]

Because once you begin to establish a huge passage of time, it'll keep going, and it just means when it's impossible for him not to be old frail crotchety man who needs to retire before he breaks a hip, you'll have even more to reset.

If tomorrow DC decided that Bruce Wayne should be 50 and start greying his hair, it would still take 150 years for them to make him an actual senior. There are enough potential stories with Bruce Wayne his 50s until the year 2070. And that's how long it would take until DC would age him up again to be in his 60s.

[SiegePerilous02]

If tomorrow DC decided that Bruce Wayne should be 50 and start greying his hair, it would still take 150 years for them to make him an actual senior. There are enough potential stories with Bruce Wayne his 50s until the year 2070. And that's how long it would take until DC would age him up again to be in his 60s.

If the aging process is still so slow that many of us would be senior citizens by the time he'd age another decade, what is really the point in implementing it? Wouldn't that still prevent the younger characters from noticeably aging even further?

[Vakanai]

This is peak irony.

Peak irony how? What do you find ironic about it?

[Vakanai]

If tomorrow DC decided that Bruce Wayne should be 50 and start greying his hair, it would still take 150 years for them to make him an actual senior. There are enough potential stories with Bruce Wayne his 50s until the year 2070. And that's how long it would take until DC would age him up again to be in his 60s.

Maybe, maybe not. To me, it feels like a slippery slope. I mean, if anyone wants to tell a story of old man Bruce, there's elseworlds for that.

[Aahz]

But isn't that the problem we are facing now without the actual aging? First we had Azrael in knightfall, then Batman: Prodigial, then Dick wore the suit again after Battle for the Cowl, and then it was Commissioner Gordon after Endgame. Stuff like that is why comic readers become so confident that change can't be permanent.

But what if change was permanent?

We would very likely have a new Batman every 5 to 10 years, with very likely every writer wanting to make a character they created to be the next Batman.

Is that really desirable?

[bat39]

No her Post crisis Secret Origin shows that she is adopted at the age of 13, while James Jr. is still a baby.

Btw. it was pre flashpoint also canon that Barbara finished collage before she became Batgirl, and that she is older than Dick (or if you go by Black Mirror the same age as Dick). So if you reduce the age difference between Barbara and James Jr. you basically have to massively stretch the time between Year One and Year Three (you can't stretch the length of Dicks time as Robin due to Tim's origin story).

Because Tim is about three years old in Year Three, and James Jr. would be only two since he was born in Year One.

Hmm...okay.

Admittedly its been a long time since I read Black Mirror so I don't actually remember much about the flashbacks with James Jr. and Barbara as kids. I still think if James Jr. is shown to be, I dunno, maybe 7 or 8 at a time when Barbara is in her early-to-mid teens, it kinda works. And yes, some stretch of the pre-Robin era might be needed, but honestly, I think that's kinda implicit when you expand Batman's timeline but still want to keep Dick under 30 (not to mention if you don't want other DC heroes like the Justice League founders to be aged up along with Batman). My headcanon pre-Flashpoint (which may or may not apply now too I guess), is that Bruce was solo as Batman for between 3 to 5 years, and that stuff like Barry and Hal debuting as Flash and GL happened in the middle or towards the end of this period.

I'll admit that the timelines have not been perfect, and sometimes its impossible to fit all the details together. But my larger point is that the fear of saying that Batman has been around for nearly 20 years (if not more) shouldn't prevent the existence of characters like James Jr. if there are interesting stories to be told with them.

Because once you begin to establish a huge passage of time, it'll keep going, and it just means when it's impossible for him not to be old frail crotchety man who needs to retire before he breaks a hip, you'll have even more to reset.

Besides, a good well thought out reboot (aka the exact opposite of the Nu52) free of old continuity could pave the way for new classic stories to be told. Look at the stories we got once pre-Crisis continuity was ditched - Year One, The Long Halloween, Last Laugh, the Legends of the Dark Knight classic run. There's a possibility for a new and different spin on his origins that gives us unique stories that can't fit into that continuity.

And it's not like those stories are lost forever with a reboot. You can still buy pre-Crisis books after all.

Passage of time doesn't mean ageing in real time though.

I mean, DC had some kind of progression of time since at least the late 60's/early 70's, when Dick first went to college. Marvel has had it since 1961 when they created the Fantastic Four (early Marvel was actually more or less in real-time, but they eventually slowed it down; at one point they even had some kind of official scale - 4 years real-time equals 1 year 'Marvel Time').

It just means that time has passed in-universe and the characters aren't static. Kids have grown into teenagers and teenagers have grown into adults. The long-standing superheroes are veterans who've been around for a long time now. There are young characters who were born after the heroes started out.

Also, Batman wasn't given a hard reboot after COIE. Stories like Year One and The Long Halloween heavily reimagined Batman's early years (which honestly, hadn't really been re-examined since the original Golden Age stories), but DC didn't go out of its way to eliminate classic continuity for Batman the way they did for Superman and Wonder Woman. After COIE, Batman was around the same age he was before...COIE didn't actually focusing on de-ageing characters or 'resetting' them to an earlier point in their lives the way the New 52 eventually did.

If tomorrow DC decided that Bruce Wayne should be 50 and start greying his hair, it would still take 150 years for them to make him an actual senior. There are enough potential stories with Bruce Wayne his 50s until the year 2070. And that's how long it would take until DC would age him up again to be in his 60s.

Taking Batman as a reference, its interesting to see how long its taken for him to age to where he currently must be.

So from 1939 to 1984, the first 45 years or so of his existence, Batman could be passed off as being in his late 20's. I think he was canonically 29 for a long stretch of time, starting with the early 70's, which stated that the Waynes were killed '21 years ago'.

But in 1984 we had the Wrath story which stated that the Wayne murders were '25 years ago', at which point it became impossible to argue against Bruce being in his early 30's. The fact that Dick turned 20 sometime during or after COIE further cements that.

Bruce was in his early 30's for a while, and specifically became 35 once the official post-Zero Hour timeline came out. So this last from the early 1980's till the mid-2000's.

I think once Damian came onto the scene, Bruce logically would have been aged up. Damian was 9 when he first showed up, and the earliest he would have been conceived was when Bruce was in his late 20's, during the days Dick was in college. So at time point, Bruce is clearly in his late 30's, if not pushing 40.

The New 52 confuses the issue by de-ageing Bruce to around 31 (and in-universe we're later told that about '10 years' were stolen from the heroes). But in 2016, with Rebirth, Damian is now 13, and I think the artificial ageing is not, so Bruce has to be logically in his early 40's (which matches with a Superman who has a chronologically 10 year old son).

So to summarize Bruce's ageing across the last 80+ years:

1939 - 1969: Early to Mid-20's (Dick is a pre-teen and then a teenager)

1969 - 1984: Late 20's (Dick is in his late teens and in college)

1984 - 2006: Early to Mid-30's (Dick is an adult solo hero, Jason and later Tim are the next-gen Robins)

2006 - 2016: Late 30's (Bruce has a pre-teen son, Damian)

2016 - Present: Early 40's (Bruce's son Damian enters his early teens)

[Vakanai]

Passage of time doesn't mean ageing in real time though.

Does it matter? Say Batman ages 10 years for roughly every 30 - he'll be in his 60s when I'm in my 60s.
I don't want the future of Bruce Wayne Batman to be old codger Batman. It's bad enough I'll be in my 60s, I don't need my heroes to be in it with me.

I mean, DC had some kind of progression of time since at least the late 60's/early 70's, when Dick first went to college. Marvel has had it since 1961 when they created the Fantastic Four (early Marvel was actually more or less in real-time, but they eventually slowed it down; at one point they even had some kind of official scale - 4 years real-time equals 1 year 'Marvel Time').

So they made a mistake and did the First Sin. That's not a good reason to push on with it.

It just means that time has passed in-universe and the characters aren't static. Kids have grown into teenagers and teenagers have grown into adults. The long-standing superheroes are veterans who've been around for a long time now. There are young characters who were born after the heroes started out.

So? I don't need the kid characters to grow into teenagers to grow into adults. I don't need my favorites to become "veterans" which is another word for "over the hill."

Also, Batman wasn't given a hard reboot after COIE. Stories like Year One and The Long Halloween heavily reimagined Batman's early years (which honestly, hadn't really been re-examined since the original Golden Age stories), but DC didn't go out of its way to eliminate classic continuity for Batman the way they did for Superman and Wonder Woman. After COIE, Batman was around the same age he was before...COIE didn't actually focusing on de-ageing characters or 'resetting' them to an earlier point in their lives the way the New 52 eventually did.

I'm aware. That's one of the reasons why I hope the next reboot is finally the hard reboot that's needed.

[Aahz]

Admittedly its been a long time since I read Black Mirror so I don't actually remember much about the flashbacks with James Jr. and Barbara as kids. I still think if James Jr. is shown to be, I dunno, maybe 7 or 8 at a time when Barbara is in her early-to-mid teens, it kinda works.

This flashback is anyway all over the place. (I'm refering to the one where James Jr. might have murdered a friend of Barbara in TEC #875).
Barbara seems to be in her teens, and is not in a wheelchair but James Gordon apparently already to be Married to Sarah Essen (or I read this wrong), which didn't happen till way after TKJ and James Jr. seems to be at least a pre teen.

Honestly it is imo impossible to make Black Mirror work, within the established pre flashpoint timeline, without massiv retcons.

[CPSparkles]

It just means that time has passed in-universe and the characters aren't static. Kids have grown into teenagers and teenagers have grown into adults. The long-standing superheroes are veterans who've been around for a long time now. There are young characters who were born after the heroes started out.

DC lately has kept Time frozen for some, accelerated for some and reversed time for others.

Example Damian and Tim age progression since the former was introduced

Damian was 9 when he was introduced. Tim at the time was 18

Damian Age 10 becomes Robin. Taking over from Tim who became Robin age 13

Damian dies age 10 and comes back as a 10 year old [question how come jason did as a teen and came back as a grown man? He should be Younger than Tim. When he came back to life, he was brought back at the moment of his death. In the same room and repeating the words that were to be his last to the nurse exactly. So he shouldn't have aged since the years between him dying and being brought back was punched away.mmmh]
Rebirth Damian has his 13th Birthday while Tim states that he is 16.

Infinite Frontier Damian is now 14. This time jump seems exclusive to Damian.

That's just bizarre and creates questions.
Damian has been Robin for 4yrs while Tim just has 3 yrs??? Does that mean Damian followed Jason [he shouldn't]
Does Tim know where the fountain of youth? It just doesn't Math.

[Aahz]

The really wired thing is that Damain still looks exactly like he did when he was 10.

Btw. where was it said that Damian is 14 now?

question how come jason did as a teen and came back as a grown man? He should be Younger than Tim. When he came back to life, he was brought back at the moment of his death. In the same room and repeating the words that were to be his last to the nurse exactly. So he shouldn't have aged since the years between him dying and being brought back was punched away.mmmh

Typically Jason comes back to live ony few month after his death as a teen and than spends a few year brain damaged and than in training before he returns as Red Hood in his late teens.

But the time line in Jasons pre flashpoint origin story also doesn't really line up with Tim's age.

[CPSparkles]

I'm a fan of some characters aging and understand why some shouldn't. DC is a business not a Fcharity or a rando online writing stories based on prompts from readers.


Their primary goal is to make money and increase market share. Suggesting they replace their biggest guns for characters less who are not as profitable, well known and established. Is unrealistic. It's not a smart move for the company.

DC has elseworlds, Black label etc and an Omniverse. They can use those to explore stories like that. That's a fair compromise.