It’s funny that so many people think Spider-Man works best as a teen...

[Mercwmouth12]

I kinda think that, as much as people say they want change, they would hate it if it actually happened. Heck, I think most of us actually want things frozen at our favorite status quo.

I don't think anyone would hate change if it was in a positive direction. The problem is the illusion of change

[PCN24454]

I don't think anyone would hate change if it was in a positive direction. The problem is the illusion of change

Define “positive direction”. Some ideas naturally clash with each other.

We can’t even decide on what career we want Peter to pursue. That’s likely the reason why Spencer put him in perpetual college.

[Alan2099]

But now you're in a path that you can't go backwards from. Different from the old stories is now you have 2 characters Miles and Gwen as spider characters and are now the teenage characters while Peter is in his 20s and can have him have a kid. Get a decent job. Him being a teen can can be done in a mini or book set in highschool or whatever. It really doesn't matter with the what ifs. It's only moving forward. Slowly but there's a progression

It's comics. You can always go back.

At one point, the idea of Bucky being brought back was practically sacrilege, Hal Jordan and Barry Allen were gone for good, The Hulk's multiple personalities were cured, and Johnny Blaze's time as Ghost Rider was finished.

Characters will age backwards, forwards, or not at all depending on the story and any event that can change things forever is just waiting for another writer to undone them.

As readers, we just have to sit back and enjoy the ride.

[Kevinroc]

I don't think anyone would hate change if it was in a positive direction. The problem is the illusion of change

The thing is the illusion of change works the other way too. There are a number of readers who would love it if MJ never showed up again, but they won't get what they want either. No other love interest is ever going to stand next to MJ at this point. So writers will continue bringing her back into the title and tease her and Peter.

[TinkerSpider]

At that point May had been in high school for 18 years. Readers didn't have a problem suspending their disbelief. They accepted that she was still a high schooler because the comic said that she was still a high schooler.

I know I said you can have the last word:

But your insistence that comics take place in real time and/or readers believe comics take place in real time is really, really, really….not at all based on the text. The number of years May has been published has zero to do with May aging in her book.

Marvel has long operated on a sliding time scale in which the origin of the Marvel U (i.e. the FF space flight) doesn’t have a fixed real world date but time in the Marvel U advances linearly. It doesn’t stay stuck like in DuckTales. It doesn’t stay frozen like in Looney Tunes. That’s the way the Marvel universe is built. You can keep insisting that’s not the way it works all you want, however. It’s your waste of your time on a message board.

The timeline doesn't work. It's all cartoon nonsense. The readers rolled with it.

Again, comics don’t take place in real time. The amount of issues in our world has no bearing on time in the characters’ lives in their world.

And for every reader who rolled with it, there was probably five complaining that the suspension of disbelief was broken. Bad writing - and there is a whole series of posts detailing how the clone sage was put together - is not the slam dunk argument you may think it is.

What can’t be denied is that MJ was pregnant and went into labor. The characters moved forward in time. They didn’t go backward or stay stuck.

If you go back and re-read the first 160 issues of Ultimate Spider-Man and all of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, you'll see references to the passage of time between stories that don't add up. Even with Bendis' decompressed writing, all those stories and the gaps between them couldn't possibly fit within a single calendar year. But the readers rolled with it. (And that's without even getting into The Ultimates 2 taking place one year after the first volume, and Peter remaining the same age in Ultimate Spider-Man.)

MC2 Spider-Girl ran for almost as many issues and didn't have decompressed writing. There's no way all of those stories could realistically have happened in just a year or two. The readers rolled with it.

Again, you seem to be oddly stuck on the idea that I’m arguing comics take place in real time. I’m not. You also seem to think I’m arguing that the timeline must be absolutely consistent across all books and all events must perfectly align and correspond to real world time.

I have never said that.

No one is expecting the passage of time to be precise or to correlate exactly to the real world, although the rule of thumb used by some used to be that four years real time roughly equals one year Marvel time.

My point, which you keep ignoring, is that time does indeed pass in the Marvel U. The stories are serial. Time passes. To keep a character in high school indefinitely - for Peter to still be 15 after 60 years of publication - would have killed the character long before he got to that anniversary. High school stories revolve around high school events. So either Peter becomes nonsensical, attending his twentieth senior prom, or the character does indeed become a cartoon character in the commonly understood sense of the word, in which his adventures are self-contained episodes and do not matter one story to the next. But that’s not the way the character was designed. That’s not why the character is popular. That’s not why the character is relatable. That’s not the way the Marvel U was designed.

I agree time slows down and Peter ages verrrrrrry slowly. In one of my very first posts, that was my argument for why Peter works best as an adult - because it’s more plausible for an adult to have all these adventures, especially repetitive ones like fighting the Green Goblin for the 629376497th time, than a high school student. As someone else said, life in your 20s/30s and I’d even argue up to mid-40s these days, given how long people are living and how active/youthful people are staying, does not appreciably change. Adult characters can plausibly have infinite adventures - they are already formed, they are already experienced. That’s different to high school, which has a very specific short time frame and the characters are in their formative years and are gaining experience.

This isn't about preferences. I'm not arguing preferences. I'm not inviting you to make assumptions about my preferences.

You kinda are by insisting Peter Parker, Donald Duck and Charlie Brown are analogous…

All I'm saying is that your "He can only be in high school for so long before it breaks suspension of disbelief" argument is bogus. Readers of American super-hero comics are willing to accept a character remaining in a certain age range and having an implausible number of adventures and life events.

No, it’s not “bogus,” it’s reality, as evidenced by Peter aging, Miles aging, Kitty Pryde aging, Jubilee aging, Franklin Richards aging…. This conversation is about the Marvel U, which has specific world building rules. Also, you may accept characters being stuck in time and that’s great, but I’ve seen far more - gazillions - of discussions re: characters’ ages and implausibility to know that many readers do not just sit back and passively swallow what they are fed when suspension of disbelief is broken. Again, bad writing is not a winning argument, sorry.

Besides, high school forever is boring. There are only so many firsts a character can experience. High school as a period of life is resonant because it ends. Coming of age is a genre defined by its ending. There is no such genre as “coming of….coming of….coming of….coming of….”

I know Spider-Man has been aged up. I am familiar with Spider-Man.

Glad to have that cleared up.

"He can only be in high school for so long before it breaks suspension of disbelief" is the statement I disagree with. Marvel could have kept him in high school for decades, and readers would have rolled with it, just like they did with hundreds of other comic characters. They could keep Kamala Khan in high school for decades and readers will roll with it.

Except they didn’t, so your assertion is an unprovable hypothetical.

In reality, every iteration of Peter in high school has ended with him graduating and aging into an adult, death, or cancellation.

[Alan2099]

No, it’s not “bogus,” it’s reality, as evidenced by Peter aging, Miles aging, Kitty Pryde aging, Jubilee aging, Franklin Richards aging…. This conversation is about the Marvel U, which has specific world building rules.

Franklin Richards is the last one you should have used as an example of characters aging. He aged, de-aged, and re-aged several times. For al your talk about not going backwards, he repeatedly did. For a long time he even stayed younger than his friends in the Power Pack that aged up while he didn't.

Jubilee is also has specifically been said to have briefly gotten younger.

And Kitty Pryde has a fairly infamous example of one writer having her say she's old enough to drink and the next saying she's under 17 and always has been.

Another fun example is Beast and Cyclops. At some point, Beast got five years older than Scott even though they were originally the same age. Beast mentions turning thirty in one issue and several issues later Cyclops states his age to be 25.

Despite what you say, there are no rules when it comes to character ages.

[TinkerSpider]

Franklin Richards is the last one you should have used as an example of characters aging. He aged, de-aged, and re-aged several times. For al your talk about not going backwards, he repeatedly did. For a long time he even stayed younger than his friends in the Power Pack that aged up while he didn't.

Jubilee is also has specifically been said to have briefly gotten younger.

And Kitty Pryde has a fairly infamous example of one writer having her say she's old enough to drink and the next saying she's under 17 and always has been.

Another fun example is Beast and Cyclops. At some point, Beast got five years older than Scott even though they were originally the same age. Beast mentions turning thirty in one issue and several issues later Cyclops states his age to be 25.

Despite what you say, there are no rules when it comes to character ages.

The world building rules to which I referred is that Marvel U is a serial story in which time advances from issue to issue. It’s not self-contained episodes, in which each story has no relevance to the next and the characters always reset exactly to factory settings every single time (despite Slott doing his best to write that way). Of course, there are plots that involve time travel and de-aging/aging, but those are stories in which the plot explains what is happening so as not to break the suspension of disbelief.

Again, inconsistent, bad writing is not a winning argument. Those are writer/editor issues. Someone didn’t do their homework.

Franklin has been de-aged as part of the story. There are in-story explanations for what happened. It’s part of the plot. Franklin is not 5 in one issue, 10 in the next issue without explanation, 35 in the next issue without explanation, and 2 in the issue after that without explanation, all in the same story arc. That’s what would happen if there truly were no rules and if audiences blindly sat back and swallowed what was being put in front of them as you and Lee are suggesting.

But it’s not.

[Alan2099]

Again, inconsistent, bad writing is not a winning argument. Those are writer/editor issues. Someone didn’t do their homework.

Basically you're just saying "anything I don't like doesn't count." If you want to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that stuff doesn't exist, that's on you, but it ain't the way comics work.

[TinkerSpider]

Basically you're just saying "anything I don't like doesn't count." If you want to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that stuff doesn't exist, that's on you, but it ain't the way comics work.

And I see you are completely ignoring the much bigger fact that the Marvel U moves forward in linear time. Always has. And that when characters are de-aged, it’s within the world building as being a plot point.

Writers get it wrong and introduce inconsistencies. That’s why the No-Prize was invented. Hanging your entire argument on one line from a writer/editor not being aware of previously established continuity is specious, but you do you!

[Alan2099]

And I see you are completely ignoring the much bigger fact that the Marvel U moves forward in linear time. Always has. And that when characters are de-aged, it’s within the world building as being a plot point.

Writers get it wrong and introduce inconsistencies. That’s why the No-Prize was invented. Hanging your entire argument on one line from a writer/editor not being aware of previously established continuity is specious, but you do you!

And I see you're ignoring the times when writers decide just to purposely change things not as part of a story but simply because they didn't like what had previously been established.

But hey, condescending remark to you too.

[TinkerSpider]

And I see you're ignoring the times when writers decide just to purposely change things not as part of a story but simply because they didn't like what had previously been established.

And when it's not motivated or explained in the story, it breaks the suspension of disbelief and throws readers out of the story, launching a thousand (gazillion) reader complaints. Again, Marvel literally invented the No-Prize for fans who explained inconsistencies that violated the serial story.

Again, poor writing isn't the slam dunk argument it may appear to be.

But hey, condescending remark to you too.

And "If you want to stick your fingers in your ears and pretend that stuff doesn't exist, that's on you, but it ain't the way comics work" to you!

[phonogram12]

Then they can accept again him being married and having a kid

I'm not necessarily one of them by any stretch of the imagination, but sure, I guess some readers will.

[marhawkman]

Goku is a bad example since the character actually ages.

Better examples would be Archie and Charlie Brown.

I think Goku is a GREAT example BECAUSE he went from a little kid to a grandfather with a grandchild older than he was when he first appeared. Pete hasn't gone that far, not even in MC2. farthest he went was teen daughter who was old enough to look for a husband.

[Kevinroc]

I think Goku is a GREAT example BECAUSE he went from a little kid to a grandfather with a grandchild older than he was when he first appeared. Pete hasn't gone that far, not even in MC2. farthest he went was teen daughter who was old enough to look for a husband.

Since GT is non-canon, Pan isn't older than Goku was when he first appeared.

[marhawkman]

Since GT is non-canon, Pan isn't older than Goku was when he first appeared.

Toriyama-sama's take is alternate timelines. To be non-canon means it's not officially sanctioned.

Fun fact: the main bad guy of the Cooler movies is Freiza's brother Cooler. And even though they don't take place in the same timeline as Dragon Ball Super, Freiza makes a brief mention in Super that he has a brother.