Your favourite explanation for Marvels sliding timescale

[Anarchist]

I think any reader has at least once wrapped his head around the fact that time basically never passes in the MU.
While it is somehow acceptable, considering the characters are so iconic that changing/aging them would be fatal to their general popularity, its still a pretty big atmosphere-killer sometimes, so I often come up with explanations for my own head-canon to make it a little explainable.
The easiest, at the latest after Age of Ultron, is: Time is broken. Because of the many time travels, reality warpings etc the timestream is irreversible kaputt and thus time passes in such a strange way.
But the explanation I like more is a quite common theory which includes Franklin Richards, who is especially notorious for never aging at all:
He is a powerful Reality Warper, but also a scared littled child who is afraid to grow up and afraid of his friends and loved ones to die at some point.
So he subconsciously manipulates the strings of reality to fit his idea of the perfect status quo.

Do you also sometimes think about this?
Have your own theories/explanations?

[Alan2099]

It's all those people that keep getting cosmic cubes, infinity gems, and other items of vast cosmic power. It's easy to rewrite reality, but putting it back exactly the same way is nearly impossible.

[dragonmp93]

Well i have two favorites:

The first one is that franklin richards is scared of growing up and death, so everyone is ageless and inmortal.

The second one is the one that the doctor gives, "time is more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey.....stuff".

[dupersuper]

Who needs explanations? DC has one, The Simpsons don't age, nor do The Peanuts, Dilbert, Calvin&Hobbes, Doonesbury...

[Anarchist]

Well the Simpsons and the peanuts are Comedy, just like South Park, Family Guy or whatever else.

[StoneGold]

The explanation is that continuing serialized fiction demands it. Trying to codify it within the fictional universe destroys it's entire meaning of existence.

[StoneGold]

Who needs explanations? DC has one, The Simpsons don't age, nor do The Peanuts, Dilbert, Calvin&Hobbes, Doonesbury...

Doonesbury doesn't really work, they age more or less in real time. OK, maybe not Zonker.

[StoneGold]

Well the Simpsons and the peanuts are Comedy, just like South Park, Family Guy or whatever else.

James Bond, then. Richard Stark's Parker. Sherlock Holmes fighting Nazis in the early movies with no explanation.

[Ghostwise]

There's a Watsonian framework that uses Celestial genetic engineering so that it all makes sense, but it's pretty long to explain.

The Leòn Genetic Sequence - Ageing in the Marvel Universe.

[vitruvian]

There's a Watsonian framework that uses Celestial genetic engineering so that it all makes sense, but it's pretty long to explain.

The Leòn Genetic Sequence - Ageing in the Marvel Universe.

My favorite Watsonian logic involves Franklin Richards unconsciously retarding everybody's aging and rewriting the chronology to keep it consistent (but not with perfect consistency, such that there are plenty of pragmaclasts pointing to the 60s version of classic Marvel).

The Doylist reasons are, I think, obvious, even if debatable in terms of just how young they need to keep characters to keep them in their prime.

[normanosborn]

No in-universe explanation is needed at all, it works well enough

[Flash Gordon]

Time just moves real slow. Yesterday was House of M, last night was Civil War. Secret Invasion happened around 6am today.

[HaveAtThee]

I think it's stupid and childish to never age these characters. It would be more compelling if there were some sort of realistic continuity. Not all characters need to age and die (aliens/gods/mystics), but I think characters would be more endearing if they were allowed to grow through time. Unfortunately now the comics are serving as brand management properties so that's never going to happen. Perhaps once the films stop making so much money you'll see a noticeable change in the landscape.

[Lt Trouble]

I don't think it's meant to be a "real thing" in-universe, but rather a narrative device for the reader, so it doesn't need an in-universe explanation.

Sherlock Holmes fighting Nazis in the early movies with no explanation.

Well, the explanation was that the Basil Rathbone movies were set in (then) modern-day rather than the Victorian era.

[Ghostwise]

I don't think it's meant to be a "real thing" in-universe, but rather a narrative device for the reader, so it doesn't need an in-universe explanation.

As soon as a flashback, or a sourcebook, or a caption with a date appears, this approach disintegrates. I can see the headaches our esteemed colleagues at Marvunapp.com have with dates and topical elements when doing profiles as they have to use sliding time.