Originally Posted by
Dataweaver
A very interesting article. Diverging from DCcU’s age for a moment, I rather wish DCnU had gone with Bruce Wayne starting his costumed career 15 years ago in an ‘early stage’ mode and at the age of 18–21 (making him 33–36 now), Clark starting his costumed career 15 years ago in an ‘early stage’ mode and at the age of 13–16 (in Smallville, making him 28—31 now, and giving the DCnU’s Superman a previous career as Superboy), and Clark moving to Metropolis 10 years ago at the age of 18–21 and kicking off the start of the ‘middle stage’ of the setting (the Dawn of the Superheroes). You could have five years worth of “early stage” stories (possibly chronicled in an ‘Adventure Comics’ for Clark and a ‘Legends of the Dark Knight’ for Bruce), ten years worth of “middle age” stories (‘Action Comics’ for Clark; ‘Detective Comics’ for Bruce), and the beginnings of a “late stage” in the present (‘Superman’ for Clark; ‘Batman’ for Bruce).
Other heroes could start crawling out of the woodworks approximately 10 years ago, with the exception of a handful whose backstories practically beg for their own ‘early stages’ who would have operated in the shadows or in out-of-the-way places for a few years (preferably less than five) before superheroes went public. The first generation of sidekicks could show up around then, too: if Dick started out as Robin 10 years ago as an 11-to-14-year-old, he’d be 21–24 now; Jason and Tim could show up six and five years ago, respectively, putting their current ages in the 16–20 range; and if Batman first met Talia right near the end of the early stage, Damian could legitimately be 10 years old in the present. If you really wanted to, you could even push Dick’s first appearance back a year or two into the last years of Batman’s “early stage”, making him possibly as old as 27 now; he was, after all, the first sidekick.
If you want things to be “middle stage” in the present, go ahead and put the Dawn of the Superheroes five years back; but tell Morrison and Johns to abandon their Batman Inc. and War of the Lanterns story arcs, and roll their respective parts of the setting to the equivalent of the mid-90s: Tim has just entered the picture and Damian is nowhere to be seen; likewise, Hal is stuck in space dealing with a recent development that decimated the Corps while Ganthet, the last surviving Guardian, has just given Kyle his ring.