PREVIEW: New Avengers #31

[jackolover]

It's a mathematical statement. If they were adventuring in their teens in the early 60s, then they are in their sixties now. They are not in their sixties now, so they weren't. The sliding timeline provides that they started only 13-14 years ago, and 2014 - 13 = 2001, not 1962.

The sliding timeline and Marvel time are indeed constant retcons to the earlier stories, and it's no longer the case that those early stories (to the extent they're in continuity with the current ones) took place in the 1960s, anymore than Tony Stark any longer became Iron Man in the jungles of Southeast Asia rather than in Afghanistan. Yes, reading the old stories with these retcons in mind involves a certain level of cognitive dissonance as you do so, but that's the way it is.

And all of this is working at a metafictional, Doylist level, where it's just something we're to understand about the way we read these comics, and not something that is supposed to be 'really' happening within the MU with a weird time warp effect... unless we take certain issues of Byrne's volume of She-Hulk where Blonde Phantom guest-starred too seriously, or they ever decide to do a story about how it's all Franklin's fault.

Well, I'm still debating whether it's meta fictional gymnastics or actually really happening, as far as the time jumps are concerned. I suppose fromMarvels perspective it is the metafictional explanation they want us to take as readers. But it is an interesting problem, considering that despite the mathematics not adding up, we have to consider that another explanation connects the Peter Parker of 1960's to the Peter Parker of 2015. I keep going back to a WhatIf? Scenario, where Marvel wants Peter to have stories told about him in the 1960's, the 1980's, the 2000's and the 2015's. Unable to solve the mathematical problem, Marvel just sweep around them and ignore the inconsistency and just switch off the previous decades mathematics, and open a new chapter with Peter in the new modern age. I don't think they had any alternative.

That's why something like these Beyonders coming in and wiping away the physical evidence that the super heroes operated in the 1960's, by destroying that Earth-616, is such a convenient tool. The super heroes, when they return after Battleworld plays out, come onto an Earth where 1960 doesn't matter. The MU will start in 2015 or 2016, and that will be year 1. All flashbacks will be re gigged to just give the essentials about origin, and can be updated there and then if Marvel go that way, because the Earth that once held history of humanity is now gone, and all that remains is memory and experience.

[vitruvian]

Well, I'm still debating whether it's meta fictional gymnastics or actually really happening, as far as the time jumps are concerned. I suppose fromMarvels perspective it is the metafictional explanation they want us to take as readers. But it is an interesting problem, considering that despite the mathematics not adding up, we have to consider that another explanation connects the Peter Parker of 1960's to the Peter Parker of 2015. I keep going back to a WhatIf? Scenario, where Marvel wants Peter to have stories told about him in the 1960's, the 1980's, the 2000's and the 2015's. Unable to solve the mathematical problem, Marvel just sweep around them and ignore the inconsistency and just switch off the previous decades mathematics, and open a new chapter with Peter in the new modern age. I don't think they had any alternative.

What exactly are you trying to say? That yes, the sliding timeline involves retconning the past stories so that Peter wasn't active till the early 21st century, not the early 1960s, or that you think there's a time warp of some kind happening within the Marvel Universe such that he really started webslinging in the 1960s but just appears younger and doesn't remember it being more than five decades since he started?

The first option is what they say they're doing... that they're following a rule that the modern characters' (so not the WWII guys) origins are no more than 13-14 years ago by regular math and chronology, so I would suggest there's no reason to believe the second option until they actually publish a story saying so flat out.

That's why something like these Beyonders coming in and wiping away the physical evidence that the super heroes operated in the 1960's, by destroying that Earth-616, is such a convenient tool. The super heroes, when they return after Battleworld plays out, come onto an Earth where 1960 doesn't matter. The MU will start in 2015 or 2016, and that will be year 1. All flashbacks will be re gigged to just give the essentials about origin, and can be updated there and then if Marvel go that way, because the Earth that once held history of humanity is now gone, and all that remains is memory and experience.

What physical evidence are they wiping out? None that I can see, I've still got all my old comics, and within the MU, surely there's no such evidence around even if it's a time warp.

[hawkeyefan]

At this point, the FF and Spider-Man are about to have their debuts be post-9/11, let alone post-fall of the Berlin Wall, and the first FF stories might well be colored by having a newly formed Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon thinking that the Mole Man is in league with Al Qaeda and Saddam. Now there's some cognitive dissonance.

Although come to think of it, the substitution of a more or less vague terrorist threat for the Communist threat might actually make for an easier reinterpretation of certain Silver Age stories... even if certain Iron Man villains remain problematic unless we posit an alternate history where Putin's Russia is generally painted as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Yeah that's what they did with Stark in Extremis. Took him out of Vietnam and made it a non-specific Middle Eastern threat. They could do similar things with lots of that stuff. And for any of the characters that are strongly tied to communism, they could have them be affiliated with breakaway states or rogue pro-communist factions.

Whatever they do, they just have to keep it sufficiently vague rather than be specific like they were in the past.

[jackolover]

What exactly are you trying to say? That yes, the sliding timeline involves retconning the past stories so that Peter wasn't active till the early 21st century, not the early 1960s, or that you think there's a time warp of some kind happening within the Marvel Universe such that he really started webslinging in the 1960s but just appears younger and doesn't remember it being more than five decades since he started?

The first option is what they say they're doing... that they're following a rule that the modern characters' (so not the WWII guys) origins are no more than 13-14 years ago by regular math and chronology, so I would suggest there's no reason to believe the second option until they actually publish a story saying so flat out.



What physical evidence are they wiping out? None that I can see, I've still got all my old comics, and within the MU, surely there's no such evidence around even if it's a time warp.

Yes on your first point. I can see Marvel pushing us towards the first option, though I want it to be the second option. But it doesn't matter now, though, because I feel after the last Incursion, all those considerations will soon be irrelevant. Battleworld will be such a huge transformation, it will be like the 616 will be considered another Ultimate Universe, that doesn't exist anymore.

Your second point is going to be more problematic. It would have to involve an amnesia on the part of the survivors of the Muliverse just collapsing now. Once the trauma of being ripped away from their spiritual home dawns on them, will they have the connection to all the emotional framework that made them what they were? People who have had near death experiences come back changed people and begin to live their life in a completely different way. It will be dependant on what kind of experience the Last Incursion is to the survivors. If they believe their Earth was obliterated never to be heard of again, it could be like a huge load off their shoulders knowing none of the familial connections they had, exist any more. Like for the first time, going to another country, you get that feeling of euphoria you have with getting separated from all your political and emotional baggage brings. Only in this case, the country the characters go too is so foreign and alien its almost like they've stepped into the garden of Eden. They would perhaps say, "Okay, now we've got to make something of this". Steve Rogers had two of these experiences in his life. Once at the end of WW11, and again after Civil War, but this one won't be like those other two, because he won't wake up on Earth-616 this time. He'll wake up and start to examine the Battleworld and respond to its geo-political situation. No America, no boundaries, no laws but what he makes it. He may reminisce, but he'll be too busy like he was in Dimension Z. Different framework, different laws, no hope of going back. Dimension Z almost destroyed Cap, but it made Ian Rogers.

[Rosebunse]

Of course Steve Rogers is going to be fine. The man's super power is not totally despairing into depression. He always fines something to hold onto, be it freedom and the American way, the Avengers, or his son. In Battleworld, if he lives, he'll find something to hang onto.

But what about other characters? Who's most likely to crack?

[somebody]

It's a mathematical statement. If they were adventuring in their teens in the early 60s, then they are in their sixties now. They are not in their sixties now, so they weren't. The sliding timeline provides that they started only 13-14 years ago, and 2014 - 13 = 2001, not 1962.

The sliding timeline and Marvel time are indeed constant retcons to the earlier stories, and it's no longer the case that those early stories (to the extent they're in continuity with the current ones) took place in the 1960s, anymore than Tony Stark any longer became Iron Man in the jungles of Southeast Asia rather than in Afghanistan. Yes, reading the old stories with these retcons in mind involves a certain level of cognitive dissonance as you do so, but that's the way it is.

And all of this is working at a metafictional, Doylist level, where it's just something we're to understand about the way we read these comics, and not something that is supposed to be 'really' happening within the MU with a weird time warp effect... unless we take certain issues of Byrne's volume of She-Hulk where Blonde Phantom guest-starred too seriously, or they ever decide to do a story about how it's all Franklin's fault.

What if their timeline is just hyper-condensed, so that something to the effect of each MU year is like roughly 4 years our time? So all the events of our 1961-1965 occurred in the first year of Marvel's sliding timeline.

[vitruvian]

What if their timeline is just hyper-condensed, so that something to the effect of each MU year is like roughly 4 years our time? So all the events of our 1961-1965 occurred in the first year of Marvel's sliding timeline?

Then it would be one calendar year, so pick a number.

[somebody]

Then it would be one calendar year, so pick a number.

It wouldn't matter because every thing from the 60s on would still be valid. That's how it should work.

[vitruvian]

It wouldn't matter because every thing from the 60s on would still be valid. That's how it should work.

No, I'm saying that if you're right, if all the events published from 1961-1965 happened in one year, then you need to pick an actual calendar year, and it needs to be as many years ago as makes sense with the characters' ages and so on.

It's just a restatement of the sliding timeline, it doesn't mean that you can have events published in 1961 happen in 1961 in the MU, and have it now be 2015, and have that be less than five decades ago. 2015 - 1961 is more than 50, so nope. If the FF's rocket flight was no more than 14 years ago, then right now it didn't happen any earlier than 2001, and in a few years that will be a later calendar year still, unless they extend the timeline on a one to one basis (i.e., move back to 'real' time) from now on.

And as for everything from the 60s on being valid... nobody's talking about events as published being removed from MU history, unless they've been specifically retconned or consistently ignored. It's just that they no longer happened in the 1960s, or in a milieu without cell phones and Google and so on, due to the constant low-level retcons involved with maintaining the sliding timeline or 'Marvel time'.

EDIT: It just occurred to me that maybe you meant real world events and things like Presidential administrations were condensed at 4:1, so that everything from the Kennedy Administration through to the present - the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, Watergate, fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan - happened in the last 13-14 years, so presently from ~2001 to now. So, this would be world where Presidential terms are 1 year instead of 4, and so on. Of course, given the number of real world figures that have aged and died, or been born and grown up, in that period, there'd be a lot of people with progeria, I guess. Anyway, it doesn't work, and not just because Marvel has never played that way with the dates of real world events (as opposed to superheroic events in their comics) - since the sliding timeline started being enforced, there have actually been stories published that 'filled in' the decades of the 60s and 70s like Byrne's Lost Generation, and had things like Vietnam and the protests against it in the correct years.

[somebody]

EDIT: It just occurred to me that maybe you meant real world events and things like Presidential administrations were condensed at 4:1, so that everything from the Kennedy Administration through to the present - the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, Watergate, fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan - happened in the last 13-14 years, so presently from ~2001 to now. So, this would be world where Presidential terms are 1 year instead of 4, and so on. Of course, given the number of real world figures that have aged and died, or been born and grown up, in that period, there'd be a lot of people with progeria, I guess.

Bingo. You just use your imagination. Or, Marvel characters gain a +1 to their age every four years. They age slower. Or something. Make it up, you'll live longer than trying to make it logical.

Anyway, it doesn't work, and not just because Marvel has never played that way with the dates of real world events (as opposed to superheroic events in their comics) - since the sliding timeline started being enforced, there have actually been stories published that 'filled in' the decades of the 60s and 70s like Byrne's Lost Generation, and had things like Vietnam and the protests against it in the correct years.

Most of those are God awful, and are worse than actually pretending that Peter Parker can still be in his 20s in 2015. I ignore them. Again -- imagination. I believe what I want to believe.

[SickAlice]

@somebody: Ringing the MST3K Mantra?

[vitruvian]

Bingo. You just use your imagination. Or, Marvel characters gain a +1 to their age every four years. They age slower. Or something. Make it up, you'll live longer than trying to make it logical.

It's pretty nonsensical and so not what I choose to imagine. Imagining that when Marvel says 13-14 years they mean it, and that means the FF's rocket goes up in 2001 during the Bush Administration and not 1961 (or 2001) during the Kennedy Administration, leads to a better overall story of the Marvel Universe - since to my mind a story that makes some sense is a better story. It's not like topical references to Presidents or events are all that important to most of the earlier stories, apart from the overarching fear of the Cold War, and we've now slid to a point where that can quite easily be replaced by post-9/11 paranoia.

Don't worry, since trying to work out logic puzzles and No-Prizes is something I enjoy doing and actually do almost reflexively, it's not costing me any years with my family. A few hours on these forums, maybe, but not years... it's not like I'm as obsessed as the Sherlockians, for example.

Most of those are God awful, and are worse than actually pretending that Peter Parker can still be in his 20s in 2015. I ignore them. Again -- imagination. I believe what I want to believe.

Thing is, he is in his late twenties in the stories currently being published, so there's no more pretending involved than there usually is in talking about the age of a fictional character in other than publishing terms. In terms of age within the story, it's whatever the story tells us it is... but what the story tells us it is has certain logical implications. Unless you're Nero Wolfe, who scoffs at chronology of any kind.

Anyway, far from being an alternative to Peter being in his twenties, the 'fill-in' stories such as Lost Generation actually support the conceit of the sliding timeline, by filling in the decades left kind of vacant by moving the start of the modern heroic era with the advent of the FF ever forward. Or maybe it's just that I liked those stories better than you did and therefore am more inclined to include them in my own head canon than you are; we can all be blind to our own biases sometimes.

Anyway, in this case my bias is not to crunch up the real world events of the last five decades plus into 13-14 years, because the world that would result just seems too screwy to me. I'm generally fine with the way the sliding timeline is usually presented, as requiring you to just ignore topical references from the earlier decades (and also ignore that some plots would be short circuited by, say, the availability of cell phones or Google).

There is another alternative I'm kind of partial to, though... one in which you keep 'Marvel time' since the FF fought the Mole Man down to a span of 13-14 years, but keep things anchored not in the present publishing year, but rather back in 1961. This would make it only the mid-70s in the MU, with the reason for all the technology looking like that of 2015 being guys like Reed Richards and Tony Stark actually advancing things for the general public. You still have to ignore some topical references like Presidents and hot bands, of course, just in the later rather than the earlier decades, but I find it a neat exercise in world building... but not one particularly related to anything Marvel is publishing right now, of course.

[vitruvian]

@somebody: Ringing the MST3K Mantra?

Which I would submit really only applies to bad movies (or other works of fiction) that you're specifically there to mock... or the framing mechanism for that mocking, in this case. I certainly don't agree that 'science facts' are irrelevant to all science fiction, even in the movies, or that fiction in general ought to be immune from criticism on the basis of story logic or plausibility given its particular premise.

Or maybe I should just link to Moff's Law rather than trying to restate it myself.

[SickAlice]

@vitruvian: No actually it isn't. It's relevant to all forms of fiction and more, Bellisario's Maxim as well to Hot Fuzz which isn't specific to mocking the film rather the idea is that the audience member may in fact be hindering their own enjoyment of a work for over-thinking the process that went into the art itself. Hence " Repeat to myself it's just a show and I should really just relax. " La la la. You must know if you do not that 1.) Most of the writers and artists more likely than not did not put the amount of thought and detail into these works that you yourself have and 2.) Neither do most of the readers. Logic works from all angles rather than just your own. Compromising with the intellectual state of those around you is crucial to building a bridge in communication.

[Rosebunse]

@vitruvian: No actually it isn't. It's relevant to all forms of fiction and more, Bellisario's Maxim as well to Hot Fuzz which isn't specific to mocking the film rather the idea is that the audience member may in fact be hindering their own enjoyment of a work for over-thinking the process that went into the art itself. Hence " Repeat to myself it's just a show and I should really just relax. " La la la. You must know if you do not that 1.) Most of the writers and artists more likely than not did not put the amount of thought and detail into these works that you yourself have and 2.) Neither do most of the readers. Logic works from all angles rather than just your own. Compromising with the intellectual state of those around you is crucial to building a bridge in communication.

I hope they don't put this much thought into it. I mean, Hickman probably did put a TON of thought into this, but not too much, because that would be crazy.