The Marvel Universe - what "counts" ?

[BarryAllen]

I got to thinking about it.

 

"Back in the day", they used to talk about about "Marvel time" vs regular time.

It would come up in lettercolls mostly, by readers and by Stan as well.

 

Basically it stated that there were times where one issue would pick up right where the other left off, so even though a month passed for the reader, only a second passed in the comic.

That, and Stan (or Roy, or whoever) would say time passed slower in the books than in real time.

 

But time did pass in the comics during the silver age...

 

Say Marvel would have stuck with a policy that 1 "Marvel" year = 3 years in real time (just for example).

If Peter was 15 in late 1962 we could be reading about a 32 year old Peter now.

If the ratio was 1:4, Peter could be 28.

 

Using the 1:4 ratio Reed Richards could be 50 now if he were in his mid thirties in 1961 (thus allowing him to have fought in WWII).

 

That might not be so bad.

 

There used to be a "Marvel" time. It would have been interesting to see the characters grow, albeit only at a third or fourth of our rate, during all this time.

 

That is exactly the way I always understood the comics.

 

The only exception would be if a year was stated in a book and then I'd just accept that time was stretched to accommodate that particular issue / date intersection.

 

I actually thought everyone read comics that way. Must be an 'old' thing.

 

 

This is a question I reflected upon in 1988-1990. If you don’t want to age the characters (a thing that more or less to some degree in a realistic comic would be unavoidable) more than a ratio, it would just be enough to keep determinate time spans, and the narration, likely.

 

By welcoming unlikeliness, believing you can remove meaning and inherent laws, you cultivate more or less illusions, which just make poor literature.

 

Not all comics can be like Gasoline Alley, but Marvel managed to give flesh to a little miracle until it lasted. We should be grateful for that, and that alone.

 

So dystopian....

[BarryAllen]

It isn't an easy question to answer and in reality its not going to please everyone. But they HAVE to keep moving forward somehow (how else will the characters remain popular with the world's youth and ensure their future?), so pick your poison because no one has a time machine but Doom.

 

With all the respect, this post does not make any sense, as Marvel hadn’t cared for about twenty years. It‘s not an "overnight" phenomena.

You can do a million things if you are a good writer, and intentioned to put yourself in service of the characters, instead of showcasing your obsessions or accepting to produce nonsense. Some wonderful examples could be the characters of Daimon Hellstrom, Jessica Drew and Michael Morbius, for which the authors developed a constant and brilliant path of maturation and growth, around 1989.

The quality of what Marvel always represented had never been so strong as it had been between 1986 and 1989. In two or three years, they would have had laid the basis for a complete neglection (first), and then negation of all they had built.

 

Nowadays, even without thinking, it's a convoluted mess. Or so it seems. I could be wrong.

 

Of course not. You are entirely right. Marvel started to deliberately go awry when it made precise choices, around 1989. Before that, it just took good writers to pick up the stories and the character’s lives, adding sense and meaning.

 

The movies have little to nothing to do with what the Marvel Age was about.

Marvel no longer represent itself. Unless something miraculous happens, it is a dead body.

 

I appreciate you perspective but I am sure many disagree on which "era" is superior.

 

Also, I am a bit confused as to why you said my post didn't make any sense. Was it the specific quote you pulled or the entire point?

[Azkaban]

I got to thinking about it.

 

"Back in the day", they used to talk about about "Marvel time" vs regular time.

It would come up in lettercolls mostly, by readers and by Stan as well.

 

Basically it stated that there were times where one issue would pick up right where the other left off, so even though a month passed for the reader, only a second passed in the comic.

That, and Stan (or Roy, or whoever) would say time passed slower in the books than in real time.

 

But time did pass in the comics during the silver age...

 

Say Marvel would have stuck with a policy that 1 "Marvel" year = 3 years in real time (just for example).

If Peter was 15 in late 1962 we could be reading about a 32 year old Peter now.

If the ratio was 1:4, Peter could be 28.

 

Using the 1:4 ratio Reed Richards could be 50 now if he were in his mid thirties in 1961 (thus allowing him to have fought in WWII).

 

That might not be so bad.

 

There used to be a "Marvel" time. It would have been interesting to see the characters grow, albeit only at a third or fourth of our rate, during all this time.

 

+1

[Comicopolis]

It isn't an easy question to answer and in reality its not going to please everyone. But they HAVE to keep moving forward somehow (how else will the characters remain popular with the world's youth and ensure their future?), so pick your poison because no one has a time machine but Doom.

 

With all the respect, this post does not make any sense, as Marvel hadn’t cared for about twenty years. It‘s not an "overnight" phenomena.

You can do a million things if you are a good writer, and intentioned to put yourself in service of the characters, instead of showcasing your obsessions or accepting to produce nonsense. Some wonderful examples could be the characters of Daimon Hellstrom, Jessica Drew and Michael Morbius, for which the authors developed a constant and brilliant path of maturation and growth, around 1989.

The quality of what Marvel always represented had never been so strong as it had been between 1986 and 1989. In two or three years, they would have had laid the basis for a complete neglection (first), and then negation of all they had built.

 

Nowadays, even without thinking, it's a convoluted mess. Or so it seems. I could be wrong.

 

Of course not. You are entirely right. Marvel started to deliberately go awry when it made precise choices, around 1989. Before that, it just took good writers to pick up the stories and the character’s lives, adding sense and meaning.

 

The movies have little to nothing to do with what the Marvel Age was about.

Marvel no longer represent itself. Unless something miraculous happens, it is a dead body.

 

What was so special about Marvel books during 1986-1989?

[bababooey]

It isn't an easy question to answer and in reality its not going to please everyone. But they HAVE to keep moving forward somehow (how else will the characters remain popular with the world's youth and ensure their future?), so pick your poison because no one has a time machine but Doom.

 

With all the respect, this post does not make any sense, as Marvel hadn’t cared for about twenty years. It‘s not an "overnight" phenomena.

You can do a million things if you are a good writer, and intentioned to put yourself in service of the characters, instead of showcasing your obsessions or accepting to produce nonsense. Some wonderful examples could be the characters of Daimon Hellstrom, Jessica Drew and Michael Morbius, for which the authors developed a constant and brilliant path of maturation and growth, around 1989.

The quality of what Marvel always represented had never been so strong as it had been between 1986 and 1989. In two or three years, they would have had laid the basis for a complete neglection (first), and then negation of all they had built.

 

Nowadays, even without thinking, it's a convoluted mess. Or so it seems. I could be wrong.

 

Of course not. You are entirely right. Marvel started to deliberately go awry when it made precise choices, around 1989. Before that, it just took good writers to pick up the stories and the character’s lives, adding sense and meaning.

 

The movies have little to nothing to do with what the Marvel Age was about.

Marvel no longer represent itself. Unless something miraculous happens, it is a dead body.

 

What was so special about Marvel books during 1986-1989?

 

That's when he was 13 years old.

 

OR

...it's a PowerPack thing