I just returned from a business trip and will finally get back to scratchbuilding this week. Until then however, I figured I'd get back to posting by typing up some ruminations about Marvel Comics.
When I was younger comics books ruled my life, more than role playing games or miniature wargames or any other diversion. I was a Marvel Comics fan and kept collecting and reading until completing my undergrad degree. It's been 10 years since I've bought a comic and I may never again. I've thought long about why I stopped reading and despite the obvious reasons (growing up, responsibilities demanding my time, etc.) I feel the stories themselves share some of the blame for me losing my fascination. The last few years of my comics-reading experience I became extremely dissatisfied with the constant ret-conning of classic characters and established continuity. The beauty of the Marvel Universe was indeed the continuity. So what caused the poor storylines and redundant reboots? Is it just me preferring a certain style of the late 70s early 80s; perhaps it's all nostalgia? Perhaps the stories today are actually better? I don't think that's the case. It's simple economics: why get rid of an iconic character if he's still making money for you. After all, when one generation stops reading (as I did) a younger generation will be there to buy more issues. And to the younger generation unfamiliar with the continuity, a ret-con is inconsequential. And so the reboots continue and the continuity becomes more confused and the thing that made Stan Lee's vision so impressive, a linked universe, falls apart.
As cynical as all that sounds I don't think that some executive's greed is what made comic book stories start to suck in the 90s. I think that the whole linked universe concept was doomed from the start because the characters do not age with normal time. If Reed Richards and company blasted off to space in November of 1961, they'd be in their 70s and 80s today. Peter Parker would be a few years from 70! Professor X would probably be long dead, along with Steve Rogers, super-soldier serum or not. The problem stems from the fact that comics are published monthly but issues are separated in-story by seconds, minutes, or days at most, leading to a huge time dilation over the last 50 years.
If I were a comics publisher inaugurating a new line of linked titles, I would allow the characters to age with my readers. How? I would publish a single "timeline" book monthly that catches up all the titles to the current date by presenting behind-the-scenes stories that have happened. I'd call it "Meanwhile...", and the summaries would take maybe two to four pages max, per character. For example, let's say a multi-issue story-arc (Origin Revealed!) links issues #1 through #3 of The Amazing Superlative Man. Issue #1 was published in January. In the April issue of "Meanwhile...", it is revealed that after the events of the first three issues of The Amazing Superlative Man (which took place over two nights in January) our hero has faced two minor villains and a relationship problem in the interim three months. The April issue of The Amazing Superlative Man (#4) picks up after these events. Perhaps "Meanwhile..." would be published two weeks earlier than all the character titles.
A few years ago I decided to extend this idea to the Marvel Universe and asked "what would the Marvel Universe look like if the characters aged normally"? I know this question has been addressed in an issue of "What If...?", but I thought it needed to be asked again, because basically "all the stories have been done" with the current characters. Why not let them grow old, die off gloriously, retire into mentorship of a new generation, disappear mysteriously and return for cameo appearances later? I asked myself the question, what if the Fantastic Four blasted off into space in November, 1961 and all their adventures, as well as those of all other Marvel characters, were tied to a real timeline, with no monthly lag? The result would be that that first 50 or so years of Marvel publishing history would be compressed into perhaps 15-20 years. The Secret Wars would have happened in the late 60s for example. So if one were to consider a title set today, in 2011, the question would have to be asked, what happened in the interim? Most of the iconic heroes would be gone. It's this setting that I call Marvel Now, which I am fleshing out for a super-hero RPG campaign setting using my homebrew rules. I will try to avoid stupid "future" tropes, such as teen-aged versions of classic characters, children of classic characters, etc. Most of the setting is quite gelatinous as it covers two or three decades. One thing I have established: Rick Jones features prominently!
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