It’s Not Just Marvel: The Greatest Strength of Most Comics Is Also Their Most Damning Weakness

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Regardless if they’re set in the world of Marvel, DC Comics, or another comic book company, all superhero comics have at least one thing in common: they are timeless, in more ways than one. Yes, the stories themselves can feel timeless and ageless, but never more so than the characters within them. Superhero comic book stories can truly be neverending because the characters themselves don’t have to age.

When Marvel covered Rogue for an episode of the Women of Marvel podcast, Preeti Chhibber and Ellie Pyle sat down with novelist Cass Morris, clinical psychologist Orna Guralnik, and Rogue & Gambit (2018) writer Kelly Thompson. The episode focused on Rogue as a character, but soon delved deeper into how and why superhero characters stay relatively the same age decades after they were created.

The overall consensus is that the stagnant aging of Marvel’s characters can be a blessing and a curse. It truly ensures that stories can be timeless when the characters are ageless, but on the other hand, there is no true growth.

Superhero Comic Books Have One Great Strength: Non-Aging Characters

It’s Also the Genre’s Biggest Problem

Comic book characters from these universes never aging can be a double-edged sword with both pros and cons, as this episode of Women in Marvel explores. During the Marvel podcast, Pyle addresses how the characters that Thompson is writing at the center of Rogue & Gambit are almost always in their”ambiguous 30s, 20s,” as has been the case for decades. She then proceeds to ask Thompson how she goes about keeping the characters and their romance fresh when, in both cases, the romance has existed for so many decades and been explored for just as long. Thompson had the following to say:

I think it’s really, really difficult. That’s the game. Like, when you’re talking about that, part of me– the nostalgic fan in me, the reader in me– is like, “well, I just want to read Rogue and Gambit forever. And I just want to read them sort of circling each other and being that.”

But that’s also diminishing returns because that’s not real growth. I think comics, for good or ill, took exactly what you said, Ellie. Like, they have this superpower where their characters don’t have to age. And they were like, great, and they just ran with it. And I get why it’s very appealing. But it’s probably one of our biggest problems that all of us have with comics at some point or another, right, is that an amazing story ends, and the character really grew and changed, and it’s such an important, powerful story to you. And then now, somebody has to come in and do what’s next. And what’s next maybe doesn’t– go back.

Nostalgia weaves its way into all forms of media, but it is most prevalent in superhero comic books. Perhaps the same can be said for standard literature, but even characters with origins in novels and other prose forms, like Harry Potter, for example, grow old over the course of their stories. More often than not, Marvel and DC Comics characters never age.

The characters that young readers felt connected to as children are still essentially the same characters when those readers reach adulthood, creating the same love and connection in new stories with the same characters without readers having to revisit old comics. Those readers can rest assured that their beloved characters look and feel the same as they did twenty years ago.

Superhero Comic Book Characters Live in a World of Constant Revolving Doors

For Better or Worse, Superheroes Rarely Permanently Change

A youthful superhero can stay youthful forever and endure the same adventures time after time. Thompson likens the feeling to a superpower and admits how appealing it is, but there’s the additional caveat that there isn’t ever really a next chapter with superheroes in their comic books. They don’t have to change, and neither do their stories. Even the same supporting players and antagonists can remain in the hero’s stories for decades to come without consequences – or at least the very least, those consequences aren’t mandatory to explore for future creators. Thompson continues:

But how do you go back? If you go through huge, legitimate change, it’s hard to just go back. What’s the old adage, right? Your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. And I definitely feel that for comics. This is a thing that is comics’ greatest strength, and also its greatest weakness.

It’s a beautiful, storytelling thing to be able to reinvent these characters over and over and over again for decades. But it’s also a thorn in our side. Some of the best, most powerful stories have very clear cut endings. People die and don’t come back. All of these things that we’ve broken for comics. And I’m a part of it. I do it, too.

Superheroes are constantly reshaped, reinvented, and even reanimated. These classic comic book characters not only seldom change, but they seldom die and stay dead. It may not be true to life, but it adds to the longevity and legacy of superheroes, and even makes the concept of nostalgia all the more appealing. Rogue herself ranks among the characters who have died the most in comics. This constant rebirth speaks to the lingering point that there are little to no consequences in superhero comic books. That lack of consequences, again, has its pros and its cons.

There Are Many Pros to Ageless Superhero Characters

How Marvel Treats Age for the Better

As stated before, superheroes rarely age, meaning that their stories can go on forever. Superhero comics don’t have the same concerns that most genres and mediums have that end up putting a full stop to a franchise. Actors in movies get old, while authors of literary classics die with their characters. With comics, the stories can theoretically go on forever, with new writers and artists adopting the helm from previous creators. To echo Thompson’s sentiment, this kind of collaborative spirit is a “beautiful” thing to see in real-time.

Superhero comic books carry such a rich history within them, especially those with characters who were created during the Golden Age of comic books, which birthed both DC and Marvel. So many characters from that era are nearly one hundred years old at this point, but they are also still as fresh and beloved as they were almost a hundred years ago. They also look, feel, and sound the same as they did nearly a century ago with little to no alterations, still maintaining the fundamentals that readers fell in love with all those decades ago. It’s the perfect nostalgia act.

There Are Also Many Cons to Ageless Superhero Characters

How Marvel Treats Age for the Worse

Change is the recurring word in this matter, and while the lack of change can be a selling point for comic books, it can also be a major problem. Comics are filled with rich history and rich stories, but many of those stories are rendered mute because nothing truly changes, depsite the constant turnover of stories and creators. When franchises are neverendng, there are no proper resolutions; the hero never gets their happy ending, and supervillains are never truly defeated. The lack of change forces the hero into an endless loop of torment that they can’t grow from, and oftentimes, they’re forced backward if they can’t move forward.

The deeper question at hand is whether superhero comic books can recover from their universal cons. Thompson doesn’t offer a solution, and maybe there is no solution. There’s no simple way to “fix” superhero comics, because it’s not a “problem” that can be fixed. It’s the nature of the genre, and as long as business is booming, the characters who generate profit for the publisher can’t change. Marvel has dismantled the necessities of storytelling – like consequences and permanent endings – but the problem isn’t company-specific, it’s a consequence of the genre.

Thompson’s Rogue & Gambit series, with artist Pere Pérez, is available now from Marvel Comics.

Source: Marvel

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