Older Than They Look/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of characters that are Older Than They Look in Comic Books include:

  • Magneto, despite having white hair for most of his adult life, is actually physically in his late thirties/early forties, thanks to being reverted to infancy by Alpha the Ultimate Mutant one of the many times he was Absolutely Finally Defeated, then later re-aged to his physical prime by the Shi'ar agent Eric the Red after the series returned under Chris Claremont. Neither of these events get mentioned much anymore, though. The movies have him the age he'd actually be.
  • Wolverine's son Daken counts (while Wolverine himself, being born in the 19th century, just tips the scale at Really 700 Years Old). Daken was born in 1946, which makes him old enough to be the father of most of his teammates when he served with the Dark Avengers. He barely looks like he's in his early 20s most of the time.
  • Nick Fury was a World War II combat sergeant and hero, heading up the "Howling Commandos". By the time he became "Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D." in the 60s, he was taking a special "youth formula" to explain why he he'd barely aged a day since then without some outlandish retcon. Not that youth formula isn't any weirder.
    • Parodied with Nextwave's "Dirk Anger", who was 90 years old and kept alive with drugs and pureed live chickens.
  • Mystique is self-admittedly at least eighty years old, but her Shapeshifting powers greatly mask this fact.
  • Black Widow also has been handwaved as being experimented on with something to keep her young. It explains how she could be a spy during the Cold War and still not look a day over 30.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has Mina Murray, who's immortal due to her bath in the fires of youth at the lost city of Kor (from She: A History Of Adventure), and thus always looks to be in her twenties. This might lead to her becoming Really 700 Years Old after awhile but, at the time of the Victorian-era comic book, it just means she looks really good for her age.
  • Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl looks like she is ten years old and her friend, Ragamuffin, looks like he is a 25-year old guy. She is actually 100 and he is 400.
  • In Planetary, there are certain characters called "century babies", that are born at midnight of a century's initial year(i.e. 12:00 a.m. January 1, 1900, etc.). These characters can still be killed, but once they reach a certain point in adulthood, they stop aging and it's never made clear if they can in fact die of old age. Century baby Elijah Snow looks about 40 but is(at the time of the book) in his late 90's; Jakita Wagner and Anna Hark are the daughters of century babies(Lord Blackstock and Hark, respectively); both are in their mid-70's and neither look a day over 30, with Anna predicting that she will live for at least three hundred years. Spy John Stone has been aging at about 1/5 normal speed since his 40s. Then there's Axel Brass, who figured out how to stop his aging when he was 43. Jenny Sparks from The Authority is also a "century baby" and stops physically aging at the age of 19, though she looks to be in her mid-20's.
  • Jack Knight from Starman looked like he was somewhere in his late 20s, when he was really in his mid 30s. It's not that drastic, but they do lampshade it a few times.
  • Most of the surviving Golden Age DC characters have had a few decades taken off as a result of various adventures and continuity paradoxes. Notably not used with Wesley Dodds AKA The Sandman.
    • At this point, the remaining survivors actually have it built into their powers. Strangely, back when older versions of the Big Three were part of the team, they aged normally despite having the most leeway to excuse slow aging.
    • John Byrne's Generations series had several characters with this including a superpowered immortal Batman.
  • Jessica Drew, also known as the first Spider-Woman, went into cryogenic stasis to speed up the effects of an experimental spider serum her dad injected her with. She went into stasis when she was four, spent at least thirty years in it, and came out looking seventeen.
  • Ed "Baby Brain" Stargard in Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian. In flashbacks to the Newsboy Army he's a superintelligent baby. In the present he looks like a baby who's got old without maturing.
  • Cecil in Ghostopolis at first. He looks approximately 10 years old, despite being the ghost of a 60-to-70-year old man.
  • Neil Nordegraf from the Scott Pilgrim series is generally known as "Young Neil" among his friends due to being the youngest of the gang (atleast before Knives Chau showed up). This was played with to such an extent that when Scott finally acknowledged him simply as "Neil" in the final volume, Neil thought it was the best day of his life. Many people will however argue that alot of other characters in the series look younger than they make out to be due to the comic's art style, and due to Art Evolution, it becomes less and less obvious.
  • Monster Girl from Invincible is 29 and looks about 9. Every time she uses her powers she gets younger but her powers get stronger.
  • Doctor Strange was born in the 1930s but remains 40-something (since that was his age when he met and accepted Death just prior to becoming Sorcerer Supreme).
  • Max from Sam and Max Freelance Police looks, acts, and sounds (in the game and cartoon adaptations) like a child, but he's actually an adult.
  • Alpha Flight founding member Eugene "Puck" Judd looks like a man in his 50s, but he is, in fact, over a century old, a result of a dark spell that turned his body into a living prison for a demon named Raazer.
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