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Comic Book Time: Difference between revisions
rewrote material referencing Not Allowed to Grow Up, removed misuses
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The problem is this. On one hand, [[Superman]] is a high-selling, successful character with a lot of licenses and so on based off of him. You don't want him to age or die, because that means losing that successful character. On the other hand, Superman exists as part of a greater universe, and if ''all'' the stories in that universe are continuously frozen in time, that cuts off a lot of possibilities.
So what do you do? [[Comic Book Time]]. You use the ''illusion'' of time passing. You never refer to specific dates if you can help it, and you let characters change, but only a little.
This can prove harmful to characters that are tied to a certain time period. For example, [[X-Men (Comic Book)|Magneto]]'s backstory involves being in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. This causes a particular type of aversion, the [[Refugee From Time]] where you just don't allow any Sliding Time Scale at all or at least not for one character.
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Another factor of Comic Book Time is that it does not pass at the same rate for everyone; secondary characters may catch [[Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome]] and age from children to teenagers and then young adults while their adult counterparts remain roughly the same age. Or minor characters can drop out of the narrative, only to return years later, aged, while their counterpart heroes remain youthful. This concept was picked up on in the [[Fourth Wall]]-breaking ''She-Hulk'' series, in which a [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] character decided to hang around She-Hulk as much as possible to stay youthful.
Stories focused around youngsters
One possible justification is that publication time does not equal the passage of time in the book. Particularly in recent years, comic book publishers have tended to adopt a model where each monthly issue of the book in question is a single instalment of a longer story-arc; for instance, a six-issue story arc where [[Batman]] takes on the Joker may only equal one night in the actual passage of time. Despite this, the story has taken up half a year of "real time". This, naturally, is going to affect both how quickly you can develop the overall narrative and how contemporary you can make it. However, all characters in a universe tend to inhabit the same "present", despite when they first appeared or how much time has passed in their series.
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Stories that take place in the future, naturally, are allowed to completely ignore this—unless the same future is referenced again later, in which case it'll have slid forward the same amount.
Compare [[Frozen in Time]], [[Webcomic Time]], [[Talking Is a Free Action
{{examples}}
== Comic Books ==
* [[Batman]] has been protecting Gotham City for about a decade. Batman has ''always'' been protecting Gotham City for about a decade.
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** This was lampshaded in ''Scooby Doo: Pirates Ahoy!'' The Gang goes on a cruise to celebrate Fred's birthday. At the wharf, they ask him how old he is. His response? "37. [[Beat|*beat*]] 38... 39... Here it is. Dock 40."
* ''[[King of the Hill]]'' has an interesting timeline. At the beginning of the series, Bobby was 11 years old and had a birthday. He turned 13 in the fifth season and hasn't really aged since. In the fourth season, Luanne stated that she was 19½, then in season 9, she celebrated her 21st birthday. John Redcorn was said to be 36 in a season three episode and 40 in a season 10 episode.
* ''[[Rugrats]]''
* The main characters of the TV show ''[[Home Movies]]'' have stayed eight-years-old throughout its four year run.
* ''[[Liberty's Kids]]''- the show covered 1773 right up to about 1789, and the main characters never aged - although all the adults around them did! By the end of the series Sarah was still 15, James 14, and Henri only 8 - after about 16 years!
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