Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

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Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by Chris McCarver »

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2013/06/21/ ... ontinuity/

Personally, I think his math's off (my personal take is that the period between FF 1 and FF@ 3 encompasses two years Marvel Time to protect the narrative conceit that Peter Parker became Spider-Man before completing his last two years of high school, then four years of real time to one year of Marvel Time thereafter, thereby placing current Marvel Time in late Year 14), but the point he makes is interesting: we're not far away from the sliding timescale placing the dawn of the Modern Age of Marvels after 9/11.
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by Col_Fury »

Yeah, while I've been aware of this for a while now, it really sunk in for me when I read Captain America: Man out of Time, where it's implied that Obama is president when Cap is thawed out. I remember thinking "that make a whole lot of sense for the story, but it'll make more 'real' sense in about fifteen years or so. What a way to make sure the book has a shelf life! (besides it being a good story, of course)"
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by djmomo17 »

I recently picked up some of the latest "OHOTMU" and they have specific years in there. Or at least I recall I saw 1961 for some event, I think related to Dr Strange. I will have to check if that have "Death of Jean Grey (1st time) in the 80's or what....
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by JephYork »

It won't. There aren't going to be any years attached to "modern era" events -- meaning anything that occurred from Fantastic Four #1 onward.

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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by djmomo17 »

Just stumbled onto this page:

http://marvel.wikia.com/Marvel_Time

This part is interesting:

Code: Select all

Magneto's ties to WW2 are unbreakable. There hasn't been another tragedy of the same nature perpetuated on such a scale since (and hopefully never will be). Disconnecting Magneto from WW2 would take all the power of his personality from him. And WW2 is becoming more and more distant as Marvel Time slides forward. This isn't an age issue - he was reduced to infancy by Mutant Alpha at one point. Yet another life-extending story could be fit into the increasing time gap as necessary. The problem is that his connection to Charles Xavier is also slipping into the future, because Charles's background is sliding forward.

Originally, as a Soldier in the Korean War, Charles was not so different in age from Magneto. That they could be colleagues made a lot of sense, especially as Charles was involved with psychological treatment of survivors of the holocaust. (One wonders how modern treatments of Charles's past handle Gabrielle Haller - indeed, the lack of any modern treatment on that part of his history is probably because any such treatment is impossible). As Magneto becomes increasingly Charles's elder, a connection of friendship and a true sense of collegiality becomes impossible. They can still be rivals, but the deep connection they developed as young men together cannot happen when Magneto has moved well past young by the time Xavier is even born.

Xavier is generally portrayed as ~40 years of age. If he served in Vietnam (which seems to be the most recent version), he should be more like 60. Of course, Magneto is more like 90. And this discrepancy is only going to increase as time goes on. Its not that Magneto cannot continue to be alive until well after he's 200 if need be - some excuse can always be arranged - its that a 200 year old Magneto relating to a 40 year old Xavier as a friend and equal is an impossibility of character. Even if it would normally beggar belief, Magneto would never condescend to call someone so much younger and inexperienced than him a colleague. The original Xavier really could make a pretense of understanding Magneto's pain, he was close enough in age to understand the horrors of the holocaust firsthand (from working with survivors) and to be treated with respect by Magneto. A much younger Xavier could never hope for Magneto's respect. 
I didn't know that they had RC Xavier so that he was in Vietnam now and not the Korean War. I guess the bottom line is that there is no real "rule" and that Marvel editors are humans and make mistakes. The MU is not a self contained story with one author and a specific arc, so it's really impossible to maintain perfect continuity.
(This just reminds me of when I found out that the writers of the new Battlestar Galactica had no idea where the plot was going and were just making things up as they went along - same with Lost...aargh.)
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by loki »

I have a suspicion that Xavier is a Gulf War veteran now, not Vietnam. But that's irrelevant to the point. I strongly disagree with what that fan Wiki is saying: "its that a 200 year old Magneto relating to a 40 year old Xavier as a friend and equal is an impossibility of character."

Impossibility? Really? I work with people who are decades older than me and decades younger than me, and relate to them as friends and equals. Wolverine clearly relates to his teammates, and vice versa, despite there being more than a hundred years of an age difference between most of them.
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by Somebody »

loki wrote:I have a suspicion that Xavier is a Gulf War veteran now, not Vietnam.
I'm not so sure - they kept him in Korea for a LONG time after characters like Iron Man had been moved on from Vietnam - it was just before HoM when they placed Xavier in Vietnam.
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by loki »

Somebody wrote:
loki wrote:I have a suspicion that Xavier is a Gulf War veteran now, not Vietnam.
I'm not so sure - they kept him in Korea for a LONG time after characters like Iron Man had been moved on from Vietnam - it was just before HoM when they placed Xavier in Vietnam.
I'll admit I'm going more from general supposition on that one, rather than any hard research. In theory, since Xavier got a new body after the Brood incident, he could be a lot older than he looks - his clock got reset. The trouble is, Xavier's youth is tied to Moira MacTaggert's youth, since both went to university together, and with the youth of Kitty Pryde's dad, Carmen, since he and Xavier served together (a dubious retcon, imo, but confirmed nonetheless). Taking things as of the current day, all three are / were parents of children who are now in their early twenties, give or take, so that would mean born in the early 1990s. If Xavier is still tied to Vietnam, then assuming he only got drafted in the final year of the war, 1975, then he had to spend at least 15 years wandering the world in a mope after Moira broke up with him before he ended up in Israel and met Gabrielle Haller. That's a bit hard to accept.

Less importantly, we'd also have to assume that Moira and Carmen were at minimum 35 when they had their kids, assuming they were only 20 in 1975. While them being 35 when they had their children is emminently feasible, the longer they remain tied to the 1970s the less feasible it will become so as the real world years go by.

Xavier may well still be down as a Vietnam vet. However, it is only a matter of time before that has to change.
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by Somebody »

loki wrote:
Somebody wrote:
loki wrote:I have a suspicion that Xavier is a Gulf War veteran now, not Vietnam.
I'm not so sure - they kept him in Korea for a LONG time after characters like Iron Man had been moved on from Vietnam - it was just before HoM when they placed Xavier in Vietnam.
I'll admit I'm going more from general supposition on that one, rather than any hard research. In theory, since Xavier got a new body after the Brood incident, he could be a lot older than he looks - his clock got reset. The trouble is, Xavier's youth is tied to Moira MacTaggert's youth, since both went to university together, and with the youth of Kitty Pryde's dad, Carmen, since he and Xavier served together (a dubious retcon, imo, but confirmed nonetheless). Taking things as of the current day, all three are / were parents of children who are now in their early twenties, give or take, so that would mean born in the early 1990s. If Xavier is still tied to Vietnam, then assuming he only got drafted in the final year of the war, 1975, then he had to spend at least 15 years wandering the world in a mope after Moira broke up with him before he ended up in Israel and met Gabrielle Haller. That's a bit hard to accept.

Less importantly, we'd also have to assume that Moira and Carmen were at minimum 35 when they had their kids, assuming they were only 20 in 1975. While them being 35 when they had their children is emminently feasible, the longer they remain tied to the 1970s the less feasible it will become so as the real world years go by.
But what about Haller herself - like Magneto, she's a Holocaust survivor, ja? And she was just used
Spoiler:
and killed off
in X-Men Legacy as the Israeli Ambassador to the UK. What age was SHE when she had Legion?

It may be easier, rather than constantly making these characters retroactively older, to pull a Cap and insert some sort of timeslip somewhere in there...
.
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by loki »

Somebody wrote: But what about Haller herself - like Magneto, she's a Holocaust survivor, ja? And she was just used
Spoiler:
and killed off
in X-Men Legacy as the Israeli Ambassador to the UK. What age was SHE when she had Legion?

It may be easier, rather than constantly making these characters retroactively older, to pull a Cap and insert some sort of timeslip somewhere in there...
Haller being
Spoiler:
killed
allows Marvel to quietly overlook how old she'd have to be to still be a Holocaust survivor. However, if that had not been the case, then one of two things would have had to happen - either she'd have had to be detached from WWII (tricky, given her function as the "map" to hidden Nazi gold, but not completely impossible), or, more easily, she would have had to have her aging retarded somehow, presumably as part of the process the Nazis put her through. which is very viable given the resources theoretically available to the Nazis (early versions of the Infinity Formula, Thule Society sorcery, Arnim Zola's genetic manipulation) and reasons for the Nazis to have done this (they had no idea how long it would be before they could reclaim the gold, so they couldn't risk their map dying on them).

Inserting a timeslip could be done, but the problem becomes explaining it for more and more characters - not just Xavier and Gabrielle, but also Moira (a geneticist, feasible), her husband (still feasible, as he may have had mutant genes, given Proteus' reaction when he took his father as a host), Carmen Pryde (getting harder), etc. Every person tied to Xavier's youth who is still alive or was alive until recently would have to get timeslipped too.

The sliding timescale is imperfect, but we've got to work with it. That means one of two things - characters' histories have got to be detached from events that have specific dates so they can avoid becoming too old, or else there has to be an explanation for why they haven't aged too much. Some do the latter by being unaging or aging very slowly / well - Wolverine, Nick Fury, High Evolutionary, etc. Some do it by skipping intervening years - Cap, Spider-Woman, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, the Twelve, all via cryogenics; Challenger by literally time jumping the gap.
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by djmomo17 »

So I'm reading Marvel 2-in-1 27 where the Thing and the Impossible Man save the life of President Jimmy Carter. Now, if it is now in retconned Marvel Time and Ben and Impy saved GW Bush...I just don't see that being as good...(in a comic sense!) :outtahere:
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by Chris McCarver »

djmomo17 wrote:So I'm reading Marvel 2-in-1 27 where the Thing and the Impossible Man save the life of President Jimmy Carter. Now, if it is now in retconned Marvel Time and Ben and Impy saved GW Bush...I just don't see that being as good...(in a comic sense!) :outtahere:
Wait a couple years, and it'll be retconned as Barack Obama.

That's something I've always wondered about... obviously, the writers appear to be careful enough not to directly reference where the characters interacted with a dignitary who couldn't have been in their then-current position during the 14-year modern-era window, but do they consider any reference to a character meeting the U.S. President in earlier stories as meeting a President who was in office 14 years ago or less?
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by Col_Fury »

Well, it's clearly Jimmy Carter there, just like it's clearly Richard Nixon in Cap #144 and it's clearly Bush Jr. talking about his father, Bush Sr., a previous president, in Cap Annual 2001.

I've considered suggesting we create a POTUS listing at the MCP (making one listing by combining all the presidents' chronologies starting with FF 1 or whatever), which would essentially double any appearance for a US president. So if you were to look up Cap #144 in the Search, you'd see Nixon and POTUS listed, etc. But that's... strange to basically list the same character twice in an issue.

But yeah, this is one of those odd thigs you get when working with a sliding timescale.
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by Jason Doty »

Why not have

President of the United States

Cap 144 (Nixon, Richard #46)
Cap@ 2001 (Bush, George H. W. #51)
Cap@ 2001 (Bush, George W. #54/55)
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Re: Recent article about the Sliding Timescale

Post by Somebody »

Chris McCarver wrote:That's something I've always wondered about... obviously, the writers appear to be careful enough not to directly reference where the characters interacted with a dignitary who couldn't have been in their then-current position during the 14-year modern-era window, but do they consider any reference to a character meeting the U.S. President in earlier stories as meeting a President who was in office 14 years ago or less?
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Giant-Size Hulk #1 (2006), referencing Champions #16 (1977).
Giant-Size Hulk #1 (2006), referencing Champions #16 (1977).
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