Lorendiac
12-01-2005, 03:57 PM
A few days ago I started a thread called Arguments for "Aging in Realtime" in the DCU. (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=94928) One thing I didn't mention in it was that the Bat-related titles are supposed to have already experimented with this a few years ago. Now I'm trying to collect data, if there is any, on why they started and why they stopped.
As near as I can tell, it went like this:
"No Man's Land" was happening in realtime, pretty much - and most of the NML stories were published around 1999 as I recall. That is to say, we'd keep getting cute little captions telling us how many days it had been since the President of the United States had ordered the army to shoot anybody trying to go in or out of the Gotham disaster area after a certain deadline. (Don't ask me why he did that!) The NML event took about a year to be published in various Bat-titles, and it lasted a year from Batman's point of view as well as from ours.
I wasn't a regular buyer of the Bat-titles during or immediately after NML, but I heard rumors that the editors on the Batman group of titles were proudly proclaiming their decision to have the "aging in realtime" thing continue in the Bat-titles for quite some time after NML ended. I believe that stayed true, pretty much, in 2000 and 2001, and maybe into 2002 for awhile, according to references in some of the regular titles. For instance, after Sasha Bordeaux had been Bruce Wayne's bodyguard for something around one year from our perspective, she made an angry speech in which she said she'd been putting up with his childish disappearing acts for the past year. I believe there were similar references to the passing of time in the first couple of years' worth of the Batgirl title that started after NML.
Then, somewhere along the line, the whole "aging in realtime" thing seems to have been quietly abandoned and quickly swept under the rug, never to be mentioned again, as if DC had become terribly ashamed of it and didn't want to be reminded. As one example of how the Realtime thing had faded away somewhere around 2002 or thereabouts, Jeph Loeb wrote "Hush," a 12-part story arc for the regular Batman title, published monthly from late 2002 to late 2003 as I recall, and there was never any suggestion in the final chapter that it had already been about eleven or twelve months since the events of the first chapter in the epic. Off the top of my head, I estimate it might have been a few weeks.
A Few Questions
1. Did any of the editors or writers working on the Bat-related titles around 1999-2001 make any public statements about why they thought having Bruce and other characters "aging in realtime" for years - not just during NML - would be a Great Idea?
2. Eventually the Bat-titles seem to have dropped the whole idea. Does anyone remember any interviews, etc., where writers or editors explained that the idea was being dropped, and why they had finally given up on it?
3. Did many fans think this was going to last indefinitely - say, for at least the next ten years, with Bruce and Selina and Jim Gordon and all the villains visibly aging a good solid decade, just as the readers would age during the same timeframe?
4. Someone recently told me, in another thread, that during that period when Batman's stories were happening more or less "in realtime," the Robin title was definitely not letting Tim Drake and his supporting cast age at the same rate or anything close to it. Is that accurate?
(I suspect it is, but I wasn't reading his title regularly and I'd appreciate an expert opinion!)
As near as I can tell, it went like this:
"No Man's Land" was happening in realtime, pretty much - and most of the NML stories were published around 1999 as I recall. That is to say, we'd keep getting cute little captions telling us how many days it had been since the President of the United States had ordered the army to shoot anybody trying to go in or out of the Gotham disaster area after a certain deadline. (Don't ask me why he did that!) The NML event took about a year to be published in various Bat-titles, and it lasted a year from Batman's point of view as well as from ours.
I wasn't a regular buyer of the Bat-titles during or immediately after NML, but I heard rumors that the editors on the Batman group of titles were proudly proclaiming their decision to have the "aging in realtime" thing continue in the Bat-titles for quite some time after NML ended. I believe that stayed true, pretty much, in 2000 and 2001, and maybe into 2002 for awhile, according to references in some of the regular titles. For instance, after Sasha Bordeaux had been Bruce Wayne's bodyguard for something around one year from our perspective, she made an angry speech in which she said she'd been putting up with his childish disappearing acts for the past year. I believe there were similar references to the passing of time in the first couple of years' worth of the Batgirl title that started after NML.
Then, somewhere along the line, the whole "aging in realtime" thing seems to have been quietly abandoned and quickly swept under the rug, never to be mentioned again, as if DC had become terribly ashamed of it and didn't want to be reminded. As one example of how the Realtime thing had faded away somewhere around 2002 or thereabouts, Jeph Loeb wrote "Hush," a 12-part story arc for the regular Batman title, published monthly from late 2002 to late 2003 as I recall, and there was never any suggestion in the final chapter that it had already been about eleven or twelve months since the events of the first chapter in the epic. Off the top of my head, I estimate it might have been a few weeks.
A Few Questions
1. Did any of the editors or writers working on the Bat-related titles around 1999-2001 make any public statements about why they thought having Bruce and other characters "aging in realtime" for years - not just during NML - would be a Great Idea?
2. Eventually the Bat-titles seem to have dropped the whole idea. Does anyone remember any interviews, etc., where writers or editors explained that the idea was being dropped, and why they had finally given up on it?
3. Did many fans think this was going to last indefinitely - say, for at least the next ten years, with Bruce and Selina and Jim Gordon and all the villains visibly aging a good solid decade, just as the readers would age during the same timeframe?
4. Someone recently told me, in another thread, that during that period when Batman's stories were happening more or less "in realtime," the Robin title was definitely not letting Tim Drake and his supporting cast age at the same rate or anything close to it. Is that accurate?
(I suspect it is, but I wasn't reading his title regularly and I'd appreciate an expert opinion!)