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Thread: Do any comic characters age?

  1. #1
    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    Default Do any comic characters age?

    I think the characters in Doonesbury age but since I've never found it that funny/entertaining I'm not entirely sure. Any others, especially in non-newspaper comics?

  2. #2
    Oliphaunt Rube E. Tewesday's avatar
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    Gasoline Alley was famous for this, although they've cheated a bit by having characters go on well past being a hundred years old.

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    Elen síla lumenn' omentielvo What Exit?'s avatar
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    It appears the characters in Questionable Content are aging.
    For Better or Worse and the ancient Gasoline Alley and Prince Valiant all have aging.

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    For whom nothing is written. Oliveloaf's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by An Gadaí View post
    I think the characters in Doonesbury age but since I've never found it that funny/entertaining I'm not entirely sure. Any others, especially in non-newspaper comics?
    I love Doonesbury, and yes, those characters age, and even die.

    The kids in Baby Blues age. This is a better strip than most
    people probably expect.

    Blondie and Dagwood just "celebrated" 75 years of ink'd mediocrity, guess they don't age.
    "I won't kill for money, and I won't marry for it. Other than that, I'm open to just about anything."

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    For whom nothing is written. Oliveloaf's avatar
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    What if Popeye aged? Imagine him sucking little blue pills in through his pipe instead of spinach.

    I just saw that someone is still drawing the Pink Panther strip. Why?
    "I won't kill for money, and I won't marry for it. Other than that, I'm open to just about anything."

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    Oliphaunt The Original An Gadaí's avatar
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    Well as a young man Popeye was better known as Quagmire but then he sailed to sea and all that.




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    Prehistoric Bitchslapper Sarahfeena's avatar
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    For Better or For Worse was an interesting strip from that standpoint...time just kept marching on. The kids grew up, moved out, got married, just like real life.

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    Elen síla lumenn' omentielvo What Exit?'s avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Oliveloaf View post
    I love Doonesbury, and yes, those characters age, and even die.

    The kids in Baby Blues age. This is a better strip than most
    people probably expect.
    I forgot about Baby Blues. How old is Zoe now? Late Teen maybe? I use to love Doonesbury but it was never the same after his hiatus. I have most of the 70s strips though in about 10 books.
    Quote Originally posted by Sarahfeena View post
    For Better or For Worse was an interesting strip from that standpoint...time just kept marching on. The kids grew up, moved out, got married, just like real life.
    I read for quite a while, but stopped when I stopped getting a paper.

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    Curmudgeon OtakuLoki's avatar
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    Marvel's New Universe books were expressly written to have a month of fictional time pass for every month of time the audience went through. As the books got more developed that constraint really began to affect the narratives. Limiting both cross-overs, and how complex storylines could get. One books started with a cheat, that the first several issues were actually going to 'backlog' time, in the effort to have more after the set up issues to focus on the initial plot. Which didn't work as well as they'd have liked: It still ended up seriously out of synch with the other titles.

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    Large member. AndrewRyan's avatar
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    In Batman: The Dark Night Falls comic, Bruce Wayne was especially old, and needed a special suit to fight superman.

    Also, in the mutant wars episodes of X-Men, when Magneto was the general of the resistance army, his hair was white, and he used his powers more and more as age restricted his fighting prowess.
    Hell hath no fury, like a woman's scorn for video games.

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    For whom nothing is written. Oliveloaf's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Sarahfeena View post
    For Better or For Worse was an interesting strip from that standpoint...time just kept marching on. The kids grew up, moved out, got married, just like real life.
    You forgot to mention the unbearable sanctimony of this strip.

    Completely unreadable.

    "I won't kill for money, and I won't marry for it. Other than that, I'm open to just about anything."

    -Jim Rockford

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    Prehistoric Bitchslapper Sarahfeena's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Oliveloaf View post
    You forgot to mention the unbearable sanctimony of this strip.

    Completely unreadable.

    lol, I didn't realize...I never read the comics, and don't think I've read that strip in particular in probably 15 years. I know it's weirdly popular in the same way that TV soaps are.

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    Oliphaunt
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    The son in Arlo and Janis (Gene?) Did age gradually, he started out 6 or 7 and reached late high school 10 or 15 years later. The parents experienced little if any visible aging over the same span. I haven't read the strip in years.

    I think I've heard the kids in Blondie did the same thing, aging slowly over a span of decades.

  14. #14
    Oliphaunt Taumpy's avatar
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    The characters in Strangers in Paradise aged during the run of the series, from mid-20's to early 30's. Of course, the series ran from 1993 to 2006, so the author played fast and loose with details involving characters' ages. (early on in the series the two main characters are shown as being in High School in the mid-80's, but by the end their birthdates were shown as being in the late 70's).

    For anyone who isn't familiar with it, despite the fact that it occasionally got pretty convoluted with "crime family" drama, I recommend it highly.
    Last edited by Taumpy; 23 Mar 2010 at 05:15 PM.
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    Quote Originally posted by Sarahfeena View post
    For Better or For Worse was an interesting strip from that standpoint...time just kept marching on. The kids grew up, moved out, got married, just like real life.
    Actually, it used to, and then Lynn Johnston decided to retire, and then changed her mind and sorta-rebooted the strip instead. Now she is rerunning her original storylines (with the kids correspondingly youngified) with some new art and jokes? Something weird like that.

    ETA: Wait, since when do I have a sig?!?
    Last edited by Risha; 23 Mar 2010 at 05:26 PM.

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    Porosity Caster parzival's avatar
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    Yeah, it's kind of a depressing thing that the characters in FBOFW are trapped in an endless time loop, doomed to keep repeating their lives forever.

    Luann has aged, albeit extremely slowly and somewhat vaguely. Her brother is now a firefighter, and I'm not sure if she's graduated high school yet or not. (She did famously get her '.' in an earlier strip.)

    I think Gil Thorp ages slightly; the students at least change.

    In Funky Cancerbean, death stalks every character, whether they age or not.

    (I don't read the comics so much; I let Josh Frühlinger do it for me.)

  17. #17
    Elen síla lumenn' omentielvo What Exit?'s avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Risha View post
    Actually, it used to, and then Lynn Johnston decided to retire, and then changed her mind and sorta-rebooted the strip instead. Now she is rerunning her original storylines (with the kids correspondingly youngified) with some new art and jokes? Something weird like that.

    ETA: Wait, since when do I have a sig?!?
    Risha, good to see you. How are you doing?

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    Quote Originally posted by What Exit? View post
    Risha, good to see you. How are you doing?
    *waves* Good, thanks. I regularly fall victim to obsessions and new hobbies (I joined bandom back in August, this time). Plus job hunting and moving. But I always come back eventually! How are you doing?

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    Elen síla lumenn' omentielvo What Exit?'s avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Risha View post
    *waves* Good, thanks. I regularly fall victim to obsessions and new hobbies (I joined bandom back in August, this time). Plus job hunting and moving. But I always come back eventually! How are you doing?
    Not bad, losing weight (again), still working same job, still living in the same house. Little changes except the kids are getting older.

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    The Queen Zuul's avatar
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    Something Positive has the characters aging. They started out as spry and sassy twenty-somethings and are now getting gray hair and bifocals and adopting Chinese babies. It also has a pretty concrete timeline, with specific years being referenced for when characters are a certain age and whatnot.

    The main character was 26 when the comic debuted and is going to turn 35 this year.

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    Quote Originally posted by What Exit? View post
    Little changes except the kids are getting older.
    They do that - fortunately they're cute to make up for it.

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    Oliphaunt Taumpy's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by parzival View post
    (I don't read the comics so much; I let Josh Frühlinger do it for me.)
    There is so much awesome contained in that blog. I usually giggle myself stupid when he takes on Archie.

  23. #23
    Clueless but well-meaning Hatshepsut's avatar
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    The interesting thing about Blondie is that while the characters have never aged, they have made some changes that reflect changes in society. I don't read the strip, but when I've seen it over the past few years, I've noticed that Blondie now has her own catering business. That surely must be to counterbalance the sexist assumptions that underlay the original situation in the strip. (I could be wrong, I've never paid much attention to it.)

  24. #24
    Obeah Man, Mischief Maker, Lord of Bees Skald the Rhymer's avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by AndrewRyan View post
    In Batman: The Dark Night Falls comic, Bruce Wayne was especially old, and needed a special suit to fight superman.
    When has Batman ever NOT needed a special suit (if only his kryptonite ring) to fight the Big Blue Boy Scout?
    "Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon." (Chesterton)

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