There are moments when I really hate a "rolling timeline."
Oh, don't get me wrong...I understand and agree with the necessity of such a fiction. We can't have Ben Grimm being 90-something years old, so we gently massage his back story so that instead of fighting in WWII, he fought in Korea...or Vietnam...or any day now, Gulf War I.
And if we want to say that Peter Parker really hasn't been fighting crime for 45+ years, hey, I'm down with that. Say he's 30 now (?), and I can play along with the fiction just fine, thank you.
But sometimes, the technique calls way too much attention to itself, especially when creators are trying too hard to be clever and specific, and cognitive dissonance sets in HARD.
Case in point: Captain America #600. One of the back-up stories, by Mark Waid and Dale Eaglesham. We're having an auction of a vast amount of Cap memorabilia, including this:
Now, this bears a closer examination:
We're clearly told that this is Cap's ORIGINAL Avenger's ID card. It's his first, the one that Tony Stark welcomed him into the modern world with. And later in the story, Stark himself verifies its authenticity.
Now take a closer look at the card, specifically, the president's signature on the bottom line.
WHAT?
WAIT A MINUTE??
YOU MEAN?!?!
OK, slow down, breathe...
You mean Cap wasn't thawed out until the Clinton Administration??
You mean Cap missed Watergate?? And so he didn't unveil Nixon as head of the Secret Empire?!?
So Cap missed the Bicentennial??!!??
Cap slept through the Civil Rights era and Vietnam and Gulf War I?!?
Cap missed disco?!!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!!?!?!
See what I mean?? Waid and Eaglesham just should have left it vague...Yeah, maybe it makes sense to do it this way within the Marvel chronology, but it just feels soooooo wrong.
At least now Cap never had to see the 1990 movie...
Speaking of the whirligig of time (thanks, Bill S.), this is post #700 around these here parts. But I don't want to feel too old, so maybe I'll backdate everything to say I didn't start posting until last month...
Important note: unlike Cap, I don't have to count the first 58 issues of Tales of Suspense, in which he didn't even appear, in order to have 600 make sense!!
Anyhoo, thanks to everybody who reads, lurks, comments, enjoys, mocks, disagrees, or just skims by. It's a gas, and I ain't stopping anytime soon.
Oh, don't get me wrong...I understand and agree with the necessity of such a fiction. We can't have Ben Grimm being 90-something years old, so we gently massage his back story so that instead of fighting in WWII, he fought in Korea...or Vietnam...or any day now, Gulf War I.
And if we want to say that Peter Parker really hasn't been fighting crime for 45+ years, hey, I'm down with that. Say he's 30 now (?), and I can play along with the fiction just fine, thank you.
But sometimes, the technique calls way too much attention to itself, especially when creators are trying too hard to be clever and specific, and cognitive dissonance sets in HARD.
Case in point: Captain America #600. One of the back-up stories, by Mark Waid and Dale Eaglesham. We're having an auction of a vast amount of Cap memorabilia, including this:
Now take a closer look at the card, specifically, the president's signature on the bottom line.
WAIT A MINUTE??
YOU MEAN?!?!
OK, slow down, breathe...
You mean Cap wasn't thawed out until the Clinton Administration??
You mean Cap missed Watergate?? And so he didn't unveil Nixon as head of the Secret Empire?!?
So Cap missed the Bicentennial??!!??
Cap slept through the Civil Rights era and Vietnam and Gulf War I?!?
Cap missed disco?!!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!!?!?!
See what I mean?? Waid and Eaglesham just should have left it vague...Yeah, maybe it makes sense to do it this way within the Marvel chronology, but it just feels soooooo wrong.
At least now Cap never had to see the 1990 movie...
Speaking of the whirligig of time (thanks, Bill S.), this is post #700 around these here parts. But I don't want to feel too old, so maybe I'll backdate everything to say I didn't start posting until last month...
Important note: unlike Cap, I don't have to count the first 58 issues of Tales of Suspense, in which he didn't even appear, in order to have 600 make sense!!
Anyhoo, thanks to everybody who reads, lurks, comments, enjoys, mocks, disagrees, or just skims by. It's a gas, and I ain't stopping anytime soon.