[MoriartyL]

Originally Posted by Marduk

And even though time moves slowly in terms of events; the years still seem to progress with our calendars. That is, in spite of everything I've said, they'll still use usually use the year of publication as the date. going back to spiderman as an example; Peter Parker was a high school senior (Actually I have no idea what age defines 'senior' in the US, and I understand that there's a large difference between their High Schools and our Secondary Schools that I haven't grasped, but I think it's safe to assume he was a teenager older than 13 or 14) when he gained his powers in the early 60s. 4 decades on he and Mary-Jane should be in their 50s. Are they? (Actually, are they? I don't read this title anymore so please tell me if he's actually reached his real age).

No, of course not. They're in their mid-20s now. Now, what I'm about to say is just my own personal idea, it's not how the Marvel editors really think about this stuff. (They try not to think about it.) But I think the laws of time don't work the same in the Marvel Universe as they do in ours. I think in the MU, time is different from person to person.

Imagine this scenario: Person A meets Person B in 2008. Person A then leaves and lives for ten years. Person B leaves their encounter and lives for a day. Then they meet up again in 2009 and share experiences. One is now ten years older, while the other is just a day older. In the Marvel Universe, this is perfectly plausible.

I like to think that the relativity and chaos of time is a well-known law of physics there, so obvious that they never bother to mention it. I like to think that they wake up some days and discover they've missed an election while they were sleeping, and just shrug it off because that's the way the world works. Rotten luck, that's all. Using superpowers seems to slow down time, and spending a lot of time with another person gets the two "timestreams" to more closely resemble each other. I wish they'd actually make a comic which admits to this.

It drives me crazy when they have a story set in some character's past, and the story is set in the modern day. Like, there was a story a few years ago set when Spider-Man was starting out, and it had blogs in it. Blogs! That is wrong. When Spider-Man was ten years younger, it was the 1960s. Now it's 2009. This isn't so complicated that the writers can't figure it out.

(I know I won’t make any friends by saying this but I find Alan Moore and Grant Morrison overrated; works I’ve read from either writer seem to live up to the hype around them).

I agree with you 100%. Alan Moore has never impressed me, and Grant Morrison actively offends my sensibilities with almost everything he writes.

I purchased the first part of 100 Bullets because I was assured it didn't but, even though it wasn't a bad story, I felt lied to. I was also recommended "Y: The Last Man" by the same guy, but I didn't really trust him after his last recommendation

I don't understand what the "lie" was concerning 100 Bullets- it's an excellent comic, from what little I've read of it. Y: The Last Man was mentioned earlier in this thread. It's a good comic, but I don't think it's one of the best things its writer (Brian K. Vaughan) has done. The characters are great, the plot is lousy. Actually, that's true of a lot of things he's done. If you like character-driven stories, I would recommend it. Just don't expect one of the best things you've ever read.