Marvel Time killed the two things that made Marvel great:

Realism and the Marvel Universe.

Marvel Time killed Marvel

That’s right. Marvel Time killed Marvel. “But Marvel’s still here” you say? Yes, the merchandising and movies are in better shape than ever. There’s more interest in Marvel characters than ever before! Yet the comics are selling almost nothing. They used to sell well, back in the old days. They should be selling even better now, with all the movie interest in the characters. So what went wrong?

The answer is simple. The stories aren’t great any more. “What do you mean? We have talented writers!” Yes, the writers are talented. But they don’t give the readers what they want.  They don’t give critics what they want, either. They don’t do the simple things that always work. But it’s not their fault. The real villain is Marvel Time, and I intend to prove it.

How Marvel Time killed the stories

Put simply, in the 1960s Marvel produced stories that hit all the right buttons. The comics sold so well that business instincts kicked in. “We’re making a ton of money! DON’T CHANGE ANYTHING!” So they invented Marvel Time. Marvel Time is the internal comic book clock that says the characters must never change. This removed everything that makes a story good. And sure enough sales have slumped ever since.

There have been times, like with the new X-Men, where Marvel Time has loosened its death-grip for a while and sales soared. But that had the same predictable effect. “We’re making money! STOP CHANGING STUFF! Bring back Phoenix! Keep the kids forever young! Wolverine’s berserker rage was popular, let’s have another one and another one and another one!”

How Marvel Time killed realism

“I don’t want realism, I want escapism.” Of course you do! Every novel ever written is about escapism. The ones that sell manage to place amazing events into a believable setting. The sales figures don’t lie. That’s what set early Marvel apart from tis competitors. The stories were that little bit more believable. That’s why Alan Moore and Frank Millar and early Claremont knocked people over, because these were stories they could believe in!

A story is about characters you care about. If those characters just do the same old stuff forever, if they forget their past, if they’re stuck in groundhog day in some imaginary city, why should you care? Meh. Seen it all before.

And not just the characters. Marvel Time compresses 5 or 10 real years into the superhero’s typical year. That results in an insane level of confusion that no real world could survive. How many alien invasions can you cope with in the same year before the city just ceases to function? But in real time you have a breathing space between battles, a level of normalcy that makes the drama seem even more dramatic.

“But superheroes were never supposed to make sense” you say? Rubbish! They can make sense if you want them to. Why do you think those early Marvels published pages on how powers work and cutaway diagrams of the Baxter Building? Why did the heroes have weaknesses? Because it added to the realism. Realism matters!

How Marvel Time killed the dream

In the early days the Marvel Universe was not just a collection of individual heroes. It was a living, breathing, breathtaking universe that was always changing. You felt like it was going somewhere! You had to buy all the comics so you didn’t lose touch! But Marvel Time killed that. Now there is no change on the large scale. You can now wait twenty years without buying a single comic, then come back and you won’t have missed anything.

This is the inevitable downside of superheroes as timeless brands. if they are timeless, there is no urgency to buy their stories.

The whole point of a story is “what happens next?” Marvel time means that nothing happens next because nothing ever changes. Oh sure, there are still simple fight stories, so any significant changes will be forgotten or retconned:

“But we cannot create new ideas at such a rate any more” you say? That betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes a good story. People aren’t looking for new ideas. People are looking for relevance to their lives, for characters they can believe in, for conflicts that really matter. Exactly the three things that Marvel Time sets out to destroy.

Marvel Time takes heroes out of the real world and puts them somewhere distant. It then says that whatever they do doesn’t really make any difference in the long run. Marvel Time kills the possibility of really good stories.

With no realism and no story, why do people still buy comics? Answer: they don’t. Well actually a few diehard fans still do. Marvel Time still allows a very limited range of stories as long as you don’t expect too much. But to all intents and purposes the stories are dead, killed by the desire to pickle and preserve and freeze the 1960s.

What can we do?

Marvel Time is the enemy of good stories. But we’re stuck with it. Movies and merchandise make a ton of money from the characters. And they want characters that don’t change. They want brands, not stories. So what can be done?

There’s a simple solution. Leave the current stories how they are, but add a new parallel series, one that features real time. Real Time worked before, it can work again.

Wake up to real time!

Look at the history of comic sales: When comics have been most exciting, most successful, most popular, they have usually worked in real time.

Real time isn’t the only way to create great stories, but it’s the easiest way. Real Time guarantees that there’s always an interesting and unexpected answer to the big question “what happens next?” Real Time guarantees that comics always appear up to the minute, fresh, and relevant. Real Time gives new readers a reason to start, and old readers a reason to keep buying.

More problems with Marvel Time

Marvel Time cannot work even on its own terms

Marvel Time says that all the old stories did happen (more or less) but they all took place within the last ten years or so. But it cannot work. Even if we ignore all real time references, the stories cannot be squashed into ten years. If we ignore the details then it is possible to squash them into fourteen years, but if we look at detail then they cover at least twenty two years. Marvel Time cannot work even on its own terms.

Financially and critically successful comics don’t use Marvel Time

Real time creates more interesting and more financially successful stories (on average - there are exceptions of course). So Marvel Time creates less interesting and less profitable comics.

Marvel Time creates continuity problems

Marvel Time is the cause of all Marvel’s continuity problems. Marvel Time says that the past forty years happened within the last few years, so we have to remember it all. And the same villains battle the same heroes, which makes everything very confusing. Worse, major changes have to be routinely retconned. What a nightmare! Nobody can keep track of it all!

Real Time is so much easier. In the real world, events of forty six years ago are only of interest to old people and historians. Most of the key players are now dead, and the world of politics and business and fashion is a completely different place. In Real Time, what a character did twenty years ago will almost never affect what they do now, because twenty years of real time has passed: the hero has changed, the villains have changed, there is almost no chance that they will retread over the same issues, so contradictions will seldom arise.

Marvel Time is driving away older readers

Why do people ‘grow out of’ comics? They don’t ‘grow out of’ movies or books. But they have to grow out of comics because the readers grow up and the characters don’t. Why not let characters grow up with their readers?

Marvel Time doesn’t give writers enough freedom

Under the current rules, writers cannot do anything that would change a major character permanently. Writers are chained up by petty restrictions. Free the writers! let the only rule become “would this make a great story?”

And another thing...

Most people don't realize the scale of the Marvel Time problem. In Marvel Time, the origin of the Fantastic Four and all the other stuff happened less than twelve years ago. So anything that took place in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s must be either denied or replaced with an altered version. Many of the early stories featured battles with communists - they have now gone. The heroes fought in WWII and Korea and Vietnam - that has all gone. They wore contemporary fashions and reflected contemporary ideals - that has all gone. They met with celebrities and presidents - that has all gone. They had a Christmas related story each year and referred to the election every four years - that has all gone. Piece by piece all the early stories are being wiped from history.

In ten years, Marvel Time will have all the heroes' origins being after 9/11. The 1990s will be erased from memory. And if you wait another few years, all the stories you now enjoy will never have happened, or at least not how you remember them. Marvel Time means the entire history, which means the entire universe, is being destroyed or rewritten before our eyes. And it means that you cannot trust what you see because one day it will have not happened.

Sure, there is a place for this. It is in George Orwell's 1984, or Doctor Doom's Official History (see the last story in FF 358). Or for new readers who have no interest in the characters' lives. But for the rest of us, we need the real Marvel Universe. We need real time.

The greatest Marvel stories are closely tied to their eras. When you change the era, you destroy part of the story. Take the Galactus trilogy for example (Fantastic Four 48-50), generally regarded as one of Marvel's greatest stories ever. If we take away the 1960s parts, almost nothing is left. Marvel has tried retelling and updating this and other classic stories (in the Ultimates and Heroes Reborn series and elsewhere), each retelling was inferior to the o

What about folk who don’t want real time?

Some people like timeless stories. Fine! Let them keep buying! Marvel has shown that it is willing to have simultaneous universes (original, Ultimates, 2099, 1602, Adventures, etc.) The obvious solution is to have two different universes: a “timeless” universe for people who don’t like change, and a “real time” universe for people who love stories.

How would it start?

Heroes would not suddenly age - that would be unrealistic. People do not suddenly age in real time. Heroes would just start aging normally from where they are now. They would wake up and notice that they were born in 1961 (or whenever) yet are now only 23 (or whatever). This would be the start of the greatest conspiracy story in all comics. Some heroes would remain oblivious to passing time, others would be aware, like in The Matrix.

How will it all be explained? Well you can consider "Heroes Reborn" and the Franklinverse to be a dry run. Notice how Marvel Time began in 1967 when Franklin was conceived. Franklin, the creator of the Heroes Reborn pocket universe. Coincidence? I don't think so.

"Heroes Reborn" failed because it made the characters unfamiliar. Real time will work because it makes the characters familiar again, linking to all those old comics that collectors love but Marvel has until now tried to forget.

The biggest media event in comic history!

Listen up, Marvel, we are talking sales! Remember how Spiderman's new costume and the death of Superman got into the real world TV news? Those things were news, even though everyone knew the events would probably be retconned. But this story is even bigger, because it is easier to understand. Yes, Spiderman really did start in 1963, deal with it! Clearly someone has been messing with their minds for the past 40 years. This is bigger than Secret Wars, bigger than Civil War, bigger than Crisis, this is nothing less than superheroes coming back to the real world! It address a question that people can relate to: why don't they get any older? This is newsworthy.

Why not give it a try? It worked last time.

The small print

The Campaign For Real Time is not to be confused with the C4RT band, or Douglas Adams' CAMTIM. The headline font is Newsflash from blambot.com. Thank you for visiting the Campaign for Real Time.

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