Inside the jump, I'll give you my pet theory on how it is Spider-Man is still a spry young twenty-something even though he graduated from high school during the Johnson Adminsitration, and how it is that Dick Grayson has aged ten years in the time it's taken Bruce Wayne to age about two or three.
I bet you can hardly wait.
My theory is that in the DC Universe, Per Degaton came up with a Sinister Plan to Rule the World Through Time Travel, as he often does. This Sinsister Plan involved establishing some sort of link between World War II and Five Years From Now. As you might expect, wacky hijinks ensued, battles were fought, and in the end, Our Heroes saved the day -- but not before everything between World War II and Five Years From Now was bathed with Handwavium Energies from Degaton's time machine, causing the enitre timeline during that period to act all screwy.
My Marvel theory is much simpler: when Franklin Richards was about 6, he developed Peter Pan syndrome, and subconsciously used his vast powers to reshape the universe so that everything can stay the same and he doesn't have to grow up.
I don't really like the idea of a floating timeline. I love all those topical references, like having Superman meet President Kennedy or having Spidey meet the original cast of Saturday Night Live. My little pet theories allow that to happen.
Finally, a note to any writers who are reading this: do not write a tory based on these ideas. It's not that I don't want you coopting my ideas for your own use. It's that stories based on fan ideas to explain some detail of continuity are a bad, bad, bad, bad, bad idea. I mean, my Marvel story isn't even a story -- it's just something that happened. My DC story could be pretty decent, I suppose, but the decent part -- a knock-down, drag out fight across decades with Per Degaton -- doesn't need to be bogged down with a tedious explanation of the fact that Degaton's Watchamacallit machine exploded, flooding the timeline with blah, blah, blah.
Posted by Jason Fliegel at July 14, 2005 2:50 PM