Long-running comic series/strips where the characters age (approximately) in "real time"

It's always been the norm that long-running comic series and strips have a "floating" timescale, where real-world history might go on but the characters never age, or at least age very slowly. So I thought it would be interesting to discuss series and strips where characters do actually age. Off the top of my head, I can think of only a few examples: Dykes to Watch Out For, Love & Rockets, and from what I've understood Judge Dredd does this too (though personally I haven't really read any JD stories published in the last 15-20 years). Are there any newspaper strips that do this? What do you think are the pros and cons of this approach?

The one example I'm most familiar is Dykes to Watch Out For, and I think this approach works for it. The strip has always been very much tied to real-life politics and events, so it would make sense that the characters age in real life too, especially since part of the charm of the strip is exactly to see the characters grow up throughout the years. Also, the characters are roughly the same age as Alison Bechdel herself, so it's obvious he draws from her own experiences of getting older. However, in a single-creator comic, taking this approach to its logical conclusion would raise some interesting questions (provided Bechdel will continue drawing the strip, as it's been on a hiatus for a while)... Should the characters eventually become old and start dying of old age illnesses? Should the creator wrap up the series before she gets too old to draw it? What happens when the creator dies? I don't think there's even been long-running series that would've ran long enough to answer these questions.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/28/for_better_or_for_worse.jpg

I don't know what comic that is, can you tell?

for_better_or_for_worse.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_Alley

that compass strip is beautiful

post-hiatus Doonesbury
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doonesbury

Hellblazer, technically. I mean, John Constantine's supposed to be pushing 60 or something at this point, but his age isn't really displayed or exploited all that much.

I didn't read it, but didn't Cerebus do this, too?

I don't think so...I always figured #1-265 took place over about 3 years, and the rest of it took about another...75 or so.

"Baby Blues" is aging its characters, but at approx. 3:1 realtime/striptime ratio.

Yeah, I noticed Baby Blues has aged its characters, but surely it has to stop at some point? They probably don't want to turn it into another teen strip (since the same guy already writes "Jeremy"), nor can they have the main couple constantly popping out new babies, so they can't let the kids grow up too much.

Sorry, I meant "Zits", I forgot the strip's name isn't "Jeremy". Speaking of "Zits", I think it shows one of the main problems that comes from not aging the characters. Jeremy remains a teenager forever, but his parents are clearly written as baby boomers; they talk about hippies, 60s rock, and stuff like that. If you do the math, it's already stretching credibility that a couple of baby boomers would have a teenage son. So at some point they have to start reminiscing about Duran Duran instead of The Rolling Stones.

if there's one thing that comic strips shouldn't do, it's stretch credibility

I'm up to about 45 now, and Cerebus has aged about 2 years according to Sims?

For Better or For Worse, of course!

don't both of the Love & Rockets writers do this?

I'm up to about 45 now, and Cerebus has aged about 2 years according to Sims?

Yeah, the "3 years" above should probably be more like 4-5.

Oh, I just thought of a couple more: Love And Rockets and For Better Or Worse.

Gilbert's characters jump around in time a lot more, it feels like - while Jaime's characters age pretty linearly.

Deric...

has anyone mentioned "For Better or For Worse" yet

THAT'S the one I was thinking of!

For Better or for Worse comes to mind.

Also, For Better or for Worse.

The first few years of Mike Grell's Green Arrow. I only read it to around #30, so I don't know how long he kept at it.

Gilbert's characters jump around in time a lot more, it feels like - while Jaime's characters age pretty linearly

Beto's characters have still aged a couple of decades in the past thirty years, even if sometimes he tells stories from the past

I might be confused about it since I read the Palomar hardcover, which may have changed around the order of some? But I could have sworn that the characters would seriously randomly jump 10-20 years back or forward in time, and then some, kids popping out of nowhere all the time... it really gets ridiculous to remember everyone, and all the various branches. With the various grandkids I would've thought it was even more than a few decades, skipping over "real time".

I'd have to reread everything to put the chronology together but Luba has kids under ten in 1982 and grandkids under ten in 2008 IIRC. not too ludicrous since she started breeding as a teenager? Poison River is set in the past, and at different times in the past, she's not timejumping around...

(Measles was '97 or so but Venus is Luba's half-niece, not granddaughter... Petra from Birdland's daughter. Don't remember any "character" babies from the vol I period <-- thinking 'aloud' in pub)

I suppose 52 counts...

The characters do age in Cerebus, but not in anything like real time--most of the five-year storyline "Church and State" takes place over the course of about a week, and then there's a great sequence in the middle of "Guys" where maybe four or five years pass without comment between a couple of scenes. (And then there are a few leaps of many, many years in the last 35 issues.)

52 doesn't count: not long-running in terms of the characters

Yeah, and even though it takes place in "real time", nothing in 52 suggests the characters in it age in real time; they certainly haven't done so before or after it.

PUNISHER MAX, by the grace of being outside continuity.

Early HELLBLAZER, also - I doubt whether it continued in the same manner, though.

http://walkerart.org/archive/D/AB737183A1BE364D6168.jpg

aging = replacing pimples with acne scars

from what I've understood Judge Dredd does this

Yeah he does. Reckon he must be in his 70s now, seeing as one of the very earliest strips took place on the 20th anniversary of him arresting his clone brother. Thanks to futuristic rejuvenation techniques his age is kind of moot, though.

What about the other characters in Dredd? Is Judge Anderson in her 50s now? Is that Chief Judge with an eyepatch a pensioner?

Love And Rockets, definitely. Maybe Hellblazer, as well? And if we're counting comic strips, I'd nominate For Better Or For Worse.

CTRL + F

Is that Chief Judge with an eyepatch a pensioner?

He's dead, been through three or four Chief Judges since then. I believe Hershey is Chief Judge now.

Already mentioned but Doonesbury is my favorite that does this - as in DTWOF, there's a sense of people getting unwillingly old and fogey-ish in their ways and trying to square that with the youthful ambition and political activism that originally animated them - in other words, reflections of the strips' writers, who aren't going to try to fake being 25 again. (Although the youngster cast in Doonesbury is pretty cringeworthy.)

speak for yourself, I think Alex is pretty awesome

OK, Alex is cool - but Zipper?!

(One thing that helps Alex is that she actually does kinda seem like Mike and JJ's kid, plus getting half her upbringing from Kim - there's a nice mix of character traits that makes her less of a one-note than the others.)

He's dead, been through three or four Chief Judges since then. I believe Hershey is Chief Judge now.

Oh, that's been and gone. Hershey got kicked out and sent to the moon. Seriously!

I've always liked how Dredd started as a wirey thirty-something and is now a grizzled septuagenarian. It gives the old bastard a touch of pathos, knowing his days are increasingly numbered. Especially in the current storyline where he's basically lost all his usual certainties.

I dread(ha) to think what will happen to the character when John Wagner retires/dies. Other writers either make him too nice or too one-dimensionally nasty. It's a really difficult balance to get right.

Should the characters eventually become old and start dying of old age illnesses? Should the creator wrap up the series before she gets too old to draw it? What happens when the creator dies? I don't think there's even been long-running series that would've ran long enough to answer these questions.

I'm still interested in these questions... DTWOF is on indefinite hiatus, but what's the situation with Dredd these days? Is Wagner still writing it? I haven't checked any recent volumes of Blood & Rockets, but I read somewhere that the focus of Locas has switched from Maggie to some younger characters, is this true?

Introducing new, younger characters to your series seems to be the way to go for many artists who want to hold on to the real-time aspect while still trying to connect with younger readers... Even Bechdel did it with that conservative Republican girl in DTWOF, who was introduced a couple of years before she stopped doing the strip. Though I guess this'd be harder to pull in a series that focuses on one protagonist, such as Dredd...

posted upthread, but Gasoline Alley is probably the best test case for this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_Alley
non-central characters did die, but the main character has clung on to the age of 114 (unless that wiki article is wrong, I don't actually read current GA), has cycled through multiple creators.

Maggie is still very much a central part of L&R

Maggie is offstage for the current two-year storyline in Love & Rockets, after the incredible advancement of her story and timeline in all-time L&R high-point The Love Bunglers. (Xaime has said he specifically did this so that if he got hit by a bus, she would have something that worked as an ending.) But this means there’s been one (1) issue that hasn’t had her as a significant protagonist. Presumably Xaime doesn’t even know yet if he’ll get caught up with the kid characters enough to carry them on into 2015, or whether he’d revisit Maggie at the same place he left her in the last issue, or jump back in her timeline.

Can't believe this thread's existed for four years without any mention of For Better or For Worse.

lol at "Blood & Rockets"

Hey, there's a really good one I know called For Better For Worse. Don't forget that one.

i do believe For Better and For the Worst does this

Dick Tracy did this more or less until the Max Allan Collins era - fairly consistently among the cast up till Moon era, then a bit less stringently until Gould's retiral. Junior, for example, moves from being a youth to a man in about 10 years.

Collins went nuts though, bringing back Vitamin Flintheart in what would easily have been his 90s like he never left. Later writers have been even more daft, Gravel Gertie had a kid in 2011 despite having been maybe 50 ("a widow 30 years") when she was introduced in 1944.

Apparently For Better Or Worse does this too, but I haven't read it.

Woah, didn't know that about Dick Tracy - kinda cool. Did Tracy himself ever age? He seems so... indelible. Graying temples or anything?

He complains about his age quite a bit in the 50s (when he would have been in his mid-40s), chases because less pacey and more about endurance and he spends longer in hospital each time something happens to him. Someone (Mumbles, maybe?) talks about him getting old and losing his edge during a fight in about 1950.

It's maybe not quite real time, but at worst it's half real time - although they identifiably celebrate Christmases and birthdays throughout the first 20 years and note "another year has passed".

Feel like for most strips, celebrating Christmas happens in lieu of Groundhog Day, a year has passed, now let's loop back and do it all over again!

Aye, but birthdays are unusual.

It took 15 years, but Luann is finally graduating from high school.

It's pretty weird reading P. Bagge comics these days where eyepatch Buddy is married to Lisa and a father.

and he's also a father, I don't mean he's married to some random father

that's a lot less weird

Buddy and Lisa have been married with a kid for twice as long as Lisa was even a character before that

http://www.comicvine.com/lisa-leavenworth/4005-77352/

Super Name Lisa Leavenworth
Creators None
Gender Female
Character Type Human
Powers Attractive Female
Intellect

Savage Dragon. The baby that was born earlier in the series is now the main character, replacing the father.

Didn't Prince Valiant get into old age?

Valiant is an interesting one. It arguably ages real time in terms of publication, but the events in the strip clearly take much longer than they take to publish.

I think Sandman did this, and Fables is doing it too, though obviously it's not easy to notice when most of the characters are immortal... Mostly you can see it in the aging of the kid characters, and events that happened three years ago in publication time are mentioned as having happened three years ago in-universe.

lol sic "attractive Female"

I'm a bit confused about that Comicvine article... Are "Attractive", "Female", and "Intellect" three separate powers? How is "Female" a power? Or does she have just one superpower called "attractive female intellect"?

I believe "Attractive female" is one power, and "Intellect" is another.

In real life, not just interpreting alarming comic-book websites. #ladies

I believe "Attractive female" is one power, and "Intellect" is another.

Except that all three words is capitalized, which makes it look like they're separate powers.

Okay, I checked some other character page in that site, and apparently "Attractive Female" is indeed considered a power, even for superheroes. For fairness' sake, "Attractive Male" is also a power.

This is pretty dumb but also just reminds me of the lists of powers I would compile for my made-up superheroes when I was 12. Converts Energy to Matter, Rides the Magnetic Field, Incredible Speed, Great Business Skill.

Repels Females

Does John Constantine still age roughly in real time? Indeed is he still a presence in the DCU now Hellblazer's finished?

Hellblazer finished because they wanted to incorporate him in the mainstream DCU. He got rebaselined as mid30s and it hasn't been long enough to judge how he's aging.

I've understood that Constantine was supposed to age in real life, but in any Hellblazer story I've read (the most recent I've read was probably from 2010), he looks pretty much the same.. Were his magical powers slowing down his aging? Was his physical aging addressed in any way?

That just depended on the artist; during Milligan's run, he looked far more like a fifty-something in Bisley-drawn stories than in any of the Italian (?) artists' issues.

He definitely complained about feeling old quite a bit. And I've very clear memories of the issue where he turned 40 (mainly involved getting stoned with zatana on swamp thing-grown weed).

Yeah, that was in 1993 though!