Friday, May 20, 2005

Snark Free Theme Day for 5/20

Brand new shtick!!!

Every Friday, I will pick a "theme" (some people might call it a "cliche," but not here at Snark Free Happy Joy Comic Blog!! Here it is a THEME!) and find at least five comics that FIT that theme!!

Today's theme?

I WAS SO MUCH OLDER THEN, I'M YOUNGER THAN THAT NOW

An often used theme is that of age-regression.

1. One of the first prominent uses of age-regression was in the pages of Wonder Woman. The books had already begun telling stories about Wonder Woman when she was a girl, and even as a toddler!

Well, in one issue, they went even further, and had Wonder Woman actually be de-aged so that she could communicate with an infant!

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Wonder Tot, indeed!!

2. Age-regression can be a fun tool to explain away a character's age.

For instance, after Magneto messed around with this dude, Alpha the Ultimate Mutant..

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he ended up being regressed to infancy.

When he was RE-aged later on, it was able to explain why he was in decent shape for a Holocaust survivor.

3. The same tool was used in the pages of Sensational She-Hulk, where She-Hulk's supporting character from World War II was age-regressed (it was based, I believe, upon a very metafictional approach - the more the Blonde Phantom appeared in comics, the more she would be de-aged, just like how Batman and Superman have not aged, since they appear in comics a LOT).

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4. In the pages of Green Lantern Corps, the same de-aging occured for Alan Scott, using the Starheart (the source of his powers) to explain it away.

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5. Sometimes, de-aging is a result of bad guys, like was the case when the Legion of Superheroes nemesis, Glorith, de-aged a few of the characters in a major battle (she also AGED some characters, as well).

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6. Also, during the whole Nanny and Orphanmaker storyline, Storm was de-aged.

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7. Finally, a couple of years ago, Young Justice had a big storyline where Klarion the Witch Boy cast a spell that made every hero on Earth switch ages. If you were young, you were now old. If you were old, you were now young. If you were REALLY old (JSA-old), you were REALLY young.

Here is what happened to the JSA...

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Ta da!

Feel free to share any other examples of this theme that you can think of!!

2 Comments:

Blogger Michael said...

Starwoman was hot.

5/24/2005 11:54 PM  
Blogger Matthew Brady said...

Iron Man was de-aged to a teenager for a while, which I heard was dumb (I never read any of the comics). Also, the Atom was de-aged to a teenager during Zero Hour, and for a while he was a member of the Teen Titans (which were relaunched at the time as just a bunch of new punks rather then a team of sidekicks. Whatever).

5/25/2005 4:16 PM  

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