Marvel timeline?

[Shogunn2517]

So I'm reading Annihilation and in it, Nova says he's been in the Nova Corps for nearly five years.  Initially, I was thinking his debut was somewhere close to his appearance with the New Warriors in the early 90s, late 80s.  Which made me think that the last 20-25 years of our history is only 4-5 years of comic book history.  Which made me try to think of a barometer for aging in comic continunity and I think of Franklin Richards.  I looked him up and saw that he was introduced in 1968, of course as an infant.  And from what I can gather as far as up to Dark Reign, Franklin Richards is somewhere between 8-13(I didn't read if it specified a birth year).  What really threw me off was when I looked up Nova's debut and saw 1966, which would be a heck of a stretch for five years.  Another thing that kills it is the Punisher, who from what I understand, is in his late fifties.  IE he's aged with our actual timeline.

Anyone know of a source that explains any of this?

[Talavar]

The Punisher is only in his 50s in the Marvel MAX series, which isn't in continuity with the rest of the Marvel Universe.  The Punisher as he exists in that continuity (and he does, poorly) is the same perpetual 30 of a lot of comic characters.

[crimsonquill]

Anyone know of a source that explains any of this?

Well, Stan Lee once upon a time said that 1 year Earth time was 5 years Marvel time.. of course continuity aside that kinda got threw out the window more each year that Marvel's writers "update/retool" characters origins. Take at look at the Avengers: The Origin limited series and you can see that Iron Man's design borrowed very much from the new movies and yet also kinda shifts the timeline forward because Rick Jones' crew is using modern internet and hacking techniques to track heroes instead of a Ham Radio like the original story.

I'd say that around 12 or 10 years have truely passed between say the origin of the X-Men and Avengers to say the Heroic Age time period if you follow the Marvel Handbook timelines.

- CQ

[Panther_Gunn]

What really threw me off was when I looked up Nova's debut and saw 1966, which would be a heck of a stretch for five years.

If I remember right, the Nova character that was in the initial run of New Warriors was not the first person to wear the uniform.

[BlueBard]

Given the rate at which comics are published, plus the need to keep core characters around for a long, long time, the best you can say about time in the comics is that it is highly mutable.  It gets worse when you start figuring in characters that cross over into different titles.  That's one bit of continuity I'd never count on.

[Xenolith]

I'd like to see the reference to Nova starting in 1966.  I'm pretty sure Nova's first appearance was in the mid to late 70s.  I bought 'em off the rack. 

Franklin grew up fairly quickly (perhaps real time) before the brakes were applied around age 6 to 8.  I think Stan realized a middle-aged Peter Parker wasn't very interesting.  Wait a minute...

[GhostMachine]

Nova was based on a character that Marv Wolfman created for a fanzine in the mid 60's, who was called Black Nova. Nova (Richard Rider) has only been around since 1976.