We've spoken quite a bit lately about comic time, and characters like Batman and Superman who should be in their 70s or more, but because of comic time aren't (well, probably 'because of' reasons other than that, but comic time is the mechanism that lets that editorial decision happen).

What does the board think about a book that, in a similar way to the TV show 24, ran in realtime? Not even bogus realtime like the tv show (really ran for 24 weeks, each in a one-hour stint) but REAL real time. As in, each monthly issue, a month had passed.

Thus characters would age realistically, take realistic periods of time to recover from injuries, and have to retire and be replaced, much like professional athletes do.

Would such an experiment work in a commercial sense, or would readers fail to connect with the characters, because they'd be around a relatively short period of time, and anyone who got injured might be out of the book for over a year.

Thoughts?

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You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different.

The first thing that pops into my mind would be the question of how stringently this rule wold be applied. If we are dealing with "real time", are we being literal about it to the extent that each issue not only takes place one month after the previous one, but also takes place in the amount of time it takes to read it? No captions that say "Later", for instance. If it takes 20 minutes to read the book, 20 minutes is how much of the character's lives it consumes.

Next there is the question of how precisely that "one month later" rule is applied. Are we exactly one month -- 28 days, really -- after the last page of the last issue? If so, do we have interesting issues every month, or do we sometimes drop in on the 20 minutes (see above) when Our Hero is reading a book or doing laundry?

I'm not being facetious here. When I was a kid, a friend who did not read comics used to mock them because he could not accept that adventures were happening to the main characters with such clockwork regularity. "Why do these stories always happen to them?" he would ask, and the best answer I could offer was "Because the book is about them." (He never seemed bothered, incidentally, that adventures were happening to Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuriakin, or Matt Dillion, or even the TV Batman every week.)

TV shows, books, movies, comics -- all forms of adventure fiction, rarely happen in real time. Great leaps are made -- sometimes of years or even longer periods -- in order to tell the story in the space allotted. If George Lucas had decided each episode of STAR WARS happened it "real time" we'd be up to Episode VI and Luke Skywalker would probably not have appeared yet! And an awful lot of those 6 movies would have been storm troopers searching the deserts for C-3PO and R2-D2!

A comicbook equivalent of "24", say "12 Months" might be interesting as an experiment, but I think a lot of cheating would have to be done to make sure something of interest happened in every issue!

It'd have to be a poetic realtime to be viable.

The answer to the "why this 20mins and not the laundry 20mins' question is, as you know, easy: We don't read that 20mins, because it's only the exciting 20 we're interested in. It's like "Why did they never show a Mission Impossible where Jim Phelps chose NOT TO accept the mission?" Simple, because that'd be a 5min show called "Another guy living your boring life"

Ah well, just a thought. Something to fester in the backs of the appropriate creative minds until they have the right vehicle/blend/idea...

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You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different.

A "24" equivalent comic could be done, but I would think it would work best as a weekly publication, at the very least bi-weekly. Each issue could take a week's time (or 2 weeks if bi-weekly) and easily end with cliffhangers, etc. It would be a huge undertaking though. I could see each issue having something of a "split-screen" effect in part of the book to assist in telling the story. Top half of each page is X's story, bottom half is Y's. One thing to remember though, there are very few artists who can handle a monthly schedule let alone anything less than that. So the lead time would have to be tremendous.

A few years back I saw an interesting experimental cartoon. Unfortunately, I don't remember the title, but the premise was this: a strange looking roughly humanoid male character had been designed and handed off to an animator. That animator did something like 20 seconds of film, then another animator was brought in. The trick was, the second animator saw only the last frame of the previous animator's work. And the animator that followed that one saw only his last frame, and so on, until six minutes or so had been produced. None of the animators saw what the others had done until they saw the whole film. The results varied from hilarious to disturbing.

A "24" like weekly might be done in this fashion, with an established cast of characters, but a different set of talent on each issue, with none allowed to see what the others had done. The result would be very bizarre, I would think.

And, again, the lead time would have to be tremendous. Imagine getting a few issues into this project and having it land in the studio of someone who can't produce a book a year!

What about doing something like this on the Internet?

You don't have to be constrained to 20 minutes once per month. It could be 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, whatever. The time covered by an installment would be posted with the installment so that it would be clear when things happen relative to each other. This would essentially be a Message Board comic.

Something like this seems like it might be more trouble for the creators than the added payoff (if any) for the readers would warrant.

While I accept JB's caveats, and the conclusion that realtime couldn't be real realtime, but would have to be poetic realtime, let's try and pick up on the intent behind Melissa's question, because there could be some fun to be had here.

I believe it was Gasoline Alley which actually did this ie. had its characters age in realtime. But this was before even my time, so I've seen no more than odd pages reproduced in reference books, so I have no idea how effectively it worked in practice. I don't think it's ever been done for superheroes though, apart from "Imaginary" and Elseworlds stories sometimes showing the situation after the passage of time.

Maybe the result would be along the lines of the Harry Potter books, where Ms Rowling's intention was for the characters to age a year with each book (and for the books to be pitched accordingly at an audience which ages at the same rate). This of course is fine when the books appear every year, and while they are appearing. But you run the risk of ending up with a bank of material which ranges from juvenile to adult which can then be attacked by the juvenile who has enjoyed part 1, and who then goes on to try to read the whole lot in one go, the adult end of which is inappropriate.

Perhaps we are simply talking about ageing superheroes whose adventures remain juvenile, in which case the idea has some appeal although, as one of the older readers, I'm not sure I will actually make it to the point where I am reading about the exploits of the grandchildren of some of my favourite characters!

Or I should say, here's how i would do it: the book would be called "20 minutes" and it would spotlight just that, THOSE 20 mintues and it wouldn't even have to address the issue before or after. Starting an issue in the middle of a fight, etc. would be cool or picking up the 'action' at the hospital after some 'mission', if you make the 'minutia' interesting, it could work. Plus, by isolating the 20 minutes as stand alones, you could pick up the issue anytime and still have the real time experience without having to rely on a string of other issues.
While I like John's idea about the "handoff", I doubt it could ever happen with today's crop of 'talent'. And even if you gave them a two year lead time, someone would probably lose interest or kill it.-Rick

I believe it was Gasoline Alley which actually did this ie. had its characters age in realtime. But this was before even my time, so I've seen no more than odd pages reproduced in reference books, so I have no idea how effectively it worked in practice.

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Unless you are communicating with us from the Spirit World, "Gasoline Alley" was not "before your time". The strip is still being published, and the conceit is still that it happens in real time -- altho so far as I know Uncle Walt, the orginal star of the strip, has not yet shuffled off this mortal coil!

It's also lettered in mixed case!

1) "A few years back I saw an interesting experimental cartoon...."

Could this have been the Anijam directed by Marv Newland that featured the character "Foska?" Each animator got the last frame of the one before him, and no one saw the previous animator's work. I think this was featured in one of the animation tournees that used to play at the late (and sorely missed) Bleecker Street Cinema in NYC.

2) And, yes, time itself, as Einstein theorized, is elastic and does not "run at the same speed" for all viewers of a given event. Remember the moment in the X-Men when one of the characters disappears for a few seconds into the clutches of some sinister being--but for that character, seven years passed within those "few seconds" that the other character experienced. I think the character was called Magick, and the sorcerer Belasco, but I ain't sure.

3) Finally, one of my favorite phrases in fiction (film, books, comics,etc.): "Nine months later...."

4) Edited to add: there's a Harvey Kurtzman/Will Elder Mad parody of Gasoline Alley in the Willy Elder coffee-table book that's out now from Fantagraphics. Just hysterical!

SAVAGE DRAGON by Erik Larsen is supposed to be a comic running in "real" time. The characters age over the course of the title, but one month is not always what we see in a given issue (that would make a last page cliff hanger impossible to resume at the start of the next issue). One year of books is one year out of the characters' lives.

A couple of comic strips have taken the "real time" approach. For Better Or For Worse and Baby Blues are the ones that come to my mind. That gives the latter strip a definite shelf life because that means that unless the family keeps having babies, the strip must eventually run out of it's subject matter.

-Brian Hunt

I'm surprised no one has mentioned that daring, industry changing experiment from the 80's...The New Universe! (y'know, the world just outside your window, except its got people with super-powers and battle-suits and the like).

(I know JB, ya did yer best and it was appreciated, by me at any rate)

Lynn Johnston's FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE strip has been running in real time since its initial publication. Elizabeth was born when I was about 10, and now she's a twenty-something schoolteacher. Michael has gone from a three-year old tot to a married man with a child of his own.

And sentimentality aside, it's just about the best daily strip being produced.

Brendan Howard

I've always found soap opera time particularly compelling. In soaps, most of the main characters necessarily age in real time. Most notably, all major holidays are inevitably observed. However, since storylines continue uninterrupted from episode to episode, a single day for a soap opera character can take two to three weeks in real time. Consequently, the kids can be trick-or-treating one day, then three "days" later it's Thanksgiving, two more days until Christmas, and the next day it's New Year's. A year for Erica Kane probably consists of no more than 30 actual days.

Of course, the rules are completely different for kids, who tend to stay infants for a few years, then disappear and reemerge as teenagers two or three years later.

By the way, wasn't there in fact a short-lived comic series that was supposed to take place in real time? For some reason, the name "Wolfpack" comes to mind.

I still remember as a little kid watching Doctor No in tv with my dad and at one point the lights went out on one part and suddenly it was the very next day.
I remember asking my father why they did this and why they just didn't keep going.
He then went into this real time vs story time thing for me and I got it.
Sounds dumb now but when you're a kid...
well you can see.
The funny thing is that my dad didn't tell me the whole story which I didn't realize until later.
When they turned the lights down and changed the scean it was also because Bond was fixing to have sex......


http://www.whatashock.com
"There is no wisdom or virtue in seeking unnecessary martydom or deliberately courting persecution..."
C.S. Lewis

Doonesburry is a "real time" comic. Characters are born, age and die.

Doing the same in a comic book would make for an interesting premise.

I'm reminded of "Twin Peaks" and that show's concept of time that unfortunately never got a chance to pay off. Each episode took place in a twenty-four hour period and every episode was "the next day". Except for one episode in the second season which open with the title card "three days later". Had the show lived long enough the characters would have aged say. five years in the course of five months. David Lynch and Mark Frost were obviously conscious of this and made strange and subtle allusions to the passing of time as often as the story line or the moment allowed.

SAVAGE DRAGON by Erik Larsen is supposed to be a comic running in "real" time. The characters age over the course of the title, but one month is not always what we see in a given issue (that would make a last page cliff hanger impossible to resume at the start of the next issue). One year of books is one year out of the characters' lives.

********

Well, if that's what we mean by "real time", I was doing it in NEXT MEN.

Wasn't that the original premise of THE 'NAM?

The original premise of The 'NAM, which debuted in 1986, was that the comic would occur in "real time", that is, the month that went buy in-between issues also went buy in the comic, so you were picking up the characters at different progressions in a 1-year tour of duty. I haven't read these in awhile, but I don't remember it adding or detracting from the stories. Obviously you couldn't have continued stories, which was a positive for a series that got alot of press and tried to appeal to the general public.

I think the "real time" idea is an interesting exercise, but not really a sustainable one. I'm not sure when the creators of The 'NAM abandoned the premise (presumably when Frank Castle started showing up) Real character development should come from what happens in the stories, not some ethereal 'in-between' period that we don't witness, only to come back with them a little older, wiser, or bitter.

Sliding off into a tangent here, the biggeset mistake Marvel made with The 'NAM was pulling it off the newsstand and making it direct-sales only. Perhaps it was their way of emphasizing the commitment to destroying newsstand distribution (which was shortly to follow)

Well, if that's what we mean by "real time", I was doing it in NEXT MEN
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Oh MAN!!! I didn't realise - now I have to re-read it again! Damn my stupid brain...

But yes, that was the main thrust of what I meant. So over, say, five years of the title's run, you'd have a changing roster - many people refer to the Avengers as a being, conceptually, a football team. Those of us who follow football teams know that the rosters change as people age and retire, and new players are drafted (I'm not counting trades and free agents, because we already do that - Henry McCoy, anyone?)


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You are a god among insects. Never let anyone tell you different.

A few years back I saw an interesting experimental cartoon. Unfortunately, I don't remember the title, but the premise was this: a strange looking roughly humanoid male character had been designed and handed off to an animator. That animator did something like 20 seconds of film, then another animator was brought in. The trick was, the second animator saw only the last frame of the previous animator's work. And the animator that followed that one saw only his last frame, and so on, until six minutes or so had been produced. None of the animators saw what the others had done until they saw the whole film. The results varied from hilarious to disturbing.

********

JB, this sounds like an extension of the Parisian parlour game 'Exquisite Corpse' that Surrealist writers and artists used to play in the early 20th Century. Young children often play a simplified version in which a piece of paper is folded in three sections. The first child draws the head, folds the paper over leaving two lines for neck and hands it to the next kid to do the torso and arms. This child leaves marks for the kips then hands it onto the last kid to draw the legs and then it's unfolded to reveal something resembling a person.

Cheers,

Rod

Unless you are communicating with us from the Spirit World, "Gasoline Alley" was not "before your time".
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I beg everyone's pardon! I'm not communicating from the Spirit World, but from the UK (beyond the veil, perhaps, though in a different sense), where Gasoline Alley has not been published in my lifetime, so I only know it from reference material, and old reference material at that.

I stand corrected!

I would love to see JB do an Earth 2 book in real time (one month passes every month). Start with a mini series explaining what has happened until the present, and go from there. I know there are some similarities to Generations but I don't care. I think it would be incredible.

I would love to see JB do an Earth 2 book in real time (one month passes every month). Start with a mini series explaining what has happened until the present, and go from there. I know there are some similarities to Generations but I don't care. I think it would be incredible.

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I would predict that there would be those who would declare the pacing to be "slow".


(One of the things I found disturbing and disappointing when I did G3 was the number of people -- not a lot, just too many -- who complained they were "confused" by the century jumps between issues. Somehow, having the characters mention significant events that had happened in those "off camera" periods was not sufficient for these readers to keep up with the action. Made me wonder if they were, in fact, actually reading the books at all, or merely looking at the pictures.)

I think the Earth 2 setting. might offset some of that thinking.

Or maybe I am giving some fans too much credit.

Infinity, Inc. #1 was the first comic I ever purchased (bought it from a friend in my art class in 7th grade), and I was so fascinated with the concept that these were the children of the original Superheroes (Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, etc.), and that the originals were all old! I just loved the whole concept at the time, seeing Superman with gray hair!

And hey, I guess that means I've been an Ordway fan longer than a Byrne fan! But I still like Byrne better...

Infinity, Inc. #1 was the first comic I ever purchased (bought it from a friend in my art class in 7th grade), and I was so fascinated with the concept that these were the children of the original Superheroes (Wonder Woman, Hawkman, Green Lantern, etc.), and that the originals were all old! I just loved the whole concept at the time, seeing Superman with gray hair!

Liked the idea (and the series, particularly the first 10 issues), but I always wondered if Roy ever thought the math through.

Folks who were in their early 20s in the 40s having kids who were in THEIR early 20s in the 80s (and this would only get worse as time went on due to "comic book time") seemed a little weird to me.

Roy did think the math through, he did full biographies for every Infinitor complete with birthdates and dates of significance. He didn't factor comic book time into the mix back then, but he didn't need to for his purposes.

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Mike Nebeker - Super Genuis
Good Judgement comes from Experience
And Experience comes from... Bad Judgement

I remember the bios (took a second though...). Thing is, IIRC, most of the gang were born in the early 60s.

If the JSA crew is in their early 20s in the 40s, then that means that they'd be in their early 40s when the kids would have been born. Kinda late in the game, huh?

(Yeah, I know the guys (and Hawkgirl) were exposed to Ian Karkull's energy and Wonder Woman is, well, Wonder Woman, but still...)

An excellent way to keep up on Gasoline Alley is to read it at this site -- http://www.comicspage.com/gasolinealley/index.html

If you go up from there, you can also read Annie (used to be Little Orphan Annie), Brenda Starr, Dick Tracy, and other strips. It's a good way for people to find those strips that are not printed in their region.

I guess it was hard to find time to start a family while you are still busy saving the world.

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Mike Nebeker - Super Genuis
Good Judgement comes from Experience
And Experience comes from... Bad Judgement

Remember that Ian Karkull's energy kept the JSAers younger.

Still, there were some problems.

Regarding Infinity Inc, I liked the concept but the execution left something to be desired. Unlike the children in JB's Generations, the kids did not have an Earth 2 feel or look to them. They were too different.

I did a Huntress Year one story for an Earth 2 web site a while back. I dealt with the age issue too.

Regarding Infinity Inc, I liked the concept but the execution left something to be desired. Unlike the children in JB's Generations, the kids did not have an Earth 2 feel or look to them. They were too different.


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That's because INFINITY INC. did not evolve naturally out of the JSA, but was invented from the whole cloth. Making the characters look like a natural progression was something that occupied a good deal of my thinking when I was working on GENERATIONS (recall the people who did not like the Green Lantern costume I gave Kyle -- admitting even as they did that it was a logical progression of Alan's outfit, but that they would have prefered something "cool".).

Sadly, it seems very few artists make conscious efforts to fit their own work into the framework created by another. When Topps did their own little Kirbyverse, they hired young artists to "fill the gaps", few if any of whom made an effort to draw even as if they were "looking at the same models" as Kirby had. Recently someone posted here a cover from RETURN OF THE NEW GODS. Some of the characters were redesigned in distinctly un-Kirby ways, but most jarring was the inclusion of a new character who looked nothing like a Kirby design.

It's not about imitation, after all, it's about fidelity .

I guess it was hard to find time to start a family while you are still busy saving the world.

Hey, they'd stopped doing THAT (aside from Wonder Woman) at least 10 years prior...

Regarding Infinity Inc, I liked the concept but the execution left something to be desired. Unlike the children in JB's Generations, the kids did not have an Earth 2 feel or look to them. They were too different.

How do you mean? I thought Ordway did a pretty decent job of making the characters look like products of their influences - heck, even Nuklon's mohawk was reminiscent of the fin on Atom's costume - without being "Hawkman II, Wonder Woman II, etc." Which makes sense when you think about it. The kids were going for "teammates," not "successors" when they started out. They only formed their own group when the JSA said no.

Squadron Supreme was done in real time. Each issue was one month after the previous one.

And that last frame only story reminds me of DC Challenge, where each issue had a different creative team and a cliffhanger ending that the next creative team had to resolve. Though that apparently was a pain to get done on time.

Liked the idea (and the series, particularly the first 10 issues), but I always wondered if Roy ever thought the math through.

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Like I said, I was in 7th grade, I wasn’t thinking too much about it at the time!

I agree with you about the first 10 issues. After that the series became less about them as the children of the JSA, and then after Crisis, the book was completely a moot point.

I thought Ordway did a pretty decent job of making the characters look like products of their influences - heck, even Nuklon's mohawk was reminiscent of the fin on Atom's costume - without being "Hawkman II, Wonder Woman II, etc." Which makes sense when you think about it. The kids were going for "teammates," not "successors" when they started out. They only formed their own group when the JSA said no.

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That's kind of my take on it too. While obviously wanting to follow in their parents footsteps, they still would want to be individuals in their own right, with a bit of rebellion against their parents as well. (Not that all the costumes were that great - we've all suffered from bad 80's fashion).

Having said that, I did enjoy the thought that JB put into Generations with regard to similar issues - a different, and (as always) thoughtful perspective. Probably wasn't thought out as well in Infinity, or not in the same way...

A lot of comics have flirted with this kind of idea in one form or another, but it's hard to imagine someone who hopes to produce an ongoing series that will survive decades (like Superman or Batman) committing to it.

John Byrne said:
<(One of the things I found disturbing and disappointing when I did G3 was the number of people -- not a lot, just too many -- who complained they were "confused" by the century jumps between issues. Somehow, having the characters mention significant events that had happened in those "off camera" periods was not sufficient for these readers to keep up with the action. Made me wonder if they were, in fact, actually reading the books at all, or merely looking at the pictures.)>

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Perhaps they were looking at the pictures while they rode the short bus to school?

It's not about imitation, after all, it's about fidelity
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That's exactly what I meant.


"How do you mean? I thought Ordway did a pretty decent job of making the characters look like products of their influences - heck, even Nuklon's mohawk was reminiscent of the fin on Atom's costume - without being "Hawkman II, Wonder Woman II, etc." Which makes sense when you think about it. The kids were going for "teammates," not "successors" when they started out. They only formed their own group when the JSA said no."
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But they could have been any team, with the way they looked. They could have been a team of mutants for gods sake. The Huntress' costume made sense, considering who her parents were. It would have been cooler if there was more of that.

The web site I mentioned before ,the JSA All Star Story Site, has done a great job coming up with characters that have the Earth 2 feel. Unfortunately, it's a yahoo group and you have to join to see the pix.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theJSAallstarstorysite/

I can post some if people want.

I recall reading somewhere that Thomas considered having younger characters begin to "take over the mantles" of their predecessors in his new series, but chose to go with the more individualistic route because he felt it was more interesting. Plus, he was hesitant to end the careers of the originals. I'll see if I can't dig up the interview.

A lot of comics have flirted with this kind of idea in one form or another, but it's hard to imagine someone who hopes to produce an ongoing series that will survive decades (like Superman or Batman) committing to it.

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As I have noted many times, this whole idea of "real time" in superhero comics (and most comics in general) is a fairly recent arrival. And, implicit in the demands of so many who seem to think it is important is that the "real time" elapse since they began reading .

In other words, the guy who started reading AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 20 years ago thinks it would be "great" if Peter Parker, like the reader, was 20 years older. But often overlooked (deliberately so, I am convinced) is the question of how interested that reader would have been in starting his "association* with Spider-Man if the character had been 20 years older than he was when he appeared in AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 1. A 36 year old Peter Parker would be a very different guy from who he was in AS-M 1, and even who he was in those books that came out 20 years ago. And today, of course, he would be 56 or so -- older than J. Jonah Jameson is traditionally portrayed (and Jonah would most likely have been dead for quite a while).

"Real time" can be fun in controlled circumstances, as in miniseries like GENERATIONS or self contained series like NEXT MEN -- but even something like the "real time" seen in SQUADRON SUPREME is a problem -- if a year goes by for them, why hasn't a year gone by for everyone else?

The timelessness of superhero comics is not an arbitrary notion, not something that is done for no better reason than that it is "traditional". The whole notion of timelessness in comics -- from "Superman" to "Fantastic Four" to "Blondie" to "Peanuts" and back again -- evolved because the status quo is an important part of what makes the strip/book/character(s) attractive in the first place. Charles Schulz did not create Charlie Brown and the gang with the intention of following them thru elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and on into marriage and the work force. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko did not create Spider-Man intending for him to become a middle-aged guy with a wife and kid(s). As Ditko himself has said, Spider-Man has to stay young so he can continue to make mistakes. A 16, 17, or 18 year old Spider-Man who is cocky and arrogant is very much representative of his age group. A 30 year old Spider-Man who has these same qualities is a jerk.

As others have said, and as I heartily agree, these characters are much, much more important than the people who work on them, and the people who read them. Our jobs, as Pros and Fans alike, should be about preservation , not deconstruction or artificial "growth". And any writer or editor or fan who thinks otherwise -- especially any who equate preservation with stagnation -- should realize that their own real time has brough them to a place where they should look elsewhere for their entertainment.

Well put and well argued, JB, but I may have a minor difference with your idea about Spider-Man.

Despite what Ditko himself said (if I may be a heretic), one of the most appealing periods in the original Spidey strip was when he (and the gang) graduated from high school and went to college!

(In fact, the great thing about growing up when I did was that I could read the "present day" adventures of Spidey in his regular book, and the "high school" adventures, as they were then, in Marvel Tales. Kind of like the Conan the Barbarian stories versus the King Conan only here he was older stories.)

Later writers placed Peter in grad school--which is actually a rather convenient move, because, while college takes four years, grad school can go on forever!

Despite what Ditko himself said (if I may be a heretic), one of the most appealing periods in the original Spidey strip was when he (and the gang) graduated from high school and went to college!


*******


Which is around the time Stan started to apply the brakes, timewise. Before then, the Marvel Universe was exploding in every direction at once, and Stan, Jack, Stever and the rest were throwing everything they had at the wall, just to see what stuck.

As I have noted many times, when Marvel relaunched itself with FANTASTIC FOUR 1, it was still pretty much The Little Company That Couldn't. No one expected the success that came out of that summer of 1961, and by the time Stan and the rest realized what they had, a lot of non-traditional changes (such as Parker graduating high school) had happened. Many chose to see this as an indication that Stan intended the books to be unfolding in something closely akin to real time, and that this is a "tradition" at Marvel that should be continued -- but this overlooks the fact that time very much came to a halt just about the time that Peter Parker entered university.

Stan may have ignored all the "rules" when he thought he was playing with a deck of cards that might go up in smoke at any time, but the moment he saw what was really happening, he pushed the books back into more familiar territory. Parker entered college and stayed there for a dozen years or so, until Roger Stern had the brilliant idea of making him a grad student to silence the clowns who kepts asking when he was going to graduate.

Unfortunately, Roger did not possess the power -- none of us do -- to prevent later writers "progressing" the character, and the rest of the MU, beyond that point.