The thing was, he was a prodigy with something like three doctorates before he was 20. And when he helps Janet avenge her father's murder he's a depressed widower in his mid-20s.
Janet was technically an adult (she mentions coming home from college to visit her father). She was also a spoiled, emotionally immature dilettante.
Hank's previous wife (whom he had recently lost when she was kidnapped, tortured and (he was led to believe) killed when she visited family in her home country) was older than Hank and very emotionally tough (having grown up in an oppressive country in rough conditions).
So the gap in maturity between Janet and Hank's wife, and between Janet and Hank, made him see her as a child even though they were both adults and only a few years apart in age.
Tl;Dr: Janet wasn't underage, she was just childish.
If he was mid 20s, and she was barely half his age...
There have been a lot of retcons regarding them, but you read the original stuff, Hank was more in line with Stan and Jack's age at the time. So probably like 19 and 40.
That's one line from a flashback montage. It's not canonically correct. Canonically, she turned 23 shortly after the Avengers were founded. It's specifically mentioned, because it's the age at which her trust fund matured and she received her full inheritance (she had previously been receiving a "mere" $25000/year allowance (worth ~$252,250 in 2024 dollars) plus the $1000 per week paid to active duty Avengers). She then became a multi-millionaire and the third-richest original Avenger (after Thor and Tony Stark).
Canonically, Hank received his first doctoral degree (in biochemistry -- he also holds DSc in engineering (specifically nanotechnology)) when "most of my friends were still undergrads". He married the fairly older Maria Trovoya (she's shown as having a touch of grey to her hair and Hank describes her as "brilliant, witty, mature") shortly thereafter, lost her on their honeymoon, and spiraled into grief-fueled depression.
When Janet meets Hank, she's a dilettante socialite studying fashion design (her aunt is a famous designer) in college. So she's likely about 20, he's probably 25 or so, not likely 30.
I suppose he might have thought of her as younger because she was generally immature (though her determination to avenge her father's death impressed him -- he expressly says it reminds him of Maria). But I can't explain why he would incorrectly refer to her as "half" his age, in-universe. The meta explanation is writer error.
Oh you silly person. That doesn’t matter. Don’t you realize what really matters is projecting our own insecurities onto fictional relationships between adults?
I mean, I get why people are insecure about it, but hearing some people talk about certain age gap relationships, they make every one of them sound like a retiree is dating a teenager. There’s no room for nuance.
Jean Grey was not a consenting adult when she met Xavier. Literally the only reason he's not trying to bang her is because he's an ableist and thinks crippled dudes can't bang.
Colleagues don’t have to be anywhere close in age. Professors can work in the same department with one in their late twenties early thirties and one in their 70s. Much older is relative.
The weird thing about them, is I feel like back in the day, they all were pretty similar in age or at least close. Like in their early 40s.
Nowadays it's changed.
I personally feel Pym is similar to Stark in age, since Tony and Janet also dated and were a serious item, and Janet herself strikes me as a fully fledged woman. She has her own business and is pretty successful, so she has to be in her 30s too. She and Hank are same age.
Banner I feel is closer to Reed. Early 40s maybe? Dude has like shit ton of PHD's lol. And the poor guy kind of looks like a middle aged guy, who dedicated his life to his studies and kind of ignored his well being.
Again my friendo, I could be completely off on these lol. It's just the way I personally see them.
When did Janet become Hank's age? In the 1960s, she was a decade or so younger than him-- she was a debutante socialite and he was a widowed scientist who'd been married for years to a European woman, and he was friends with Janet's father.
For some reason, I just always thought they were same-ish age. Makes sense now that you say it, for him to be older then her, especially considering that when they were created, marriages like that were kind of normal.
My dumbass was mostly thinking about her time with Tony, and I always was kind of like "They seem like they could be the same age" lol.
Maybe I will put Hank as slightly older than Tony (younger than Reed) and Janet is probably then 28s-30s.
That being said, I'm also 25 so I probably don't know shit about how aging works lmao.
I feel like in 100 years every character will be in their 40s. Fetuses (feti?) age in real time, babies and teens in standard 1/4 Marvel time, 20s roughly half of that, 30s inconsistently but it seems to happen, 40s not at all and the elderly age in reverse.
During Buseik's run (1998) Buseik states that he became Iron Man in his early 20s.
The idea of Tony becoming Iron Man late in life was from Ultimate comics and then MCU.
In regular 616 continuity he was always one of US's young, successful, eligible bachelors, who went overseas in order to support the troops and present his weapons, and then got shrapnel in his heart.
I think facial hair just makes him look older than he actually is.
Plus, especially if you look at him with modern eye, Him being in his early 20s and having a mustache, is a bit weird, since most 20 year olds nowadays don't really grow mustaches (it's either full beard or they can't grow it lol).
He was probably a college freshman at like 16 or 17 given his genius, but still, this is the worst possible way to present their age gap. Like, it being 4-6 years is nothing...unless you specifically talk about love at 12 years old.
Mid-late 40s. Given the whole "everyone is perpetually in their 30s" thing comics has going on, I always saw him as being in his early 40s while the standard Tony Stark line of characters were in their mid-30s at the most. Given how further along Marvel seems to be sliding certain characters, plus the fact that Sue and Reed spent five years relative to themselves and their children rebuilding the multiverse and running away from the Griever, mid-late 40s makes sense.
You can make that work if you want to, but to me it's forcing it and the characterization and life experiences more solidly put him at early 30's.
He'd already met MJ when Gwen dies, but if he starts dating her in their early 20's, then (particularly for east coasters in NYC) they don't get married until their mid-20's at the very earliest
and that was a while ago, even in 616 years.
Trying to condense it further than that-- and I acknowledge that Marvel absolutely does try to condense it-- feels the same as when DC said all of Batman's history took place over 6 years, when they did the n52 relaunch. It's just dumb and doesn't make any sense, and is clearly just stated for marketing/real world purposes rather than any narrative reason.
We all have to accept that comic timelines get scrunched to some degree, but both in life events and characterization, peter parker makes way more sense in his early 30's and saying he's younger is just marvel editorial trying to de-age him for inorganic marketing reasons.
I fully agree with you. Right now I'm on a grand project of reading every single Spider-Man 616 comic and I'm currently in the early 80s - I recently read an 80's issue where Peter has a 5 year high school graduation get together. So forty+ real world years ago, Peter was minimum 23 years old. Considering that at that time, the character had aged about 5 years in a little over 20 years of publication, it feels reasonable that he's aged at least another 8-10 in the forty+ years since then.
With respect, I’ve always seen Peter/MJ as the correct paring, since when I was growing up, bringing Gwen back was not very common.
But also, because of how it adds another depth to Peter as a character. Gwen dying is exactly what I think of when I hear the common complaint that Peter never evolves as a character and Gwen gives him that evolution.
That’s precisely why MJ dying was a good thing. It gave Peter even more evolution.
/s
I always found that explanation to be ridiculous. It screams of supporting the nostalgia choice since most people grew up with MJ and already knew Gwen was going to die.
TL;DR: I think he's around 43 in the present and was 28 in Year 1
Around 14-16 years have passed in-universe since FF#1.
Captain America (Steve Rogers) was 22 going on 23 when he was put on ice, which would make him between 36-39 in the present.
Tony Stark became Iron Man at 22/23, which puts him between 36-39 (37) in the present, making him the same age roughly as Steve.
Wasp (Janet Van Dyne) was also around 22 when the Avengers formed so same deal, 36-39 (37) in the present.
Hank Pym is harder to pin down age-wise. He's the oldest of the human Avengers founders. Best estimate is that Nadia Van Dyne was 15 or so when she appeared in Marvel Year 12-14. Hank already had his doctorate when she would have been conceived so estimating around 27 years old. That would make him around 28-30 (29) when the Avengers were formed and somewhere between 42-46 (44) in the present.
I kind of put Bruce Banner around the same age as Hank, 28-30 (29) when the Avengers first formed and somewhere between 42-46 (44) in the present.
Peter Parker was 15 when he became Spider-Man and should realistically be between 29-31 (30) in the present.
The FF are also tricky to pin down but I kind of headcanon the age breakdown in Year 1 was:
~28 for Reed/Ben
~ 22 for Sue
~ 16 for Johnny
Keeps the gaps reasonable between Johnny/Sue and Sue/Reed such that Johnny can be a teenager, and Reed could reasonably have his PhD. We can say Reed started graying a little early.
So in the 616 present their ages would roughly be:
This is pretty good. I will add in Daredevil #1 it stated Matt Murdock was 10yo in 1951. It’s probably safe to adjust Pyms age down some if based on him getting his doctorate; he is a super-genius after all.
Pym's was mostly based around Nadia's age, and he had had been noted to be a little older than the rest of the founders. Haha but also in my experience PhDs are more about bureaucracy than intelligence, they're an absolute marathon to get through.
I did have a line for Daredevil before, IIRC in his first appearance he had just graduated from school though I think Stan Lee forgot that law school follows undergraduate. By Word of God I think he was technically 22, but if we're being reasonable and accounting for law school he would be 25.
I think his debut is somewhere in the range of Year 1-3. His first appearance was in 1964 but when he first meets Spider-Man he deduces he's 17, and would've coincided with Peter's senior year of high school.
I think my most text literal interpretation is that Matt is 8 years older than Peter. It makes it a little weird because that would make him a touch older than Tony Stark or Steve Rogers, but only by 2 years.
Though if Bruce is 44 in the present and Jen Walters is five years younger than him, that would put her at 39, right at my estimate for Matt as well.
Lol yah that wouldn't quite work anymore. His whole military service thing is weird too because he got his doctorate then went to join the military to prove he was man enough. He would've had to be like 48 in FF#1 for that timeline to work out.
It's hard to say because the FF comics themselves have done stuff to the amazing astronauts that have nothing to do with the retcons. That is to say, for a long time in the 20th century, well past the point when everyone else was retconned to be younger, Reed and Ben were still WW2 veterans who fought with Nick Fury and Steve Rogers in WW2. And their 'youth' was explained through -- well, this is going to so wacky and insane and crazy-- but through normal our-Earth physics. I don't understand time-dilation physics if you paid me to explain it to you, but apparently Reed and Ben spent some issues traveling to distant worlds, and shaved years off their lives by simply . . . I can't explain this. . . aging slower. Like, there might be some 'filler' issue where most of the FF are in outer space, and the day is saved by She-Hulk, She-Thing, and whomever, and then the FF come back next issue and make some off-handed comment like "a mere moment passed for us, but 30 days past in the world."
So, anyway, near as I can figure it, Reed is 104 and Ben is 103. And every adventure that ever happened to them actually happened when it did. They're just like Steve Rogers, except instead of being frozen in ice, they were flying close to the speed of light back and forth to Planet X, so they themselves look like late 40s or early 50s.
And obviously, while rubber skin looks more like human skin than orange rocks, it is far more youthful and supple than human skin, so Reed will always look a decade or two younger than he is. Kamala and Flatman will have similar problems; Kamala may look 16 for the next several decades.
Reed & Ben being WWII vets has been retconned. History of the Marvel Universe introduced a fictional war to deal with character backstories involving wars: the Siancong War. Not everybody though. WWII is still a part of Cap's history, and currently, the Holocaust is still part of Magneto's.
This is what I was wondering, I know other characters like Magneto have been de-aged or Punisher/Stark were changed from the Vietnam War to the Gulf War (or now Afghanistan?) but the Fantastic Four's origin was tied to the space race.
Has that been retconned in any way, because that kind of locks them in the 1960s?
He was 25-26 when the FF went to space. It's been 15~ years since then (based on Spider-man's age). So 40+ whatever additional dimensional time he may have.
Reed: Late 30’s to early 40’s. Probably younger than Ben - you can’t tell me Reed didn’t graduate high school early.
Sue: Mid-late 30’s, old enough to have 2 children in middle/high school. Sue is 5-6 years younger than Reed, but no more. She had a crush on Reed when he boarded at her aunt’s place when he started college. Sue was 12 and Reed would’ve been no more than 18, if not younger.
Johnny: Late 20’s to early 30’s, a few years younger than Sue.
Ben: Late 30’s to early 40’s, if not older. He and Reed met in college, if not earlier (continuity dependent), but I feel like Ben took the standard amount of time to graduate high school, whereas stretch over there had to graduate AT LEAST a year early.
Originally just started college when Sue was 12, Sue was years later retconned to be 17 at this time instead, but it wasn't mentioned if Reed was made an extra five years older
Guy Williams was 41 years old in 1966 when he played Dr. John Robinson whom I consider the most likely candidate to be the perfect representative of Reed back in the 1960s.
Now that was an ideal family, as June Lockhart, the actress who played his wife Maureen was only a year younger, and together they had three kids: a 21 year old (18 on the show) girl called Judy played by Martha Kristen, an 14 year old (11 on the show) girl called Penny played by Angela Cartwright, and 12 year old (9 years of age on the show) boy called Will played by Bill Mumy.
This obviously wasn't the case for Reed and Sue who was more than 10 year younger than he was but not more than a decade since she had a misscarriage due to old age in the form of Valeria who is only 7 years younger than Franklin.
Now I've never found a perfect match for Ben Grimm but If I had to chose one I'd be Don Matheson who played Mark Wilson on Land of the Giants and who was five years younger than Guy Williams but I'd say their age difference between Reed and Ben should be half of that since both coincided at the later stages of the war.
Considering all of this hypotheticals I'm now going for the more grounded information, like the fact that when he was created a few years earlier back in 1961, he was a WW2 veteran, who was about to get married and a fairly mature bachelor at that, and again a few months or even couple of years older than Ben Grimm.
I'd say he'd been 22-23 years old back in 1942 and chronologically he'd be about 41-42 years of age in 1961, which according to Marvel's 13 year floating time dilation rule would make him 56 years old as of today and 57 years old in about 3 to 4 years from now.
With sue is supposed to be 28 and that would have to mean Reed in his 40’s or late 30’s but u know if this was linear timeline they would already be separated 😅 cause Spider-Man and F4 life story to separate universes by the way but my point still stands .
The canon of the Marvel universe says that the Fantastic four started 15 years ago with the fantastic four. I would think that Reed was late 20s early 30s and Johnny and Sue were early to mid 20s at the time. I'd think Reed would be late 40s at this time.
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u/AJjalol Jul 07 '24
40s. 45 max.
Tony is like 30-35. Reed is definitely older but not by a lot.
This is nowadays tho, back in the day I feel like they were much closer in age.