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Topic: Quick Q4JB - Steve Rogers’ Age (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Ernest Degollado
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 12:33am | IP Logged | 1  

In your mind's eye, how old is Steve Rogers when he is pulled from that icy water?

{Clarified Title - JB}

Edited by JohnByrne2 on 18 September 2014 at 5:17am

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John Byrne
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 4:54am | IP Logged | 2  

About 25.
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Michael Penn
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 6:04am | IP Logged | 3  

On what date did Captain America become "frozen"? In AVENGERS #4, Cap says it was over 20 years ago, but that was just when he'd awoken, so it's probably not exact. If there's no set date (particularly from that classic Lee-Kirby era), what date would you (not just JB, but anybody) think appropriate?
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John Byrne
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 6:41am | IP Logged | 4  

V-E Day was celebrated in May, 1945, so fixing a date depends on whether we assume Zemo was a already a hold-on on the German surrender, or if the War in Europe was, in fact, still going on. In AVENGERS 4, Cap refers to the European Theater of Operations (E.T.O.) which suggest the War was still happening. That would put Cap going into the ice before May of '45, which ties in with his "twenty years" comment, at the time.

Of course, a lot of gobbledygook was shoveled into Stan and Jack's simple and straightforward story, over the years. Even the bad guy being Zemo was a retcon. But the one thing that seems to have remained consistent is that Cap was frozen before the end of the War in Europe.

This fits with him being 25 at the time, born in 1920, 21 when he tried to enlist and was recruited for "Operation Rebirth." One of the curious things about that return in AVENGERS, mind you, is how Stan wrote Cap from the moment he came out of the ice. There was the gravitas of a much older man, which became the motif, with Cap calling people "son" and the like, as if he had somehow experienced the time in the ice. Those so inclined might argue he did, since no one had told him how long he was frozen when he made the "twenty years" remark. (I am not one of those! Suspended animation is suspended animation. The subject doesn't experience anything, doesn't dream -- and most certainly it is not something that "wears off"!!)

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Darren Ashmore
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 7:11am | IP Logged | 5  

How curious it might have been if Stan and Jack had done away with the suspended animation angle for Cap and instead just had, in 1964, a 45 year old Steve Rogers, return to action, the Super Soldier Serum keeping him fit and vital.  He comes out of 'retirement' in reaction to the emergence of the new superheroes.

(of course 45 isn't really 'old', especially considering such actors as Frank Sinatra, Kirk Douglas, etc were playing action heroes at the same sort of age.)

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John Byrne
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 7:40am | IP Logged | 6  

How curious it might have been if Stan and Jack had done away with the suspended animation angle for Cap and instead just had, in 1964, a 45 year old Steve Rogers, return to action, the Super Soldier Serum keeping him fit and vital. He comes out of 'retirement' in reaction to the emergence of the new superheroes.

••

Apparently 45 is about the age Stan had in mind for Nick Fury when he turned up in the original Hate-Monger issue of FF. In other words, roughly Stan's own age at the time.

Of course, this made Fury 25 back in those SGT. FURY issues, which seemed unlikely -- especially since Fury was supposed to be a fairly close contemporary of "Happy" Sam Sawyer's.

There were some who squawked loudly when Howard Chaykin introduced the Infinity Formula as a way to keep Fury somewhere south of his real age. Personally, I saw it as a fairly elegant solution, not quite in keeping with the grizzled Sgt. of WW2, perhaps, but very much in character for the Steranko-ized Agent of SHIELD.

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Michael Penn
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 7:40am | IP Logged | 7  

45 was old back then!

Sinatra was singing about the "September" of his years when he was in he 50 and already being retrospective and thinking of his retirement. 
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Ernest Degollado
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 7:46am | IP Logged | 8  

Thanks for the quick answer JB.  I would have thought he was older, probably because of the reasons you cited in how he was portrayed.  Of course a 15-year-old me would probably consider 25 "old" while a 48-year-old me thinks 40 is still a "young" guy!  
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John Byrne
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 7:49am | IP Logged | 9  

One of the curious questions that came up when I was doing GENERATIONS was figuring out just how old Ma and Pa Kent were when they found the rocket. The text describes the (originally unnamed) couple as "elderly," and when they morphed into the Kents, this was continued.

But what, I asked myself, constituted "elderly" in those days? Seigle and Shuster were barely more than kids, so just about anyone older than them would be "elderly"! I started doing the math, and reasoned that if Clark had adopted the Superman identity when he was around 25 (the youngest he could reasonably be to be hired as a full-time reporter), then he was born around 1914*, which would, following the earliest stories, be around the same time the rocket landed.

This presented a problem of sorts. Taking the apparent ages of the Kents when they found the rocket, how old would they be in those SUPERBOY issues? Adding ten or fifteen years to their ages would get them deep into old age.

Eventually I decided they were in their sixties in 1914, which fit the then-common concept of "elderly," and allowed them to be in their seventies when Clark was being Superboy. This had the welcome surprise of allowing Pa Kent to have fought in the last days Civil War, having been born around 1852. And that, of course, opened up the potential for the Jonah Hex story I did in the third series.

---------------

* The GENERATIONS Superman would be 100 years old this year!

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Darren Ashmore
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 7:58am | IP Logged | 10  

Michael, I agree with you that 45 year olds seem a lot younger now than back in the sixties, however at that age Sinatra was hardly past his prime, Oceans Eleven was released in 1960 and The Manchurian Candidate in '62  Kirk Douglas played Spartacus at age 48. 
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Doug Centers
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 8:09am | IP Logged | 11  

" This had the welcome surprise of allowing Pa Kent to have fought in the last days Civil War, having been born around 1852. And that, of course, opened up the potential for the Jonah Hex story I did in the third series."

...

And for those doing the math this is perfectly reasonable. My Great Grandfather was 15 yo when he enlisted with the Union.
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John Byrne
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Posted: 18 September 2014 at 8:19am | IP Logged | 12  

Michael, I agree with you that 45 year olds seem a lot younger now than back in the sixties, however at that age Sinatra was hardly past his prime, Oceans Eleven was released in 1960 and The Manchurian Candidate in '62 Kirk Douglas played Spartacus at age 48.

••

Something to keep in mind, here, is that actors back then traditionally played characters sometimes MUCH younger than they were. Look at Cary Grant, Doris Day, and a host of others who were still playing characters in their 40s (at most) when they were, themselves, well into their sixties.

And, of course, the reverse was often true. Parents of teenagers were often played by actors who would have been more appropriately cast as the grandparents. Think of the Andy Hardy series, for instance.

On TV, Mike Connors was playing MANNIX and giving his age as 35 when he was on the high side of 40. On BLACK SHEEP SQUADRON 40* Robert Conrad was playing 30+ Greg Boyinton.

Age is a mysterious and elusive thing, in Hollywood!

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