I met my wife when she was 12. I was 23. Her parents were acquaintance of mine.

We fell in love 12 years later and married when I was 39. She was 28 at that time.

From time to time I had a thought about that story Marvel finds "creepy" today and had a little smile.

Of course nothing sexual or romantic crossed my mind when she was a kid and I a young man.

Those Marvel guys are stupid and it makes me a little angry.

A ten year difference? Fine. Who's to know? I'm 58, but a couple years back, when I played Daddy Warbucks in Annie and pulled a Professor Xavier, I got guesses of my age from 40 to 50 and everything in-between - but nobody went to 56. And I'm not nearly as handsome as Reed Richards. I look a lot like I did when I graduated high school.

Are the writers REALLY so desperate, or the trivia-engorged fans SO full of ennui that this is what they look at in a comic? Aren't there, like, stories and art around such instants?

You'll pardon a comment, but they can sit on their thumbs and twirl while they discuss such. Me, I'm wondering how the hell they're going to get out of Doom's latest trap - FF androids that deliberately avoid fighting their cognates! Unless Reed can complete that jammer that interferes with their differentiating between each other and the REAL FF!

Side note: Likewise, any Batman story at DC that disagrees with the O'Neil/Adams run (or the Englehart/Rogers run) gets thrown on the garbage heap for me.

Word of advice to newer creators--Don't do work that conflicts with the classics; you will not look good.

Basically, end of.

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That how continuity in comics USED to be!  With so much work being collected these days, I think the older stories are being seen as much as (if not more than) the current monthlies.

JB's FANTASTIC FOUR  was read by hundreds of thousands of people--and it's STILL being collected and read today!  Same thing with the Lee/Ditko SPIDER-MAN and the Lee/Kirby FF.  I can walk into any comic shop OR Barnes & Noble and buy those editions any day of the week.

JB says (in another thread) that people should just forget about the Dark Phoenix Saga--but THAT keeps getting reprinted too!  Altogether, more people DID read--and ARE reading--JB's X-MEN & FF than Fraction's.

When you look at that panel you understand immediately that there's a teenager having a crush for a young man who's just not comfortable with a kid this age. 

That's how I understood it when I was a young teenager and that's how I understand it now.

I don't know what to think of a comic books publisher who's unable to look at a picture...

Nothing happened while they were still underage and the older young man did not follow through, being embarrassed by the crush (well, until CC DID follow through in X-Men 166, which was a mistake in my book).

Didn't need a rewrite. 

I've never read it but Fraction writes Sex Criminals for crying out loud.