Featured Topic: Children from the Future

[Beta Ray Bill Cosby]

now with a link to the podcast in question!

[Gaumer]

Matthew blew my mind with his Franklin Richards theory. I may never recover. Honestly, TYVM, sir.

And OMG Hickman could totally do that story. And, as I believe Matthew alluded to, he just may be doing it.

[Gibralter]

Matthew blew my mind with his Franklin Richards theory. I may never recover.

My mind was blown!

[Navarre]

It is indeed one of the most clever theories I have ever heard. Kudos, Matthew! 

[Tondi-]

I think that offspring are a great way to introduce venerabilities to some of the bass-add characters out there.  I have no idea what Dakens story is but I remember thinking it was cool when Logan went out of his way to help X-23.  Also seeing Luke Cage go nuts after the kidnapping and seeing what lengths he'd go to get her back was good interesting story telling.

They are a good way to look at what if scenarios.  As discussed in the podcast they can just get silly but sometimes what they think of works really well and you end up with staying characters...like Blink.

I think everything comes unstuck when they start too young though.  The thing about comics is all the heroes can die and do die almost cyclicly but its different for kids.  You can't just kill a 8 year old kid on panel even if they do have the powers of the Hulk and Ms Marvel. 

And to be honest comics do crazier things with parallel dimensions / timelines characters than they do with hero brood anyway.

[SpiderLover]

Children as a concept in comics can work. The best example I can think of is The Lone Ranger and The Green Hornet. While this is not direct in father to son it still works in the sense of family ties. Now why did I even bring this up? One word: Time.

Time has to pass to make this a doable idea. It can be done in two ways either the child is born and progresses. There is great storytelling potential here but to pull this off you cannot be connected to a team book or an Universe. You can't have Damien hanging out as a 20 year old with a 25 year old Lex Lurhor, it doesnt make sense.

The other option is to age a character in another setting and say I am the son of gambit and place nothing that gives away the time period because later it will be dated if it's an ongoing. Another thought that could work is you end a book with an exclamation that a father is dead and some time in the future the son or daughter takes up the mantle.

[Canadian Joe]

Just listened to the Kids of Super Heroes podcast and had to throw in two Canadian cents.

The reason why kids of superheroes stories generally fall flat is because of something Matthew alludes to in his Franklin Richards theory (which is awesome, BTW) and that the crew comes up against on alot of shows and is the major reason I don't regularly read comics.

Superheroes don't die.

The main reason we as human beings have children is we realize that we will one day die, and we want someone to carry on our name/legacy/genes/etc.  And so it makes sense (a whole lot of sense) for a superhero in a world with supervillains to have children.  ("Now son, take your super soldier vitamins every day, and one day this cape and mask will be yours!")

But, from our point of view, from the meta point of view, super hero children ring totally false, because we realize superheroes never really die.  All it takes it a new writer, a new marketing poll, a sudden spike of interest from a fan base, and suddenly a hero is alive again!

We've been discussing stories about Superman and Batman's kids.  If we start from when those heroes were first published, we should be taking about their *grand kids*.  But we don't, because Superman won't age and die (excepting elseworlds, what if's, etc), Batman won't ever have to pass the batsuit, cave, etc on to his heir because he's too old (Batman Beyond being an obvious and awesome exception) and Wolverine's claws will be sharp and badass for another 50 years.

The only way a children of super heroes story is interesting is when a world is created where superheros can grow old, retire and die.  And that is a world most comic book publishers have no interest in seeing and (perhaps) is a world most comic book fans don't want to read about.

[Gaumer]

The main reason is sex. Kids are a byproduct of that.

Sure, passing on the legacy is a nice thing that comes with that, but I don't see any planned pregnancies going on in the comics book universes.

I've also never seen that aspect of parenthood quite worked into comics in the way you are saying. They've done comics where supes try to come to terms with their own death, but I don't think that finality has ever been addressed by a supe wanting to have a child. Awesome idea though.

I also don't think that the characters in the universes feel that they won't ever die. Most of them have only aged a certain number of, relatively, short years. It takes a fair amount of wisdom to come to the point of acknowledging that you want a child to pass on a legacy.

[Andreas]

Might not be the most funny reply, but i think that if you are gonna have children of heros in a book they just need to be from the future.

It's all about the inhereted paradox in comics that you have linear continuity but the heros can't get older! At least not at normal speed.

So if you introduce a kid (like Franklin Richards) this paradox gets more obvius.
A grown up child like Cable can just jump right in to continuity like the rest of the heros.

This came to my some time ago when i got back to reading comics after like a seven years break. It was soo wierd to see that the whole DC and Marvel univers had followed the time.
Cars, buildings, clothes ect had moved along and the heros had been throu all sort of adventures.
But they hadn't grown up the sligthest bit???
Hadn't gotten older or wiser or anything!

Sooo timetraveling kids are really the leser of the evils for us fans - I think.
Becaurse if you are a "regular" comic reader, and only read comics a set amount of years, kids of heros works ok. Becaurse the paradox isn't obvius to you. If on the other hand you are a real comic fan, and you hold on to your interest for years and years, children who never grow up make the paradox seems so much more obvius. And thus anoying.

[Otter Disaster]

I was thinking about the Kids of Super Heroes (KOSH?) problem today, and it reminded me of when I used to watch soap operas on TV, and how the two problems are essentially the same.

In both settings the problem are essentially these:

Making the baby - Interesting
Revealing the pregnancy - Interesting
Determining paternity (where applicable) - Interesting
The delivery - Interesting
Changing poopy diapers, sleepless nights, daycare, teaching li'l Daredevil to read, etc. - not especially interesting.

With the soaps the kids usually disappear until holiday episodes where they'd show up for the family photo then back off to boarding school.  The next time you see them they've aged considerably, but are still shoehorned into regular continuity.  I'd say a soap baby ages about 10 years for every five until they're 18-20 and can become full fledged cast members.  Even so introducing a kid on a soap is a long term commitment for the writers with the rapid aging. 

With comics it's easier because of the fantasy setting, and we can just rapidly age, or pull the kid from the future or whatever else we can imagine.  While this solves the problem of boring kids who don't work in a universe where buildings get levelled as a day to day thing, it also reflects a lazy attitude toward the writing. 

Writer A: "Well, we've presented the 5 or 6 dramatic scenarios of introducing a kid, now what?
Editor B: "I dunno we could just have him abducted to the future, and brought back a fully formed adult ready to be shoehorned into continuity!"
Writer A: "Awesome."

Rinse repeat....I hate superheroes with kids...

[ClubberLang6]

The only way children of superheros works-in a storyline  is if the combination of the superhero parents' powers create a cool superhero.  This makes for interesting characters.  For example, say the Dazzler and the Thing had a child together.  The offspring would be a flamboyant strong man that looks like he is made of glittery bricks.  He would be like one of those over the top boxers of wrestlers from the 80s-90s (ie Hector 'Macho' Camacho or Golddust.)   
 
Another interesting combo would be that girl from kick-ass and Dr.Manhattan from the Watchman.  You would have a god-like being who also has a potty mouth. 
 
The only way these kinds of story lines work is when the kids inherent cool powers. 

[Navarre]

The podcast referenced that. The statement was that someone who had been changed at a genetic level could pass on their powers but it wouldn't automatically apply to all super-powered beings.

[Gaumer]

I really liked the comic book science lesson we got there, and would love to hear a podcast where the guys get into something science -ey like that.

I don't think that a cool power necessarily equates to a good character, but I agree that it sure helps.

[Alisha Mynx]

I don't think that a cool power necessarily equates to a good character, but I agree that it sure helps.

It can help, but not always.  In the Secret Wars: 25 Years Later story in What If?, I found Thor's kid to be interesting for NOT being the one worthy to carry the hammer.

[SpiderLover]

Here is something I was thinking about today. Making Comics a little accountable for their events. Now they will never do this but here is my thought.

Now time is what keeps comics from making children progress through the years, but what if they decided that every event they did made the comic advance 3 years. Now this would do to things, force them to come up with new characters or use lineage; force them to slow down on the Event comics.