Age Lift / Comic Books

• DC Comics' Earth One line sees two examples: in Superman: Earth One, Jimmy Olsen is presented as being older than Superman rather than younger, while Batman: Earth One makes Lucius Fox younger than Batman as opposed to older (especially notable considering The Dark Knight Trilogy and, following the example made by it, The Batman and Gotham, had Lucius as an old friend of Thomas Wayne before he and Martha were killed on that fearful night).
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate Spider-Man:
    • The series placed Mary Jane Watson, Harry Osborn, and Gwen Stacy in high school with Peter when he started out his career as Spider-Man, whereas the mainstream versions didn't meet Peter until college. The Spider-Man Trilogy, The Spectacular Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man Series, the Ultimate Spider-Man (2012) cartoon, Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, and Marvel's Spider-Man have followed its lead to varying degree, either removing one to save for later^note with the original film trilogy having Peter and MJ meeting Gwen in college; the Amazing films having Gwen in high school, Peter reunite with Harry (and in deleted scenes meet MJ) in the summer before college or adding more to be classmates^note Loves Mary Jane making pre-Black Cat Felicia Hardy a transfer student with them; Spectacular likewise having Glory Grant and Randy Robertson go to school with him and pre-Venom Eddie Brock as a recent graduate; the Ultimate cartoon making many of Spidey's allies like Luke Cage and Iron Fist and enemies like Rhino his age; and the 2017 cartoon giving Age Lifts to Anya Corazón, Miles Morales, and many of his enemies to make them Peter and Harry's age.
    • Ultimate Spider-Man also does this to Jessica Jones, making her a senior at Midtown. In the classic Marvel Universe, Jessica and Peter were in the same grade.
    • Aunt May here is much younger looking than she is in the original comics. She now looks more realistically aged, of course even then we never did learn what the age difference is between brothers Ben and Richard so even then the original age is plausible.
    • Ben Urich is closer to his 30s than being middle-aged like other versions.
    • Peter stays in high school throughout the entire run, whereas Peter Parker of Earth-616 graduated high school in Issue #28 and has been a young adult ever since.
    • Miles Morales, an original character of the Ultimate universe, is a teenager. The Miles Morales native to the Marvel universe was introduced in Spider-Men II, and he's an adult.
    • Morbius, due to his Adaptation Species Change into a true vampire, is centuries old, instead of a young adult.
  • Ultimate X Men:
    • Wolverine in the mainstream Marvel Universe has been alive since the 19th Century and is often physically around his 40s. Ultimate Origins establishes that Logan was a young man during World War II, and earlier than that, the "Shock and Awe" two-parter had established Logan’s xiphoid hadn’t ossified when the Adamantium was bonded to him, meaning he's physically younger than 40.
    • Magneto’s backstory makes him quite a bit younger than other versions, who are Holocaust survivors. In fact, Ultimate Origins sees him as a young man in the 1980s.
    • Cyclops is Havok's younger brother, instead of the older one.
    • In his backstory in 616, Bishop was born almost a century after the X-Men fell due to one of their own and traveled in time as a man in his prime. Here, he's already a young man during the present and his time-travelling self is a middle-aged man.
    • In the 616 continuity, the Juggernaut is Professor X's older stepbrother. Ultimate Juggernaut, however, is a young man around the same age as Rogue, and actually grew up with her in the same trailer park.
    • In the original continuity, Storm, Nightcrawler and Dazzler are already adults when they join the X-Men. Their Ultimate versions are teenagers.
    • Forge is also reimagined as a teenager, although he's with the Brotherhood.
  • Ultimate Fantastic Four makes the titular four and Doctor Doom teenagers, as opposed to just Johnny Storm being a teenager.
• Smallville comics:
  • Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor actually meet as children in this continuity, in most comics Diana was created (or born in later versions) literally thousands of years before Steve even was born.
  • Barbara is the adoptive daughter of Batman in this continuity and is his first protege (instead of Dick Grayson), making Babs a great deal younger than she was originally. In her debut during the Silver Age she was already an adult when Batman and Robin met her.
• Extermination (2018) saw Cable killed by his time-traveling teenaged self and subsequently replaced by him. The new version is colloquially called "Kid Cable".
• Heroes Reborn:
  • In the tradtional Marvel Universe, Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, and Victor von Doom are middle-aged men. In the HR reality, they're closer in age to Sue and Johnny.
  • Ultron is the creator of the The Vision. Here, the Vision actually came before Ultron, with Hank Pym taking Ultron's role as Vision's creator and Ultron himself being designed to replace Vision as Hank's assistant.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Tails in the games is eight years old. He is ten in the comics, in order to match his age in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM).
    • Amy's classic design from Sonic the Hedgehog CD is eight however — for Sonic Adventure she was retconned as twelve. Amy in the comics was initially ten, not eight. Her body itself was aged up to sixteen in order to match her game redesign (making her a preteen in a teenage body). By the end of the pre-reboot comic, Amy's biological age is seventeen and her chronological age is eleven.
    • Charmy is sixteen, not six in the comics, because he was listed as sixteen in the American Knuckles Chaotix manual. He had a Vague Age in Japan, and Sonic Heroes later established Charmy as being six.
  • Sonic the Comic:
    • Sonic and Knuckles are implied to be at least eighteen in later arcs, as they can visit bars. At the time their ages were sixteen and fifteen in the games respectively (Sonic Adventure would later switch this around so that Sonic was fifteen and Knuckles was sixteen). The Sonic Adventure adaptation would reveal that Knuckles is Really 700 Years Old instead of being an actual teenager.
    • Amy's age is unstated, but she isn't treated like the eight-year-old she was when introduced in Sonic the Hedgehog CD.
• Batman: White Knight:
  • Jason Todd was actually the first Robin in this continuity, presumably making him older than Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon, both of whom are his seniors in the mainstream DCU. When Jason finally shows up in the present day at the end of Curse of the White Knight, he has wrinkles and a receding hairline, indicating he's a good deal older than his mainline DC Universe counterpart, who is somewhere in his 20s.
  • In the mainline continuity, Duke Thomas is a teenager. Here, he's an adult veteran of the U.S. Special Forces and a former Gotham police officer.
  • Mr. Freeze is the son of a Nazi scientist and was born prior to the rise of the Third Reich during the 1930s, putting him in his 80s at least. The cryonic accident that transformed him had the side effect of making him appear much younger. The same is true for his wife Nora, who was born during World War 2 but spent decades in cryogenic stasis.
  • Azrael was a college student when he debuted in the comics. The version of Azrael from Batman: Curse of the White Knight is a middle-aged veteran of The Vietnam War with gray hair.
• The rebooted version of Rose and Thorn from DC's short-lived National Comics anthology series was changed from an adult woman to a high school student.
• Superman:
  • In the Post-Crisis comics, Lex Luthor goes from a contemporary of Clark (they grew up in Smallville together as seen in How Luthor Met Superboy) to a contemporary of Perry White (about twenty years older). In the 00s, he was retconned back to being Clark Kent's schoolmate.
  • A few examples pop up in DC Comics Bombshells. Notably, Lois Lane is reimagined as a 17-year-old newspaper hawker, which removes any potential squickiness when she begins dating Supergirl in the follow-up.
  • Supergirl was originally Superman's younger cousin, having been born on a section of Krypton that survived the extinction, making her an actual teenager when she was introduced in The Supergirl From Krypton (1959). Her more well-known Post-Crisis origins however have her as his chronologically older cousin by having her be born on Krypton itself some time before the cataclysm.
  • When she was introduced in Supermans Girlfriend Lois Lane #23, Lena Thorul was a grown woman instead of a teenager who could hang around with Linda Danvers and Dick Malverne. When asked about it in a letter in Action Comics issue #298, Mort Weisinger admitted Lena had been quietly deaged in The Girl with the X-Ray Mind because they thought her character would work better as a friend to Supergirl.
• Black Canary was originally over fifteen years older than her love interest Green Arrow, being in her forties. Post-Crisis their ages ended up essentially swapped. This creates some inconsistencies with Black Canary though; for example, she's supposed to have a maternal relationship with Speedy, but that's hard to establish anymore as they're almost the same age.
• New 52:
  • Post-Crisis, Green Arrow was aged up nearly 20 years into his 40s. The New 52 aged him down back to his 20s.
  • The Justice League generation in the New 52's Prime Earth are "around 25" rather than "around 35". In DC Rebirth this actually gets explained as someone having stolen a decade of their history. On Earth 2, the JSA heroes have been de-aged by several decades, dropping the World War II connection. Subverted with Wonder Woman, she’s initially one of the younger members of JL being explicitly 23 years old, but this got contradicted in Darkseid War which reaffirms Diana that is Really 700 Years Old like most comics.
  • The original Batgirl, Barbara Gordon, was in her late teens to mid-twenties when Dick Grayson was in his early-to-mid teens. Post-Crisis, however, they established her as only a little older than him, and having retired from being Batgirl by the time he's established as Nightwing. In her Batgirl (2011) and Batgirl (Rebirth) comics she's the same age as Dick.
  • Magog was an adult former soldier Pre-Flashpoint, but the New 52 version of the character is a young boy with a superpowered Older Alter Ego a la Shazam!.
  • In Pre-Crisis Batman comics, Lucius Fox's daughter Tiffany appears in one story, where she's an adult running the Wayne Foundation's anti-drugs program. She appears in much the same role in the post-Crisis Red Robin, where she's the older sister of one of Tim's love interests, the teenage Tam Fox. In The New 52, she's a precocious pre-teen, the Bratty Half-Pint younger sister of Batwing's Luke Fox. Additionally, Tam still retains her pre-Flashpoint age, which now makes her the older of the two Fox daughters.
  • In The Dark Knight Returns, Carrie Kelley was introduced as a 13-year-old schoolgirl. When she finally made her mainstream DC Universe debut during the New 52, it was as a college student in her late teens or early twenties. Doubly so, s her original counterpart was 13 while Bruce was middle-aged, whereas her DCU counterpart is college-aged while Bruce is in his prime.
  • Wonder Woman (2011) has a downplayed example with Queen Hippolyta who is established not to be the daugther of Queen Otrera and Ares who was betrayed by Hercules before the Trojan War had even kicked off but their granddaugher, named after the original who was in this continuity killed by Hercules. Here her mother is stated to have been Antiope.
• Batman: Year One established Jim Gordon as younger than he was previously depicted. This resulted in his daughter Barbara Gordon, the original Batgirl, becoming his niece who he raised as a daughter for a while.
• Unlike the Red Queen and Hope van Dyne, Nadia Pym is quite a bit younger—mostly because she's in the "present day" unlike the former and Hank Pym was still very much in his prime and didn't undergo his own Age Lift like in the latter.
• In Marvel Adventures Spider-Man, Emma Frost is a teenager who is around the same age as Peter and his classmates.
• In Marvel Action: Chillers (part of the all-ages Marvel Action line from IDW), Elsa Bloodstone is introduced as a teenage girl around the same age as Ironheart.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Diana and Steve Trevor were originally very linked to their actions in WWII, which meant that as time went on and the timeline at DC shifted they were getting older and older compared to those meant to be their contemporaries. Then Wonder Woman (1987) changed Paradise Island to Themyscira and had Wondy entering man's world for the first time during the Cold War and Steve now the son of WWII veterans rather than being one himself.
  • In most continuities the Amazon Mala is made considerably older than her princess, whereas the original Mala was about the same age as Diana and grew up alongside her on Paradise Island.
  • Star Lily was a young adult no younger than 18 in Wonder Woman and the Star Riders. When introduced in the main continuity for Wonder Woman (Rebirth) Star Blossom is a young teen.
  • The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): Troia is older than her counterpart Donna Troy, as Troia is the same age as Diana while Donna was rescued by Diana when Diana was already an adult working as the Amazon's champion and Donna was a toddler.
• In Black Canary: Ignite, Dinah Lance is a mere 13-years-old when she becomes the new Black Canary, rather than a young adult.
• Trouble (Marvel Comics) attempts to retcon that Peter Parker's parents, Uncle Ben, and Aunt May were teenagers when he was conceived (and his real birth mother was really May via an affair she and Richard had). This in-turn led to a case of Writers Cannot Do Math, as given Richard and Mary died a couple of years after Peter's born, there's no way they can be spies by that time. Likewise, there's no way May can be a senior citizen (like in the classic Marvel Universe) or middle-aged (like in the Ultimate Marvel one) by the time Peter becomes Spider-Man.
• Shazam! has had this happen a few times:
  • The original comics tend to use Vague Age, but it has Billy and Mary as twins and Freddy presumably being the same age. Post-Crisis, he's a bit older than them.
  • In the New 52 and afterwards, Billy and Freddy are the same age while Mary is both older and no longer related to Billy by blood.
  • Outside the mainstream universe, Shazam The Monster Society Of Evil and Billy Batson and the Magic of Shazam have Mary being younger than Billy. Also, in this universe Black Adam's mortal form is about a year older than Billy instead of being an adult...though a later issue by a different writer confuses things by implying that he was an adult before he got banished in the first place.
• When she became a Canon Immigrant from X-Men: Evolution, X-23 was reimagined from a little girl to a teenager, which crossed over to other incarnations — except Logan, which went Truer to the Text and presented X-23 as an eleven-year-old.
• Kid Sherlock: As the name implies, Sherlock Holmes is a kid in this comic. Watson is also a kid, and a dog.
• The Batman: The Animated Series comic, Batman: The Adventures Continue, paints Azrael (Jean-Paul Valley) as around Bruce's age. In his debut in Sword of Azrael, Jean-Paul was only a college student slightly younger than Dick when he first became Azrael.
• Democracy: In Real Life, Harmodius was a teen when him and Aristogeiton murdered Hipparchus. In the graphic novel, while his age is never mentioned, his design resembles that of an adult, probably to not make it Squick, as he and Aristogeiton were lovers.
• In the magazine version of Jimmy Tornado, Lupé is described as being 17 years old. The album version raises her age to 19 while keeping Jimmy the same age (15).
• Jack McGee from The Incredible Hulk (1977) was the same age as Bruce. Among the many changes made when the character was reimagined as a black woman was deaging Jackie; she's still an adult in the present day, but was a teenager during one of the Hulk's earlier rampages.
• Wonder Woman: Dead Earth: Rather than being Diana's twin this version of Nubia is an older Amazon.
• Among the many changes done to the Condiment King when he became a Canon Immigrant from Batman: The Animated Series to the Batman comics is becoming a teenager.^note The original Condiment King was an adult stocky, Brainwashed and Crazy comedian named Buddy Standler who wore mostly blue and white, whereas the comics character was Mitchell Mayo, a willing criminal who started out as a teenaged former fast food worker and was Red and Black and Evil All Over. That said a version of Standler did appear in Detective Comics #1000
• In the original The Jetsons cartoon, Elroy was an adolescent boy, albeit a very smart one. In the 2017 comic book adaptation, he's a teenager.