Fountain Of Youth / Comic Books

Fountains of Youth in Comic Books.

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• In Athena Voltaire and the Isle of the Dead, it's recounted that a Spanish explorer discovered the Fountain of Youth. The effects lasted a while but had to be refreshed from time to time. Eventually, however, he noticed that the Fountain was showing signs of depletion; rather than risk returning one day to find it gone, he filled up as many barrels as he could. However, the ship he put them on was sunk, setting up the plot.
• Happens twice from two different sources in Asterix album Asterix and Obelix All at Sea. First Obelix gets de-aged as an aftereffect of overdosing on the Magic Potion, then our heroes discover the remnant of Atlantis, where everyone is a child (and happy from it) after having drunk from an actual Fountain of Youth.
• This becomes a plot point in Astro City. When the hero Crackerjack starts becoming incapacitated due to his advancing age, he desperately seeks something to reverse the effects.
• Happens to Giles in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff Angel and Faith, the result of a resurrection spell that doesn't go quite according to plan. The twist is he still has all his adult memories, but they're now at the mercy of a pubescent, hormone-addled body.
• One Bugs Bunny comic story has Bugs and Porky go looking for the Fountain of Youth. An old witch tries to trick them into thinking that a random spring is the fountain, but it turns out to be the real fountain, although they lose track of its location in a storm.
• Bunty: In "My School Chum Mum", after trying an anti-aging potion, Mrs. Todd is turned into a schoolgirl and forced to attend school with her daughter, posing as "Cousin Emily".
• In a "Gnuff" story in the furry comic Critters, the main characters are stranded on an island divided by a steep mountain range where one side has water that makes you younger and the other has potatoes that make older. So, if you're living off the land on that island, you need to balance these foodstuffs to maintain your true age. Unfortunately, the one pass through the mountain range gets blocked and the characters on both sides realize that they are in terrible danger of eventually overbalancing on one of the materials and dying or disappearing as a result unless they can each get to the other side.^note This story, done by Danish writer/artist Freddy Milton, has a long and strange background and has no less than four versions going around with wildly different main characters. It was originally made as a Disney Ducks Comic Universe story but wasn't found worthy for publication, so Milton — who had the right to the story but not the characters — redrew it with his own Captain Ersatz characters who were geese instead of ducks. Later still, when drawing comics for the Scandinavian Woody Woodpecker magazine, he redid and expanded the story with Woody and his niece and nephew Knothead and Splinter taking the roles of Donald and the boys. Finally, he redrew the story again as a "Gnuff" story, and this was the version that was published in Critters. You can find both the Donald Duck version ("The Big Sneeze") and the Gnuff version ("Gargantua's Cure") of the story in the "English Stuff" section of Milton's official homepage.
• The DCU:
  • Batman:
    • One Silver Age Batman comic◊ features a Mad Scientist villain who turns Batman into a toddler. However, Batman still keeps his adult mind, memories, strength, and skills, so pretty much all the villain accomplishes is to make Batman a smaller target.
    • Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus pits. While not exactly the same thing, the pits are used at one point in Batman Beyond to restore elderly Bruce Wayne back down to his 40s (as part of a Ra's plot to put his mind into Bruce's body).
  • The Fountain of Youth is what gave Detective Chimp the ability to speak to other animals and stopped his aging. It's either magical, radioactive or alien nanotechnology.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes: The Time Trapper's first appearance involves this shtick, with him returning the Legionnaires to infancy. This later affects a number of Legionnaires for a longer period following an ill-conceived attack on Glorith late in pre-Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! volume 4: Shrinking Violet catches Merlin Sickness from the experience, while the White Witch is merely de-aged to sixteen. Brainiac 5, meanwhile, gets stuck with an Overnight Age-Up.
  • Shazam!:
    • One Golden Age story has Dr. Sivana invent a liquid which reduces the age of the victim by as much as thirty years. Naturally, he wastes no time in using it for crime.
    • Another story has Sterling Morris drink a youth serum after feeling old and tired, only for said serum to make him younger and younger until he reaches the age of sixteen. Luckily, he takes an antidote before he can get any younger.
    • A Golden Age Captain Marvel, Jr. story has the young hero battling his nemesis Sivana Junior, who has discovered the Fountain of Youth and is using it to regress wealthy businessmen to children who he can bully. Captain Marvel Junior is temporarily regressed as well but finds the cure and turns the tables on the villain.
  • Superman:
    • Several Silver Age Mort Weisinger-era Superman Family comics stories feature characters temporarily regressed to infancy via various means, usually retaining their adult minds. Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Supergirl are among those regressed at one time or another.
    • In his first Superman-era appearance in the Silver Age, Krypto the Superdog has grown so old that he blunders his superheroics. Fortunately, Superman discovers a Fountain of Youth in a Kryptonite valley, which brings Krypto back to his prime.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1942): In issue 7, Hippolyte shows Diana a possible future in which Di and Etta Candy invent the Life Vitamin "L-3" when Etta's mother Sugar is dying of old age. When Sugar drinks a glass of water with the vitamin in it, her age regresses until she's physically in her twenties. The rest of the vision shows that the vitamin is made available to the public, essentially erasing death of old age as a concern and allowing Diana and Steve to live together for centuries.
    • Wonder Woman (1987): When Villainy, Inc. tries to take over Skartaris, the villain Trinity is somehow able to spread a "virus" which de-ages a bunch of the inhabitants into infants, and even further for some, outright killing them.
  • The Fifth Week Event Young Justice: Sins of Youth combines Fountain of Youth and Overnight Age-Up, with a combination of Chaos Magic and an "aging ray" turning all teenage heroes into adults and all adult heroes into kids.
• Disney Mouse and Duck Comics:
  • Several comics feature either the fountain itself or characters getting younger. For example, in the story "History re-Petes itself", Pete's attempt to turn Mickey into a baby backfires, resulting in Mickey trying to Raise Him Right This Time. Pete grows up rapidly over the two weeks, while Mickey and his friends attempt to make him into a good guy — unfortunately, as you might have guessed from the title, it fails, and Pete remains bad.
  • In one Gyro Gearloose comic, he tries to invent a youth potion for Scrooge. When that fails, the two of them locate the actual fountain of youth and drink from it, turning back into children. However, they soon find that being young isn't all it's cracked up to be and take Gyro's failed youth potion to become their former ages.
  • Scrooge McDuck: Once while Scrooge and Donald were adventuring in South America, they came across one of these (actually a Fountain of Youth lake with a small island in the middle). Neither of them wanted to drink the water, as both Scrooge and Donald were Genre Savvy enough to be aware of the problems that would arise. The water did not have to be drank, it would rapidly de-age anyone who merely touched it, which proved to be a problem when they found themselves trapped on the island in the middle after their boat was damaged.
    Donald: Think we can swim to shore?
    Scrooge: No. We'd both be eggs before we got there.
• EC Comics: In the story "A-Corny Story", from issue #28 of Tales from the Crypt, a guy who has been fired by his late boss' son for being "too old" sends him a tree from Haiti which is supposed to prevent old age. It starts out as this hideously gnarled specimen which keeps growing younger, and its new owner starts doing the same. On the day when the tree finally de-ages into a seed, the guy de-ages into a sperm cell or something and vanishes.
• The trope shows up in a few stupories of the German comic anthology Gespenster Geschichten. Being a horror comic, it always ends badly for the victim:
  • In the story "Das Geheimnis der verhexten Kamera" ("The Secret of the Haunted Camera"), young actor John Steven is tired of only getting to play roles as an extra and becomes so desperate to make his own movie that he attempts to rob a bank. In trying to escape the police, he ends up in an old, decrepit warehouse studio, where he finds an old director. After Steven vents his rage on him, the director pushes a button on a magic camera, making the young actor regress in age until he disappears offscreen, with the film screen representing his life burning away.
  • In "Das Geheimnis des Zaubertrankes" ("The Secret of the Magic Potion"), Tibetan monks have managed to develop an elixir of youth but have yet to test it on humans. When a young monk tries to drink it to test it, he gets kicked out before he can swallow a sip. Angered, he plots with an old English explorer to try and steal the potion, but they get cornered; with nowhere left to go, the Englishman drinks the entire elixir and becomes younger until he vanishes, only leaving his clothes behind.
  • In "Wen die Stunde Schlägt" ("When the Hour Strikes"), an old man named Colin is approached by the Grim Reaper. When he laments that he hasn't even written his will yet, the Reaper accepts to give Colin three minutes so he can write the will, leaving an hourglass by his side that symbolizes how much time he has left. Feeling he has nothing to lose, Colin flips the hourglass over, and upon seeing that the Reaper hasn't come back after the allotted three minutes and the fact that he's become a young man again, rejoices in the fact that he essentially found eternal life... until he later becomes too young and turns into a child, unable to reach the hourglass before it is too late. The Reaper comes back just in time to see Colin turn into a baby and vanish, then reclaims his hourglass.
  • In the story "Die Uhr des Sensenmannes" ("The Clock of the Grim Reaper"), a young woman named Samantha is lamenting the fact that her father is dying from an incurable disease, with the Grim Reaper on his way to claim his soul. As he arrives, Samantha manages to steal his hourglass, threatening to destroy it; left with no choice but to relent, the Reaper leaves, and the father makes a miraculous recovery. Samantha keeps the hourglass to use as leverage, but when rats come and topple it, she realizes time is flowing backwards, causing her to get younger by the second before disappearing. The Reaper comes back, reclaims his hourglass and claims the father's soul, ensuring that Samantha can never be born again.
• In the Iznogoud comic story "The Malefic Hopscotch Grid", anyone who uses the titular hopscotch grid is turned into a child. Iznogoud tries to use it on the Caliph, but by the end of the story, the Caliph is the only person who has not been turned into a child.
• Judge Dredd:
  • Dredd — a rare example of a comic book character who ages in real time — has a couple of decades taken off in the 1990s after being exiled from the city and getting his face burnt off.
  • Within the comic, there are stookie capsules, which dramatically slow the aging process in humans. Since producing them requires the slaughter of a peaceful and harmless alien species, they are highly illegal.
• Mina Murray and Alan Quartermain search for the Fire of Eternal Life in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen New Traveller's Almanac. They fail to find it, and Alan dies on the trip. After an indecently short period of time, Mina hooks up with Alan Quartermain Jr. Really, that's what happened. It's in the Almanac.
• In the eighth issue of Madballs, Dr. Frankenbeans and his bumbling assistant Snivelitch discover the Fountain of Youth. Frankenbeans attempted to use it to his advantage by tricking the Madballs Horn Head, Wolf Breath, and Touchdown Terror into diving into a pool of the water, causing them to become the Madball Babies. In the end, Frankenbeans found infant Madballs to be even more difficult dealing with, so he had them restored to their normal ages by asking them to dive into the toxic pond where the Madballs were originally created. In retaliation to being reduced to infancy, the age-restored Madballs expose Frankenbeans and Snivelitch to the Fountain of Youth, turning them into children.
• Marvel Universe:
  • Agents of Atlas: Present-day Jimmy is left horribly burned, with no higher brain function, after his first Atlas investigation goes wrong. Bob restores him using his last recording of Jimmy's physical pattern. However, Bob's last meeting with Jimmy was about five decades ago — so Jimmy gets reset, physically and mentally, to how he was in 1959.
  • In The Incredible Hercules, Zeus gets reverted back to childhood, both physically and mentally, by drinking from the river Lethe.
  • The fountain itself appears in both the original Man-Thing series as well as The Sensational She-Hulk, with a small village of people from the Conquistador days living there. Drinking the water however isn't what leaves one immortal but regularly bathing in it (drinking it will leave one a shriveled, red-skinned immortal). She-Hulk eventually convinces them to destroy the titular fountain as they've also grown apathetic (when several villagers are killed by wild beasts, they ignore it) as strong emotions break the immortality causing one to begin to age again since they've given up living by what they've sacrificed for immortality.
  • Spider-Man:
    • The Maggia crime lord Silvermane fears death due to his age and blackmails Dr. Curt Connors into making a serum with the aid of a newly discovered ancient tablet. It works too well, and he ends up being de-aged out of existence... temporarily.
    • When the Vulture learns that his original flight harness has given him terminal cancer, he obtains a new suit which allows him to steal the life-force of his victims. Spidey temporarily loses his vitality to this and his Actually a Doombot mother has her own vitality drained. The Vulture loses this suit soon after, along with the cancer.
  • In the first issue of Super Hero Squad (based on the cartoon of the same name), Dr. Doom plans to use a Time Machine to go back in time to retrieve the fractal shards. The squaddies intervene and the machine malfunctions, turning them all (except for Reptil) into babies (Redwing turns into an egg). Chaos ensues as the baby-fied heroes and villains fight.
  • X-Men:
    • This is a favorite tactic of the extradimensional media mogul Mojo in the Chris Claremont-era stories. Since time passes slowly in comic book universes, this is usually not an issue, as most characters' backstories aren't tied to a specific event. A notable exception is Magneto, a holocaust survivor canonically born in the 1920s. To get around this, he's reduced to infancy and then aged back to adulthood sometime in the '70s, putting his age firmly back in the traditional comic book "fucked if I know" category. Magneto has naturally gray hair and is in good physical condition for a man of his age. Different artists either draw him as a physically fit older man or a physically fit young man with prematurely gray hair.
    • In one 1990s Uncanny X-Men storyline, Storm is reverted to a young teenager by the villain Nanny, who hopes that this will make her easier to brainwash and recruit. Storm still has her powers, but as she's so young, they're unreliable and only just manifesting. The Gambit (2022) miniseries is an Interquel revisiting Storm and Gambit during this same arc.
• The Franco-Belgian comic Les Petits Hommes features a story named "Miss Persil". It centers around a young girl who has the mind and personality of a five-year-old, due to entering a coma at that age and miraculously waking up recently. It obviously causes a lot of problems, especially considering her parents intend to place her in a school in the "big world", but the Doctor finds a way to get around that by making her drink an elixir of youth to rejuvenate her so that her body will match her mind. It works well, but she actually takes the elixir with her.
• In one The Pink Panther comic book story, Pink helps somebody who holds him up at gunpoint find the legendary Fountain of Youth, but the person who drinks from its water ends up as an infant, unable to do anything with the wealth he acquired earlier in the story through the same means. Pink takes it upon himself to name himself the man/child's official legal guardian, which allows him to have access to the man's fortune.
• One Popeye adventure involves a search for the Pool of Youth. While the pool doesn't actually make those who bathe in it physically younger, it extends their lifespan indefinitely and gives them a younger mentality — a man claims to be over 200 but feels 6. The Pool is guarded by the Sea Hag's sister and her army of cavemen.
• In a Marvel Comics Scooby-Doo story, Scooby and the gang are hired by an obsessive millionaire in looking for the Fountain of Youth, which is guarded by the (supposed) ghost of a Spanish conquistador. The conquistador turns out to be a midget who believed that he was still working for Ponce de Leon. The millionaire pays the guy a bundle for the Fountain, and it turns out to be real. He regresses to infancy.
• Silverblade: As part of their bargain, the falcon restores Jonathan Lord to being physically 30, the age he was when he made The Silver Blade.
• The Smurfs:
  • Three of the Smurfs were child-ized when Peyo decided that he needed a few child characters. There is no cure for the miniaturization, in a rare case in which this trope isn't reset. In fact, they don't mind their new situation.
  • However, there are two episodes of the 1980s cartoon show in which the Smurfs do find a literal fountain of youth which de-ages Papa Smurf and Grandpa Smurf in different situations, both of whom are later restored to their actual ages.
  • In "Smurf Van Winkle", the other Smurfs try to pull a Rip Van Winkle on Lazy to make him think he has slept for a few centuries while his fellow Smurfs have aged incredibly. Lazy works on a potion to bring them back to the same physical age he is, but the whole thing was revealed to be a ruse when they were all de-aged into Smurflings.
• In Spirou & Fantasio, the main characters search for the actual fountain. After the mission ends in failure with the water losing its power permanently, Spirou winks to the reader and says "Do you really think we need that?"
• In the SpongeBob SquarePants comic "SpongeBob BabysitterPants", SpongeBob accidentally turns Mermaid Man into a baby when he plugs in one of Man Ray's old machines. At the end of the story, Barnacle Boy, the Swashbuckling Sidekicks and Man Ray are also turned into babies.
• One Star Trek Expanded Universe comic story published by Gold Key Comics features aliens who invent a de-aging ray and use it on Enterprise crewmembers.
• The The Twilight Zone comic book "Specter of Youth", crooked antiques dealer Max Tiberias is sold a number of amphorae from an ancient shipwreck, one of which contains a mysterious liquid identified as "nectar, the drink of the ancient gods." Max experimentally dips a pencil in it - only for the pencil to into a tree branch. His cat drinks some and becomes a kitten. Eager to be young enough to enjoy his fortune, Max ignores the warnings about how mortals who drink the forbidden nectar will suffer a terrible fate, and down an entire cup of the stuff. Though he initially rejoices in returning to his forties and thirties, he soon finds himself getting a little too young, until he starts forgetting his adult life and begins chasing the kitten as he shrinks out of his clothes. The process stops at infancy, but there's no way of restoring him, and he's left starting his life again as a homeless orphan.

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