How old was Reed supposed to be in the original FF run, taking only the Lee and Kirby issues into consideration. I always thought he was older than your average superhereo, like late 20s to late 30s, maybe even early 40s. An user yesterday gave Reed getting married as an example of him being younger but my parents got married in their 30s and, well, the grey temples are there.
How old was Reed supposed to be in the original FF run, taking only the Lee and Kirby issues into consideration...
Xavier Hill
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Camden Mitchell
Reed and Ben both served in World War 2. The math is pretty clear.
Luis Long
How old are they all supposed to be right now anyway?
They got aged up and aged down multiple times.
Like that time the skrulls injected the metabolic accelerator to kill them but in the end they got younger and stronger, and all the multiverse shenanigans spanning years for them.
Nathan Sanchez
early to mid-30s I think. Younger for Johnny obviously.
Christian Harris
I feel like this is something modern writers don't take into account. The fact that Reed and Ben are both war veterans gives them a bond that they don't really have these days, when the origins of the FF have moved away from World War 2.
Wyatt Diaz
Late 30s Early 40s feels right. Johnny can be late 20s early 30s.
Camden Mitchell
I think the whole sliding timeline thing just makes them war veterans of whatever semi recent war that happened.
Writers prefer to not make direct references to maintain consistency
Julian Hill
30s at most. The skunk stripes were to make him look professorly
Lucas Peterson
>I think the whole sliding timeline thing just makes them war veterans of whatever semi recent war that happened.
Recently they did the retcon to have them veterans of the Siancong War, a fictional war made to account for the sliding timeline:
marvel.fandom.com
Ayden Gomez
See late 30s at least actually
Brody Harris
Kirby said they were from stress after a shelling or something.
Evan Cox
Let's say Richards and Grimm entered the war at the age of 16 in 1945 (unlikely but the youngest it can be and be within a suspension of disbelief). They'd be 32 in 1961 and the FF comics were happening when they were supposed to be published.
Elijah Hernandez
He had his fortieth birthday in canon.
Nicholas Phillips
OP here. I'm asking with only the first 102 issues in mind.
Tyler Martinez
Doesn't work. They were both college grads, then enlisted. So early twenties for Reed, maybe a year or two older for Ben, they enlisted in 1942 (we'll say). The rest of the math unfolds from there.
Xavier Fisher
I'm not sure this is a good idea
Blake Lopez
10 year old children had in their late 20's. 40 at the least.
Logan Bailey
What a fucking mess.
Hudson Young
While I do think Reed and Ben were supposed to be in their 40s in the original run I don't mind them being deaged due to their children and the sliding time scale.
Aaron Hill
Both Reed and Ben went to college and (presumably) graduated.
They were freshmen in the same year as Doctor Doom (who didn't graduate). Doom left what was clearly non war torn Latveria to attend college, meaning that the latest the trio's freshman year could have been would have been 1938.
Reed could have been passed up a couple of academic years and started college early, but as it's not stated let's assume he didn't and is the same age as Ben. If both started college at 19, they would have been born in 1918-19, meaning that the youngest Reed and Ben could have been when the FF was founded in 1961 would have been 42.
Remember that the concept of a sliding timescale/'Marvel time' wasn't introduced until much later, with characters like Johnny Storm and Peter Parker passing through high school and college in more or less real time, meaning that Reed and Ben (and Doom!) would have been in their early 50s by the time Kirby left the title.
Adrian Murphy
Stan Lee mentions their approximate ages in an early letter page. I think it was "mid 30s" for Reed.
Ryder Fisher
I think Reed is the closest to the 50, with Ben being a couple of years younger since he didn't go on the Multiverse road trip.
Ayden Davis
Not the OP but he's totally only asking in relation to the original Lee/Kirby run
Evan Barnes
>Packed away their diplomas
So they were about twenty in 1944.
Reed and Ben - ergo - were 37 when the FF began.
Ryder Phillips
The battles mentioned were during and after 1942, however.
Lucas Sanchez
It's always "about ten to fifteen years ago" now.
Luke Miller
Can this be anymore Vietnam inspired than basically just calling it the Vietnam war?
Benjamin Hall
And Charles Xavier was a Korean War veteran, which means that in Stan Lee's mind, he was younger than Reed and Ben.
Xavier Campbell
yeah but the user i was replying to asked how old are they supposed to be right now.
Adam Richardson
People born in the 10's could have volunteered to be in Korea
Luke Ross
Further evidence is that Charles' father was said to have worked on the atom bomb and that might be where Charles got his powers from.
Isaac Collins
Xavier always gets mistaken for much older than he actually is because people associate "bald man in wheelchair" with "old man".