What do you think about the current aging of characters in DC comics?

It's kinda crazy, if you think about it. It's really sometimes even worse than soap operas/telenovelas. Batman has been around for over 70 years, and yet he's only in his early-mid 30's. Yet, Dick Grayson started out as Robin just over 70 years ago, and he's aged about 20 years. Superman's the same, as are several DC characters.

Basically, my question is this; how do you feel about the aging of DC characters? Do you think they should eventually grow old and have others take up their mantle, or should Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent/Kal-El be perpetually in their late 20's-mid 30's and have everyone else age around them?

Personally, I feel like we should let the characters grow up, in basically real-time. If you want to keep a book like Batman Confidential around for each of the characters, so you can always have a cool story with the original Batman/Superman/whoever that's cool (and actually probably a good idea), but I feel like characters should (for the most part) grow old in real time. Now, if you want to have something like Brightest Day every once and a while, where dead characters are brought back younger and healthier, or have some huge event where Bruce Wayne is de-aged for a certain storyarc, fine. But I feel like characters should grow old and die, and pass on their legacy. Otherwise, it's just kinda ridiculous.

-Gary

I like having them age at the rate they are, which is about 5-10 years for one year. I just wish we had some solid ages for them. Dick's age changes every five minutes. At this point, Bruce'll have had to be 13 when he took him in.

I'm sad enough to have actually sat and worked out the ages, so as long as they have fans to do it for them, I suppose it keeps nerds like me busy.

Its a difficult one because you can have a big story arc play over 6-12 issues sometimes, but its only a few days that have actually passed.

In terms of comic books, they've never be real time and that for me is the beauty of it. They stay timeless and you identify with these characters from an early age seeing the adult dominance, then you identify with them as an adult and then, as Bob Kane put it in his 'Batman and Me' book... nostalgic.

Marvel do it wrong - their characters seem to stay ageless which is frustrating, but the beauty of Batman is his re-invention and interpretation. That's why he's lasted for so many years captivating new audiences with every incarnation.

I like the current ageing system, I really don't have a problem with it.

If batman was in his early twentys when he took grayson in(who was 11) Bruce Wayne would still only be in his early thirtys seeing as grayson appears to be in his early twentys.