It's generally reckoned to be about 15 or so years since the X-Men made their debut, when Jean was probably about 17 or 18. So she was probably now born in the early 1990s, and the Dark Phoenix arc happened about ten years ago.
A bit less than that. Scott, Jean, and Warren are Peter Parker's age, and the Spider-Man office has dictated that he can't turn 30, so they can't, either.
You'll notice, when the O5 were brought into the present, they were drawn and portrayed as younger than how they were drawn in 1963. When teen Jean meets her adult self, she's shorter.
I like this because it puts Jean/the original X-Men around my age (it makes me feel younger, I can still take on a Sentinel!).
But it's crazy to think that in less than 15 years, the X-Men have already been through Dark Phoenix, Days of Future Past, Age of Apocalypse, Onslaught, Genosha, No More Mutants, Krakoa... They never catch a break.
Their physical age doesn’t matter anyway, because Scott and Jean lived about 12 years in the future with Cable, but Jean also missed out on some time during her two prolonged deaths. But both would’ve been born about 28 years ago according to Marvel, physically at their peak, and mentally at least a decade older than that.
Take it up with the Spider-Man office. They're who mandated that Scott, Jean, and Warren couldn't turn 30. The X office is required to go along with whatever the Spider-Man office decides about the passage of time. Wanda, Pietro, Johnny Storm, and Crystal of the Inhumans are also stuck around that age.
That's also why the entire Krakoa era is now one year, by the way. Those were seasonal Hellfire Galas, every three months.
put brian (who was peter's college roommate in the 70s) there too thus making betsy, his twin, around the same age as well, so yea spider-man dictates the other characters lol
How is that possible, Hank had a whole plot line in the 90’s where he had his midlife crisis after turning 30. Also I miss when that was the worst thing Hank was doing
this is a weird sticking point since they claim 15-ish years since the start of the x-men comics and most of the team was 16 or older. which would make them all in their early 30s with the exception of possibly bobby
That’s true, but there’s some references in other comics to Scott being 16 when he joined, and then also saying Scott is a few years older than Bobby. Both of those can’t be true of course, so the real answer is “nobody knows, so don’t worry about it” lol.
Isn't it more like 13 years? Remember, it's the Spider-Man office that decides these things. Whatever the X and Avengers offices may want to do, they have to conform to what the Spider-Man office says regarding ages and the passage of time.
I'd go even farther. Let 'em be 40 or even older like nature intended. Anthology series can do really well when managed correctly, allowing characters to really grow into different phases of life. We don't get enough of that in Marvel comics. Closest we've gotten is Old Man Logan
Can't do that in a shared universe, where characters that were established from the start as Peter Parker's age have to stay that way. This not only applies to the O5, but Wanda, Pietro, Johnny Storm, and Crystal.
Disagree honestly, the sliding timescale and fucked up continuity are already weird. Personally I don't care if Cyclops and Spiderman are the same age. It doesn't feel important to the narrative
Well, hop a time machine, go back to 1963, and convince Lee and Kirby to put their new X-Men book in a different universe from the rest of the line.
As it is, though, it's a shared universe, and those old stories with guest stars, and the various crossovers, are canon. And too many important X-Men stories involve guest stars, crossovers, and events outside of the X books.
Well then extend what I said to the rest of Marvel too. Spidey can be allowed to grow older too, right?
But regardless, I don't think keeping everyone the same age is really adding much to the story or quality of the shared universe. We already have weirdness like Magneto being roughly 100 years old if using WW2 as a chronological marker.
The underlying reason doesn't really have to do with it being a shared universe, but the mandate that the "main characters" of the universe continue to persist as the main characters but also be a relatable age to the current crop of readers.
And this isn't just a problem you see in Marvel comics.....I mean how long was Ash Ketchum going to be 10?
I mean the issue as I mentioned in another comment isn't "Spiderman" or a "shared universe" but just a general mandate for long running series where the "main characters" continue to be the "main characters" having to match the age relevant to the current generation of readers/consumers.
It's not a Marvel problem, and persists elsewhere. Ash Ketchum being a notrious example.
This is one the things where my head canon "the Phoenix did it" gives a legitimate rationale for any continuity shenanigans, patchworking timelines as she sees fit.
Can we get Phoenix to age everyone up a little while leaving Spiderman the same age or whatever if that's important to people. Then we can have Spiderman be like "huh, weird, the X-men that were the same age as me are now older. Which is actually the least bizarre thing that's happened all year"
There is no way Kitty is 27, even 25 seems like a big stretch. She is both incredibly immature and far down the line of people Marvel needs to age up first.
I don’t know why people try to make sense of the timeline based on what happened when, as if any of these things make sense. Franklin wasn’t even born when Kitty was already a teen. And now he’s all grown up, which should mean that Kitty is around 30 or older. Except she clearly isn’t. The only thing that matters is how old Marvel thinks these characters are, as that’s how old they would be portrayed as by the writers. So, yeah, maybe she is 24, but purely based on vibes, not any semblance of timeline.
Oh, yeah, I misremembered Kitty’s first appearance year. Even then, if you think that all Marvel events align like that and make sense? More power to you, but you’re run into shit that makes no sense in no time.
Except it isn’t that straightforward, because the OG team are still supposedly under 30 (because Marvel ages up younger characters but the likes of Spidey, OG X-Men etc are doomed to never grow up)
Scott is supposedly 27. Kitty has to be stuck at 21 at most, and that's only because they've had her tending bar occasionally as a job between X-Men runs. She should be more like 10 years younger than him at least, but the sliding time scale vs. the need to age up the younger characters always ends up in a mess.
You don’t have to be 21 to work in a bar. That really depends on the local county laws. With that said age is relative. X-23 is 21 so Kitty has to be older than that. I’d place her at 23 or 24 which has her relatively older than that New X-men generation (most of whom are college aged now as seen from NYX) yet younger than the senior X-men
I'd agree that it makes sense she be that old. The real problem is this silly insistence that Scott, Jean, Spider-Man, and Human Torch are all 27ish. They really should all be 30-35, to make room for younger characters to age up behind them without closing the gaps between them too much.
If Scott was 17 when X-Men #1 came out, I don't think it's out of line to make him at LEAST 32 now, and really should be more like 37. Surely 15-20 years of "Marvel time" have passed by now. Even editorial routinely uses that 15 year number, though that's usually back to Fantastic 4 #1.
That lets Kitty, Magik, and the New Mutants be mid-20s, and the younger classes be 19-21, and still leaves room for the next next generation behind them.
To me the O5 are early 30s and until it’s written in the books that they are 28, I wouldn’t say that’s canon. That’s how I read them and it makes more sense
Scott, Jean, and Warren can't turn 30 because of Peter Parker. We can determine Kitty's age because she turned 14 during the Brood saga. This was when Magneto met his granddaughter, Luna.
So i have heard that it is a general rule that Fanadtic Four formed 15 years ago and X-Men also started to form not lomg after and i think Jean along whit the rest were 17.
Notice the O5 were drawn as younger than they were in the 1963 comics. When teen Jean met adult Jean, she was shorter and less developed, and had freckles.
The Spider-Man office dictated that Peter can never turn 30, so the characters established as the same age can't, either.
Officially, Claremont wrote in 1980, the original 5 x-men had been formed 6 years prior. So, Jean would have been 17-18. Kitty Pryde is the gold standard for mapping out the X-Men years. Kitty ages one year to every 3 actual time years. She was 13 in 1980, so 15 years onto 24. But then you have to factor in that Jean has been dead or in stasis for part of those years, and she was resurrected to her prime age on Krakoa. So…good luck
Considering the fact that Jean is probably Cyclops’s age, she’s only a couple years older than Spider-Man, who definitely was not 27/28 in 1980. I find that to be funny.
General rule of thumb is you can pretty safely put the original 5 in their early to mid 30s, the "second generation" (which goes from Giant Size X-Men #1 to approximately Uncanny #171, when Rogue joined) in their mid 20s to early 30s, and most everyone after that is in late teens to mid 20s unless there's a good reason otherwise (like Wolverine, who's reliably born in the 1800s, or Gambit, who's probably a couple of years older than Rogue).
You forget that it's a shared universe, so the Spider-Man office decides how much time has passed, and everyone else has to follow their dictates on the subject. The Spider-Man office says Scott, Jean, and Warren can never turn 30. They also have made it official that the entire Krakoa era was one year.
Yes, that one office has that much power over the rest of the line.
From what I understand, the sliding time scale doesn't begin until either the Fantastic Four's debut in 1963 or the birth of Franklin Richards in 1968.
Otherwise, you'd have weird timeline shenanigans like Destiny meeting Nathaniel Essex in the 1890's taking place roughly 17 years before the X-Men were founded.
So Jean's birth should still be in 1950 - which lines up with a bunch of the O5 and several of the Giant-Sized as well. It's just that her age after 1963 has been continually collapsed down.
I still don’t understand why we need any timescale, sliding or other. It’s a comic book. Everyone is the same age as they have always been, unless they are shown to have grown. Everything happens now, and now is all there is or has ever been. Time is meaningless, and no one is their real selves anymore since the Incursion, if they ever were due to the Secret Invasion. It all makes complete sense if you accept that none of it makes any sense.
I think we get to just head cannon whatever amount of time has passed since the 05. It’s a large amount of the pan circles I run in do. I say 20 years.
70
u/BillybobThistleton 1d ago
It's generally reckoned to be about 15 or so years since the X-Men made their debut, when Jean was probably about 17 or 18. So she was probably now born in the early 1990s, and the Dark Phoenix arc happened about ten years ago.