Board Thread:Trivia/@comment-63851-20130514135231/@comment-61022-20130531191416

As everyone has already said, the mainstream Marvel Universe operates on a sliding time scale (while most other alternate realities can be considered taking place on whatever dates they were published or referenced) It all gets a little confusing, but Iron Man is not the only character whose origins were altered due to the source material becoming dated.

For example, in their early issues of Fantastic Four, it states that both Reed Richards and Ben Grimm fought in World War II. Marvel has retconned that so that the characters served in the military but not in a specific war. Likewise the origin of the FF has been slightly altered. Originally in FF #1 the Fantastic Four were trying to beat the Russians to the moon in the space race. That was topical for 1961, but kind of silly for a "modern age" tale so they changed it so that they were really trying to leave the solar system.

On the X-Men side of things, it was originally stated that Charles Xavier and Cain Marko fought in the Korean War. They've simplified it to a "conflict in a western nation". Ditto for Forge, his early appearances state that he fought in the Vietnam War, now he also gets that "western conflict" tale.

Magneto on the other hand, his origins are a locked into World War II, as the basis of his character was surviving the holocaust. Marvel has gotten around this when he was de-aged battling the Defenders and brought back to his prime by Eric the Red later on.

This creates some dicey continuity since Charles Xavier is shown meeting Magneto shortly after the war while treating Gabriel Haller whom had also survived the Holocaust. One could argue that Xavier was much older until he was turned into a Brood around the time the New Mutants were first formed. In that story, Xavier transformed into a Brood and his mind was transplanted into a cloned body, which you can argue is much younger than his original body. Another possible way Marvel could make it more topical is they could change it so Charles was doing humanitarian work in the middle east around Israel since there is still regular conflict going on in that region today, Gabby's origins could be in living in a refugee camp or a prison camp from a neighboring nation and could have still faced similar atrocities.

I would suspect that eventually the Punisher's origins could change, however there is a bit of a "cheat" in his origin when he was killed in the late 90s and then became an Angel of Death, then was resurrected when he refused to play ball anymore (See the explanation in Garth Ennis' Marvel Knights Punisher from 2000-2001) one could argue that when he was brought back to life he was restored to his youth.

Likewise events that happened on "key" dates have been generalized. For example there is an old issue of the Fantastic Four where they help the Apollo space mission land on the moon. That has been generalized as just a "manned mission to the moon" as opposed to a specific historical moon landing. I would suspect that even the 9/11 attack on the WTC (featured heavily in a lot of Marvel books around the time it happened) would eventually be generalized to a "Terrorist attack on New York City"

But as I said, the sliding time scale only applies to most realities. For example the MC2 and Ultimate universes operate on a sliding time scale. However, most others don't and the dates they are set in are typically the ones they are set in (such as many of the What If universes.) even ones that have interactions with the mainstream Marvel Universe. For example the original Deathlok came from a universe where the age of heroes ended in 1987, that year has remained constant.