"Old Aunt May fine. How you?"
OK, now that I've gotten that out of my system, on to the more serious question.
Was it ever established what Aunt May's age was meant to be? If not, how old did you always think of her as being?
To me, she always looked like she was about ninety, especially the way she was drawn in the old days. In point of fact, the way she and Ben were drawn, they looked way too old to be Pete's aunt and uncle. Even if you postulated Ben having a kid brother who was twenty years younger than him, it would still put Peter's father's age around 70. :) Making them Peter's father's aunt and uncle might have had made more sense.
What do you, the reader, think?
Replies
In the Silver Age: 70-something.
Now: 60-something.
I could be Ben was younger than May, bring his age more in line with Peter's father.
"To me she always looked like she was about ninety."
Look she so old to your young eyes?
That's how Steve Ditko drew old people. May got younger when Romita took over, and younger still with later artists.
In the movies, she is unexpectedly young and attractive. (Stark's words, not mine.)
When Ditko drew old - he really drew old.
When I was a child my mother's aunt visited us occasionally and my sister and I referred to her as Aunt Anna even though as our grandmother's sister she was actually our great-aunt.
My mother came from a family so large that one of her mother's sisters was born after she was. So my great-Aunt Wanda was younger than my mother.
Yeah, I knew an aunt who was only two years older than her niece.
Maybe Ditko originally intended Ben and May to be Peter's grandparents and Stan changed them to Uncle and Aunt in scripting? Never thought of that before.
Could they have had the whole "Aunt May is always on her death bed" sub-plot in place since the beginning? Could May & Ben's age have been a weird carry-over from when they were the weird witchy couple, the Marches, who took in young Tommy Troy? In any case, Aunt May has clearly been getting progressively younger and healthier over the years, until the most recent movie version, who seems to constitute a whole new character concept, albeit one that finally seems like the Aunt of a teenager, as opposed to a grandmother or great-grandmother.
...Foo . The Baron stole my intended line . Sob !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If only she actually died in ASM#400.
It was done quite well and even by then it was about time.
...What you said !
Richard Mantle said:
From what I've read, although I can't remember where now, I got the feeling Ditko based May & Ben loosely on his own parents, just as Peter Parker was loosely based on himself, and apparently his parents were well into middle-age when he was born. My mother's father and mother were, respectively, 45 and 37 when she was born and when I came around, nearly 19 years later, her father was already 8 years in the grave and my grandmother, although only 56 looked much older. Maybe it was from living in near poverty in farming communities in NE Texas that prematurely aged her, but she looked like she could have been a model for Aunt May as drawn by Ditko. I think he did intend them to be somewhere between 55 and 65 and I do know plenty of people who look much older than they really are as well as those who look much younger. Partly a matter of genetics but also based on life-style and hardships endured -- oh, and nowadays the capacity to purchase medical means to make yourself look younger.
Richard Willis said:
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next