Much like Dick Grayson, many sidekicks (and young superheroes) during The Golden Age of Comic Books aged visibly through the years while their mentors remained the same.
Black Terror's sidekick, Tim/Kid Terror, was eleven years old during his debut in 1941. By 1944 or so, he was increasingly depicted as a teenager. He was shown attending high school until his last Golden Age appearance.
Kitten, sidekick of the Cat-Man, was 11 at the time of her debut. She remained young for a while, but as years passed, artists started drawing her as a teenager more and more often (it wasn't terribly consistent) until they finally settled on a teenage look that lasted through last eight issues of Cat-Man Comics.
And appears in 1990s AC comics as an adult woman, married to Cat-Man (who gets disapproving looks from female heroes), and still shorter than average. It should be pointed out that, somewhere down the line, AC Comics decided to retcon Kitten's origin, stating that she was already an adult when she and Cat-Man met.
Airboy, young aviator hero who was 12 at the time of his 1942 debut, was one of the very rare early cases when a Golden Age comic book character that aged close to real time. He managed to last until 1953, so readers saw him growing up into a 20-something adult throughout the course of his run.
The main characters of Archie have been in high school for over sixty years. Someone once wrote in to the Archie letters column demanding an explanation for this, theorizing that the characters must be really, really dumb if they can't graduate. Reggie Mantle (yes, the character) responded by explaining that he and the other characters had simply been stuck with eternal youth. Life With Archie: The Married Life was made to show what life would be like if Archie and his friends actually aged for once.
The America's Best Comics universe averts this. In most of their books, the date is featured quite prominently. For those characters who have very long backstories, explanations are given (Example: Tesla Strong, daughter of hero Tom Strong, was born in 1938, but as of the turn of the century was only in her late teens. This was explained by a childhood accident with the life-extending drug that allowed her parents to stay in their physical prime past their hundredth birthdays.) They even had the end of the world take place in 2004 — and the dates given in subsequent comics are usually earlier than that.
Asterix and the other villagers have been the same age since their publication. This was lampshaded in The Golden Book, in which Uderzo decides to show what the Gaulish Village would look like if it really had aged 50 years.
Averted in Astro City, where characters age in real time.
In the first issue of the second series in 1995, POV character Ben Pullam is an adult man with two young daughters moving to Astro City for the first time. In the first issue of the Vertigo series in 2013, Ben is back as an older man and his two daughters return now as grown women in their late twenties.
Astra, the First Family's daughter, is ten years old in a 1996 story, and graduates from college in her own 2009 mini-series. In the interval, her uncle Nick has gotten married and has super-powered twin children of his own.
The Black Rapier, a longtime leader of Honor Guard, retires in a 2014 story and even mentions his 45-year-long crime-fighting career (aided by a rejuvenation serum).
Being Badass Normals, Quarrel and Crackerjack are acutely aware of the effects of advancing age on their bodies and reflexes.
Starfighter got his powers during the Vietnam War; by 2017, he's a white-haired senior writing novels and enjoying quiet time with his (alien) family.
Soundly averted with Atomic Robo. While Robo's history has a lot of gaps that could have stories put in them, pretty much every one that is published has a defined year and a clear position on the official timeline. Characters are shown to age in a reasonably natural fashion, at least when they're not lasered to death before they're allowed to, with Bernard's hair visibly thinning over the course of his career with Tesladyne and Jenkins going increasingly grey; Robo's oldest friends have pretty much all passed away by now, and the only reason he hasn't outlived his oldest enemies is that they keep preserving themselves with mad science. Of course, Robo, as a robot, is effectively immortal as long as he can be welded back together; he'd be 100 by now even without the time travel incident, so once it's established that he met some Sky Pirates in 1951, no further effort needs to be spent on explaining how he's still around or trying to massage it to a more recent year.
The Blackhawks, since their series continued without interruption until 1968, following a sliding timescale up until the 1970s, in which they operated as mercenaries in then modern times. Most subsequent revivals published since the 1970s have appeared as period pieces set in the 1940s to the Vietnam War at the latest. Birds of Prey #75 revealed that almost all of the original Blackhawks have died.
Buck Danny is perhaps the most glaring example in Franco-Belgian Comics: the main trio joined the Air Force in 1941 and haven't aged a day since. The only change is in rank, though Buck is stuck at colonel (any higher and he wouldn't be able to fly).
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: While the television show had one in-series year pass for every real year because each season took a year with an episode roughly every week, Buffy Season 8, of course, took longer to unfold because of the monthly comic schedule. All the characters have been stuck at the same age for the last three real-world years. Season 8 takes place a year and a half after Season 7/half a year after Angel Season 5 (with the IDW Angel and Spike comics in the half-year between).
Cherry from Cherry Comics has always "just turned 18".
Interestingly, Don Rosa and Carl Barks's Disney Ducks Comic Universe universe has a static timeframe. That is, Scrooge McDuck was born in 1867, made his first dime in 1877, retired in 1942, met Donald in 1947, and died in 1967 at the age of 100 (because it's the last year Barks wrote its comics, and thus where Rosa puts an end to his universe). The stories take place in the late 40s and early 50s. All technological innovations get a Hand Wave as coming from the decades-ahead-of-the-times mind of Gyro Gearloose. Of course, under other authors, Comic-Book Time still applies.
Not only does Rosa's timeline only apply to his own stories, it's also officially unacknowledged, and Rosa is forbidden from making specific references to this passage of time beyond subtle references and background details that will go unnoticed by most. The direct mentions of the years have only appeared in behind-the-scenes editorials in the trades reprinting his works, and the date of Scrooge's death only in a fanzine. Officially, the Donald universe operates in Comic-Book Time, and anything going against this is simply considered fan theories by the editors.
Funny note here: due to the amount of stories produced per year, all by different countries, the Disney characters have actually had more Christmases, Halloweens, birthday, April Firsts, or whatever holidays more than actual years that have passed by. Donald has celebrated at least 200 Christmases.
A Dutch comic written for Donald's 80th anniversary indulges in some Postmodernism to lampshade the trope: Donald goes to the Money Bin seeking what Scrooge describes as "that weird comic with your name", written by some guy in Oregonbased on the Ducks' adventures in exchange for a percentage. And then a physician starts taking Donald and the nephews' vital signs because he theorized that "you don't age because there are comics about you".
Paperinik New Adventures makes a solid effort to avoid it, as the time seems to pass as much for them as for us: in "Phase Two" Two mentions that has been two years since his last fight with One, and in "Under a New Sun" Paperinik recalls that he first met Xadhoom "a few years ago".
Dennis the Menace (UK): Dennis has been about 10 years old since he first appeared back in 1951. It's "about", because his physical appearance has changed repeatedly, getting sometimes taller and stockier like a teen, and sometimes smaller and more round-faced like a younger boy of 6 or 7 or so. However back in 1998, his mother got pregnant, carried a baby to term (his sister Bea), and little Bea was for several years a 2-year-old (and friends with 4yo pre-schooler Ivy the Terrible), while nobody else has aged one iota. Bea was retconned back to a baby when the 2009 CBBC cartoon started and the comic adopted its art style and continuity.
Dennis's age was a common question in fan letters in the 80s, and was never numerically answered. Other characters' ages seemed to promote less interest, possibly because Dennis was supposedly the one answering most of the letters, even though he was not the longest-running character at that point.note That honour went to Lord Snooty, who appeared - as a child - in every issue from 1938 until some time in the 90s.
It is now official Beano continuity that Dennis is the son of 80s Dennis, who was the son of the original Dennis. Fanon says that the current red-haired Dennis's Mum is actually 80s Minnie the Minx, but the Beano website names her as "Sandra" (and also makes her present-day Minnie's aunt). How Gnasher and Gran fit into this is anyone's guess.
Still, the Beano isn't above ignoring that for the sake of a joke. In a 2022 comic, Minnie is stopped by the police in her (now wildly anachronistic) boxcart and shows she does have a licence to drive that gives her birthdate as 1953. "Err...minxing keeps me young?"
This gets really weird in the adventures of Douwe Dabbert. When Douwe is first introduced, he is a very old although surprisingly spry man. None of his adventures are explicitly dated and we are never told how much time passes between his adventures. Then, in one of his very last stories, he is reunited with Thorm, a character he met in his second adventure, and explicitly says that it has been twenty-two years since they last saw one another. This is possibly lampshaded when he returns Thorm to the animal kingdom at the end of the story and remarks to the other animals that they haven't changed a bit. But wait, it gets stranger! Duting his travels, Douwe befriends a family of wizards, who recur throughout his adventures. The wizards are established to age very slowly. Pief, who looks and acts like a ten-year old boy, is Really 700 Years Old. But it is Pief who grows up during those twenty-two years. Compare his first appearance to his last and you will note that Pief now looks more like a teenager and acts much more maturely. All this while Douwe himself shows no signs of aging. (Although it is revealed in one of the stories that he has some wizard blood, so that might go part of the way...)
Completely inverted in Fables (possibly due to the characters being immortal). Some references to past events imply that, given the frequent timeskips in the storyline, events may be progressing twice as fast as real-time.
One early arc had a character's recovery over a year happen in a single issue, yet some other story arcs will take place over as little time as a week. Fables seems to run on "whatever time is most convenient".
Invincible made a very solid effort to avert this over its fifteen year run, even if realities of the medium and Schedule Slip hobbled it into Webcomic Time at points. The entire cast visibly aged over the course of the series; Mark himself and Eve started out as high school seniors before moving on to graduate high school, go to college, drop out, get jobs, marry each other, and eventually have a kid (who herself grows from a toddler to elementary age). They're well into their thirties in the final arc after having begun the comic as teenagers. Some of the practical issues with this trope are also notably averted by having many of the superpowered characters have slowed or nonexistent aging baked into their powerset. The same does not apply to the non-powered characters, multiple of whom are middle aged or even senior citizens by the time of the final issue.
Originally the characters in Jon Sable, Freelance aged in real time, and this lasted until the book was cancelled in 1988. However, after the revival in 2009, Jon seems no older than he was when the book was cancelled and the book no longer makes any reference to specific historic events like the Vietnam War, and the 1972 Olympic Games that were seminal events in Jon's history.
Averted in Judge Dredd. The story has a 1:1 time-passage rate. Dredd really is 40 years older now than he was in 1977. Even all his treatments and cyborg implants have their limits. Dredd facing his old age, watching long-time supporting cast retire, and training the new generation of Judges is a major theme now.
Another 2000 AD comic that averted this, the shortlived Age of the Wolf, depicted the female protagonist living through a werewolf apocalypse at three different points in her life, as a teenager, an adult, and finally a middle-aged woman.
In the long-running comic strip The Phantom, the hero married his girlfriend in 1977, following an on-and-off relationship that began in 1936; to look at the happy couple, you wouldn't think either of them had been born in 1936. Their children, born in 1979, has as of 2017 finally started college.
In the Gold Key/King/Charlton series of the 1960s/1970s, the tales usually clearly indicated patrilineal succession. In issue#8, the death of a Phantom occurs in flashback. In issue #20, when encountering Krazz, the Phantom recalls that his father, the previous Phantom, handled Krazz earlier. In #67, the death of a Phantom occurs and the son takes the role; these events took place in the 1950s or 1960s at the earliest. In #68, the Phantom recalls how his father slew his female opponent's guardian presumably during his female opponent's youth. #70's tale of the Malix Ibex takes place with a flashback to 1938, and the epilogue clearly indicates that a subsequent Phantom has proceeded to the role at a point following the flashback. This situation still entails a floating timeline, as the extant Phantom remains the Phantom associated with Diana Palmer.
Powers rarely gives measurements of time passing. Walker and Pilgrim rarely look any different throughout the first volume, and except for Walker's retirement and Pilgrim's medical leave, there are no firm lengths of time given. Then by issue #1 of volume 2(the Legends arc), readers once again meet Callista, the little girl he helped rescue way back in issue #1. Turns out she's now working in a record store, and she states that it's been six years since she met Walker.
Rychlé šípy: See the work page for the range of publishing dates. Beside seasonal changes, there is no obvious reference to time passing after the first year or two of the comics running, but subtle changes do occasionally happen - such as Rychlonožka entering an apprenticeship (thus having finished primary schooling). The time setting also varies. The books are presumably set in the time of the First Czechoslovak Republic, while the comics likely take place in the time they were written / published (for example, they feature the versions of police forces contemporary to the time of publishing).
Yet another exception: in Image'sThe Savage Dragon, where events have progressed and characters have aged in realtime since the series was launched in 1992. Creator Erik Larsen has said this makes crossovers with series that have Comic-Book Time a brain-straining nightmare.
In The Simpsons universe, Radioactive Man was first published in 1952, and a later retcon established that Claude had been active in the 1940s as Radio Man. The characters are all well aware of this, and Radioactive Man himself thinks it's odd that he's known Bug Boy for 30 years yet BB is still 12 years old. Bug Boy actually has some elaborate theories as to how this happens, based on superheroes distorting time in some way.
Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) is actually a rare example of a piece of media in the Sonic franchise to subvert this trope, at least in the original continuity. By the latter half of the comics first decade, the setting was established as being the Mobian year of roughly 3236, with Sonic celebrating his sixteenth birthday in issue 68. After Sonic spends a year in space (issues 126-129) the year on Mobius is now 3237. Sonic even celebrates his birthday again, with his exact age being questioned by himself and other characters as a result of the skip. The rebooted continuity more or less plays this straight, being closer in setting to the games.
The above's British counterpart Sonic the Comic, on the other hand, plays this agonisingly straight, to the point where the comic's timeline seems to run parallel with the real world, complete with there being a Christmas and New Year issue every year. If one considers the amount of years the series was publishing new strips, this would mean roughly seven years had passed in universe, with Sonic and other characters appearing not to have aged a day!
Glaringly obvious in Tintin. The hero remains a "Boy Reporter" from the 1920s to the 1970s, while all around him the world is changing, as shown by advancing technology and various Ripped from the Headlines plots. Members of the cast who arrived after the story started are likewise frozen in time.
Top Cow Universe seems to be heading in that direction. Originally, it stayed fairly close to real time. In the 2003 universe handbook (published on the tenth anniversary of the line's debut), most characters are given concrete, real-time birthdays and chronological references to past events that worked perfectly well if you assumed that their stories took place during the year they were published. In more recent stories, writers seemed to be backing away from that. While they do acknowledge that the characters have been around for a couple of years, they carefully avoid giving any exact dates. It's probably just as well - if the above-mentioned birthdays were still canon, the current Witchblade would have turned forty in 2010.
Averted by IDW's Transformersbooks. Lines by previous writer Simon Furman and the fact that the series exists in its own universe allowed writers James Roberts and John Barber to create a fairly tight chronology for the setting (ex. Soundwave arrives on Earth in 1984, is found by Skywatch in 1985, and finally reenters the story in 2006; all of this is repeatedly and explicitly stated as canon regardless of time passage). Some events occur differently than they did in real life (Mt. Saint Helens erupts four years later, Occupy Wall Street occurred in 2007, etc.), but rather than being errors, they make clear that this is a Alternate Timeline where many things happened differently. It greatly helps that Transformers, being robots, don't age like humans do and can live for millions of years naturally, so the writers don't have to worry about aging most of the cast too much — and, by contrast, over the thirteen-year run of the universe, Audience Surrogate Verity Carlo ages from a teenager to a woman in her late twenties.
COMPLETELY averted with the modern day stories in Valiant Comics which had almost every single story set in the month it was published (the only exceptions being multi-issue stories which would take place somewhere in that time frame as well).
Most shared universes, particularly of the superhero variety, tend to use Comic-Book Time, but there was one notable aversion to this trope with the Wildstorm universe, which (more or less) appeared to progress in real time. At least ever since Jenny Sparks died on panel at the end of the 20th century, which occurred at the end of 1999 in both real life and the WSU. Her successor, Jenny Quantum, was a baby one year later, was 3 years old in 2003, etc. until 2007 when 7 year old Jenny artificially aged herself to a teenager. But during those 7 years, and most likely after though we couldn't use Jenny as a gauge anymore, the universe as a whole advanced in real time. Most of the Wildstorm universe also followed real time, with references to WildCATs being formed in the 90s, for example. The only possible exception might be Gen 13, whose members remained college-aged from their first appearance in 1994 til the Worldstorm soft reboot in 2007.
In W.I.T.C.H., none of the characters (save for Will's brother, who started as newborn, then became a toddler) ever aged - the main team were still in 8th-9th grade after the comic had run for over a decade. Especially odd because we see them celebrating seasonal holidays on several occasions, implying at least some years have passed.
Zot! plays with this by making the alternate Earth that the hero hails from stuck in 1965. Characters from the "real" Earth notice this oddity.
Played straight in PS238. The series started in the early 2000s and was apparently set then, but despite there having only been a couple months' time passed since then, a placard the superhero's tower makes a reference to a battle fought in 2015, so presumably the present year is "whatever is the current year when the page was published."
Fan estimates have the entirety of Usagi Yojimbo taking place over five to six years so far. Barring a three year hiatus, the comic has ran constantly since 1986.
The first issue of Vol. 5 gave a more concrete example. In the author's notes, Stan Sakai notes that while the comic has been going on for nearly 40 years, it doesn't mean that much time has passed in the comic world. He notes that it was spring in the 24-5th trade paperback, as evidenced by peasants planting rice. At the start of the new issue, winter is just beginning. Nearly 100 issues, two publisher changes, roughly 13 trade paperbacks, and 8 real life years amounted to just 10 months of Usagi's life.
. Characters are shown to age in a reasonably natural fashion, at least when they're not lasered to death before they're allowed to, with Bernard's hair visibly thinning over the course of his career with Tesladyne and Jenkins going increasingly grey; Robo's oldest friends have pretty much all passed away by now, and the only reason he hasn't outlived his oldest enemies is that they keep preserving themselves with mad science. Of course, Robo, as a robot, is effectively immortal as long as he can be welded back together; he'd be 100 by now even without the time travel incident, so once it's established that he met some Sky Pirates in 1951, no further effort needs to be spent on explaining how he's still around or trying to massage it to a more recent year.