This history has been changed over the years in order to keep it current. In the original comics, Richards was a veteran of World War II who had served behind enemy lines in occupied France, and the goal of his space mission was a manned space flight to the moon before the Communists were able to. This was later changed to getting there before the Chinese Communists and to explore the interstellar areas of the red planet and beyond. Also, Reed originally states that he and Sue "were kids together" and that Sue was the "girl next door" who Reed left behind to go fight in the war. This origin story was, many years later, altered so that Sue was thirteen years old when she first met Reed, who was in his early twenties, at her Aunt Marygay's boardinghouse. Current official Marvel canon has since altered this origin story by combining elements of both—it eliminated the large age gap but maintained that Reed and Sue did not meet until their late teens at Aunt Marygay's boardinghouse. The change in age was an editorial decision made in 2013 as Reed developing, several years later, a romantic interest in a girl he first met when she was thirteen years old was deemed inappropriate.