hear the word 'wizard'. Old bloke with a big beard is the quintessential wizard.
Not for fantasy of the last half-century. The period starts with Stephen Donaldson, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, Ursula K. LeGuin, and Raymond Feist, among others, all of whom have powerful young magical students and/or mages at all stages of adulthood, often with mature, established magicians who aren’t yet middle-aged.
In comics, wizards and their ilk have likewise been all over the map. Dakeem the Enchanter and Jennifer Kale defined some age boundaries early on at Marvel, folks like Brother Blood, Raven, and Mysa Nal/White Witch doing the same at DC.
Harry Potter speaks for itself, of course, and all the magic academy stories in its wake.
Grimdark fantasy generally does magicians as peers of their colleagues in whatever group they’re in.
Goodreads’ fantasy list is topped by Patrick Rothfuss, J.K. Rowling, Brandon Sanderson, George R.R. Martin, Scott Lynch, Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, Christopher Paolini, Joe Abercrombie, Cassandra Clare, Brent Weeks, Kristin Cashore, Rick Riordan, Eoin Colfer, Peter V. Brett, Jonathan Stroud, Jacqueline Carey, Wein Morganstern, Naomi Novak, Robin Hobb, Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan, and Stephen King. That’s the top 50 of all time.
Zooming in on the highest-rated of the 2020s so far, we find Brandon Sanderson, V.E. Schwab, T.J. Klune, Sarah J. Maas, Joe Abercrombie, Susanna Clarke, Naomi Novak, Rebecca Roanhorse, S.A. Chakraborty, N.K. Jemisin, Nghi Vo, R.F. Kuang, Rebecca Yarros, Travis Baldree, Leigh Bardugo, Jim Butcher, and Tamsyn Muir in the top 20. I haven’t read more than about half of these, so I read reviews about the others.
There are ageless old-looking guys in this bunch, Abercrombie’s the most fascinating and scary of the bunch to my taste. And there are non-ageless old guys, often bearded. But there are a
lot of magical students here, and their faculties in all stages of maturity, and there are a lot of young adult and simply adult magic-workers in leading roles. Which is to say that both the 2014 wizard and this one are fairly typical, this one a bit more so, and (to my taste) pleasingly more active.