Woo hoo - I had a nice little score at Amoeba. Somebody dumped their Batman Animated - The Collector's Series (probably because Batman Animated is coming out on DVD). Normally, I much prefer straight chron collections but the continuity in the animated series was so good and these are so well chosen that the individual tapes make beautiful mini-arcs.

When I saw the whole bunch, my fingers started twitching hoping hoping hoping the one I most wanted was there until...Ta da! The Harley tape with four episodes. The build up to Harley's Holiday (the third ep) is wonderful character continuity and has the most affecting scene /exchange in the entire animated series. Great stuff.

I also picked up the Mean Streets collection because it introduces Tim Drake, and has the Appointment in Crime Alley episode with Dr. Leslie Thompkins. It's also got Legends of the Dark Knight which is a tripartite story, one in regular Batman Animated style, one animated like the old fashioned Dick Sprang, and one animated in the style of Frank Miller. Very cool.

I also picked up the Batgirl collection with four episodes of Babs in action. Batgirl Returns is basically a solo Batgirl with Catwoman and Robin. Holiday Nights has Batman and Batgirl up against Poison Ivy, harley,Clayface and the Joker.

And they were all $5.99! And there were 20 more tapes in this series there! (Which I probably won't get 'cuz I'll just get it on DVD. But these are worth having in the mini-arc format.)

As for Astounishing - I am so deeply and completely lost as to which reboot this is and how much of Kitty's history is in play. She's remembering Colossus and the Hellfire Club and the Brood and Sentinels and...so what happened with her Excalibur years?

It's not, strictly speaking, a reboot if I understand properly. Joss will probably reference stories he liked and use his favorite characterizations, but this title is supposed to be regular continuity with one particular X-team in the aftermath of the climactic events in the main X title (Magneto taking over Manhattan and killing Jean Grey, Professor X taking a sabbatical).

Kitty seems, however, mysteriously young. Not like a woman that's boffed Pete Wisdom and mourned Magneto's passing.

Then again, they're all terribly terribly old.

Thanks Matt - I'm not up to date on current X-Men continuity at all.

Kitty seems, however, mysteriously young.

This is the weird thing. Joss is definitely hitting on all the 80s X-men stuff I used to know.

Eh, Franklin Richards is visually younger than he was in the late 1960s. It's comic book time, which bears about as much resemblance to the real-world variety as Illyria's experiences in "Time Bomb". I don't even bother handwaving it anymore.

Eh, Franklin Richards is visually younger than he was in the late 1960s.

I don't think Franklin Richards was even born until the early 70's.

This is the weird thing. Joss is definitely hitting on all the 80s X-men stuff I used to know.

Yes. If you consider it, the only person who has any right to be so young is Wolvie. Scott? Still looking the same age he did in the 70s.

I don't think Franklin Richards was even born until the early 70's.

I may be conflating stories (I wasn't a regular reader until around issue #175), but I seem to recall Franklin being present in their 1969 moon landing story, and not as an infant.

At any rate, he actually looked and sounded several years younger during Byrne's run than he did in the late 70s.

Professor X at least got transplanted into a younger clone body in the wake of the Brood saga, and I think Storm's regression to childhood at one point would allow for a bit of flex on the age issue.

They've allowed the X-people to get a little older--the original five were teens in 1963 and now they're, say, mid-twenties, maybe mid-to-late. It's flexible in the same way that, for example, Cordelia's age is flexible on "Angel"--she's technically supposed to be 18-19 in season 1, but since she was out of high school and they didn't have to reference that directly, they could more or less ignore it and let her play the role at something closer to Charisma Carpenter's real age.

Joss is trying to get away from what's happened in quite a few Marvel titles--the younger characters are allowed to age bit by bit over the decades until they get so much older than their original concepts that the original identification gets lost. That's what happened to Kitty. They turned her into a capable, street-smart ass-kicker who kept her head when things got intense, which is pretty much everything the original Kitty wasn't but wished she was.

I may be conflating stories (I wasn't a regular reader until around issue #175), but I seem to recall Franklin being present in their 1969 moon landing story, and not as an infant.

Aha, Google provides the answer. He was born November 1968, so he was around for the moon landing, but he was less than a year old.