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.

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

Immediately after that storyline, the next writer to handle her, Claremont himself, basically said he was ignoring that part of contuity, for Kitty to maintain her iconic role in the X-men, and it has been maintained that way since...

I've always felt that Kitty should be allowed to grow up -- that the value of the character is in the journey. Given Joss's track record, I'd say he feels the same way.

I'm way more out of touch with the current White Queen -- since I've skipped like the last twelve or fifteen years of X-Men "continuity", what's the story with her (diamond?) form. She used just to be a nasty telepath, right?

I like iconic Kitty... I think she should be allowed to grow up. Having read no Pryde & Wisdom, I can't speak as to whether or not I think that's the way she should've gone - but I identify insanely heavily with Kitty for very little reason. (I'll share my list in a second.) Having grown up some in the past 10 years (the difference between my age and Kitty's age at her first appearance) but still having kept my essential character, I think there's room for her to keep her iconic position and grow.

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 don't think this is a stretch for the original Kitty. Sometimes we do grow up to be who we wish to be.

Why I Identify With Kitty Pryde, by Kiba:
1. She's Jewish, I'm Jew-ish.
2. She's a very good dancer, I'm an ok dancer.
3. She's great at working with computers, I'm ok at working with computers.
4. She can walk through walls; I walk into walls.

Also, I really dig the Caliban storyline.

From Neil Gaiman's blog: his speech at the Harveys.

I love this part:

"Right now I actually believe that the best thing about comics may well be that it is a gutter medium. We do not know which fork to use, and we eat with our fingers. We are creators of a medium, we create art in an art-form, which is still alive, which is powerful, which can do things no other medium can do.

"I don't believe that a fraction of the things that can be done with comics have yet been done.

"For now, I think we've barely scratched the surface.

"And I think that's exciting. I don't know where comics as a medium will go in the future. But I want to be amazed, and I'm pretty sure that I shall be."

I like the topic unspecific:

Most of the things I've got right over the years, I got right because I'd got them wrong first.

Scott? Still looking the same age he did in the 70s.

I thought Scott was actually looking a bit older, receding hairline and a bit saggy around the shoulders. But yeah, point taken.

The ultimate result would be a team of geriatric mutants, those who survived to old age, and that would be a highly amusing comic.

I can see people making it out of puberty and gelling at around 24, unless they need to get white hair, but then they gel there, but with a 25 year old body.

Kitty looks to have gelled at an age that prevents her from having had enough time to do what she did.

I don't mind much, but I'm never sure what to remember and what not to at the best of times.