I've been rather fortunate in that these kinds of discussions never come up when I talk comics with friends and associates.  I really only ever encountered this on internet forums. 

I don't mean here; this forum diagnoses the problem rather than propagating it.  This site is like the WebMD of comics. 

QUOTE: That comment says it all. We don't need to know the ages of characters, if there's been five Christmas stories told since Plotline A happened, so what? Were the Christmas stories any good? Have five years passed since Plotline A? Is our hero, who we assume was 25, is now 30? Who cares? Enjoy the stories.

Thanks Shawn.

There's a TV show over here (now cancelled) called HEARTBEAT. It's set in the 1960s and is about a bobby on the beat in Yorkshire, with some soap opera stuff included. When it started, it was set in 1964. It ran from 1992 until 2010 and in that time, it remained in the sixties. People simply enjoyed it, even the many, many Christmas episodes. At no point did I come across anyone saying, "Hang on, if the first episode was set in 1964 and they've celebrated Christmas many times, we should be in the 80s now!" They simply appreciated each timeless tale for what it was.

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Those are the kinds of things that bug me simply because it's so EASY to get it RIGHT.

"A tiger? In Africa, sir?"

I guess the point I was making was that years ago, we simply let things like that go. Yet if there'd be an internet forum for Scooby-Doo back in the late 60s/70s, no doubt there'd be questions asked like that.

In fact, the mention of Scooby-Doo reminds me. That's another franchise where people don't appear to expect ageing. Fred, Shaggy, Daphne, Velma and Scooby-Doo have been young folk forever, probably at college. No doubt if there was a similar mentality regarding that franchise, we'd see people demanding that Fred and others celebrate 40th birthday parties and get jobs.

By the way, off-topic, that recent post I did about childhood misconceptions included one about where animals lived. As a kid, the books, cartoons, posters, films, etc. that I watched were indiscriminate when it came to including animals. If a tale was set in Africa or there was a picture of the African jungle, it had everything from bears to tigers, none of which are found in Africa.

What a coincidence. I just reread the issue where Superman talks with Reagan last evening. At the end of Legands #2. I have not touched that particular issue in some time (err... more than a decade). Several other real life figures shown up in that scene as well (VP Bush, etc.)