Better by half

It’s been almost seventeen years since I came out, not yet half my life, but edging closer to it year after year. Even way back then, I felt like I was coming into myself late, twenty-one years old and in my last year of college. Today, I read about out LGBT teenagers in high school … Continue reading

My summer stack of comics

Did you know that scientists recently calculated how much we actually read in our work and personal lives? It seems a typical person today consumes the equivalent of 174 full newspapers a day in information — nearly five times as much as 25 years ago. Between email, print material, internet browsing, and advertising, we are literally inundated with text … Continue reading

Super-heroines, stains and all

My favorite comic book characters have invariably always been the ladies. Maybe because there were less of them when I was growing up. Maybe because their costumes were more fabulous than those of their male counterparts. Probably because, when written with care, the super-heroines always seemed more intuitive, more vulnerable… just more real than most … Continue reading

The badges behind the bat

One of the best things to come out of Batman: The Animated Series—and there were a number of great things that came out of Batman: The Animated Series—was the character of Renee Montoya. As a uniformed patrolwoman, Montoya starts off as the smart, straight-laced junior foil to the self-serving, corner-cutting, Batman-hating Detective Harvey Bullock. They’re … Continue reading