Or not.
The Creative Loafing article came out, and yes, I am in it. The woman who interviewed me admitted that she usually copy edits, so she was fairly new to this whole interviewing thing. I mentioned this later to my mother, longtime newspaper editor, and she asked, “Did she ask you how to spell your name?” I said no, and she shook her head disapprovingly. I answered, “You’re right, she should have, but it’s ‘Heather Hill.’ Surely she’ll get that right.”
Well, she did. But…
Another “comic addict” and longtime Heroes customer, Heather Hill “started [reading comics] in 1977 — the year Star Wars came out,” she laughs. Hill is a freelance writer for the online role playing game Dragon Realm and mother to 8-year-old Emily.
Dragon Realm? Dragon Realm? It’s DragonRealms. One word, plural. If anyone wanted to Google it based on that article, they’d be out of luck. I don’t go around calling Creative Loafing “Crate of Loathing.” If you’re not sure of what you heard, ASK.
I mentioned later in the interview with her that actually, I started reading earlier – my cousins and I read Richie Rich and other Harvey comics in the car trip up to Pennsylvania every year. That’s not as good of a hook, so I won’t quibble.
At one point during the discussion, she asked what I got out of comics, and I said that different people get different things based on where they are in their lives. For instance, right now Supergirl is doing a storyline – ‘don’t let your boyfriend hit you, no means no,’ that sort of thing. It doesn’t speak to me at all, because I already know these things. But I still remember a Wonder Woman comic when I was in high school that dealt with teen suicide. At that point in my life, it was more relevant to a teen girl. The things I read now speak to me more where I am in my life today.
What did I not say?
That’s what a good story does, whatever the medium. It becomes a part of you, woven into your past to remind who you were. “I’ve hung on to an issue of Wonder Woman that dealt with teen suicide for years now,” Heather says lightly.
For the record, I WAS NEVER SUICIDAL AS A TEEN. It never crossed my mind. This sounds to me as if this issue of Wonder Woman was some sort of magical talisman that guided me through a turbulent youth. I remember it because I thought it was interesting that a comic was trying to tackle such a serious issue. I didn’t exactly clutch it to my breast, weeping, “This is me!”
George Perez was doing the book back then. I enjoyed that run, and enjoyed Jill Thompson’s run, too, for that matter, since they didn’t draw her like she was constantly bending over for a good poling. Pardon my French. I actually had to stop reading the book for a while because she and her Amazon cohorts were clearly having some sort of mystical laundry problems that caused their uniforms to shrink and give them all wedgies.
I admit I’m probably overreacting a bit to the quote, and after I read it again I’ll see it differently. I did give her that awesome “hobble in my walker” quote, because baby, I know what the media wants in a sound bite. I’ll have to read it again later, preferably when I’m not hopped up on my Wednesday night raspberry mocha. Regardless, I will be speaking with the interviewer, if only to remind her of the importance of confirming your facts (Dragon Realm indeed). As my newshound mom says, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!”
, I believe your title is safe.
Our neighbor, a guy who loves his yard and has surely noticed what our mower looks like, yelled at him that that was our mower. He let it go and started jogging away, saying that he (our neighbor) could give it back to us. Which he did.
