Mary Bierbaum

Lost in Transition: LSH and the Uneven Footsteps of Progress
Lost in Transition: LSH and the Uneven Footsteps of Progress
Lost in Transition: LSH and the Uneven Footsteps of Progress
At a time when most of comics was tiptoeing around the notion of gay, bi and lesbian people existing – much less being portrayed well – The Legion of Super-Heroes was making text out of subtext with characters such as Shrinking Violet and Lightning Lass, and doing it during one of the series' most creatively daring periods. Yet as the fate of the character Shvaughn Erin illustrates, a step forward for some can often leave others behind.
Bizarro Back Issues: The Power Rangers Get Extreme (1996)
Bizarro Back Issues: The Power Rangers Get Extreme (1996)
Bizarro Back Issues: The Power Rangers Get Extreme (1996)
This week, Boom Studios --- which, in the interest of full disclosure, is a company I've done some writing for --- announced that they'd acquired the rights to Power Rangers with plans to launch a new series sometime this year. It's pretty exciting news, but at the same time, the news about a bunch of teenagers with (shockingly positive) attitudes coming to comics always gets me a little bit down, because it reminds me of one of the biggest missed opportunities in the history of the franchise. See, this isn't the first time that the Power Rangers have made an attempt at conquering the world of superhero comics, and there was a time when they only made it through one issue with a story that was more notable for the books that it advertised and never came out than what happens in the issue itself. The year was 1996, the comic was Power Rangers Zeo, and the man who had the license... was Rob Liefeld.