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Hi. My name is Zoe Tunnell, and I was an awful comics fan. To be clear, I don’t mean I liked awful comics. (I still do! They’re trash, but they’re my trash.) The type of awful I’m referring to is one probably all too familiar to a lot of you. When I was a teenager, and even into my twenties, I was The Comics Nerd. It was my all-consuming identity, and being the person who could answer any question about the latest Marvel Movie when asked at a party was my lot in life.
It turned me into a cruel, shitty little person who began to view comics as a series of Facts and Events to learn and catalog and lord over others, rather than just…stories I love and cherish. Thankfully, I’m better now. And as much as I’d like to credit that all to looking inward and personal growth, strangely enough, I can thank two comic book characters for getting my shit together—specifically, Kate Pryde and Ilyana Rasputin.
Read more about Zoe’s journey in this Patreon exclusive essay.
