May have been the worst book I have ever done -- but if so, very few people even got the chance to discover this for themselves. (And, curiously enough, those who actually read it seemed not to mind it too much.)

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Did you really read her name as "Diana"?

I gave the character the gender-neutral name "Dana" because I originally planned to keep her gender "secret". I'd grown very tired of fanboys complaining that muscular woman looked like men, or Superman with long hair looked "just like Wonder Woman". So I decided to mess with their heads a bit.

Ultimately, even before the first issue was started, I changed my mind. Just didn't seem worth the effort -- and messing with the heads of microbrains is way too fish-in-a-barrel. But I kept the name.

(I did have the small satisfaction of seeing some idiots complaining that they couldn't tell if Dana was male or female -- even tho I'd used female pronouns thru-out. Yes, comics are a "visual medium", but you're supposed to read the words,, too!)

Reminding me that the place to go for up-to-date fashion data is, of course, male comicbook fans.

(There was also much shrieking over the Alex character using "Dude". "Is this book supposed to be set in the '90s?" asked one griper. "NO ONE uses 'dude' any more!" Yet I could not turn on the TV without hearing it -- and Kevin Smith seemed incapable of speaking at all without using either "dude" or "fuck" every other word. Again -- comic fans are the ultimate arbiters of taste and style, right?)

It went to sleep for a while after that, occasionally stirring, since I thought it was a good working title. Then I read some articles about runaways, and saw a new incarnation, a particularly "dark" one.

Unfortunately, since I cast my team with "real" teenagers, not the usual steroids 'n' silicone contrivances, I suppose it never really had much of a chance.