This page is going up late thanks to the national state of shock following the election. Well, some portion of the nation's shock, anyway.

The identity of a comic like "Captain Tempest" cannot help but be informed by our position as Americans, being in part a love-letter to a distinctly American style of storytelling: the pulps. There are things I have long prized about being an American, things about America that I have felt I can be proud to take a share in. Always, of course, with a clear-eyed understanding of the horrors and atrocities that I also bear the legacy of. I'm a deeply corny romantic about baseball and hot dogs and the fourth of July and Halloween and the national parks and the great American road trip and Hollywood and comic books. I have loved my country, in ways both wholesome and problematic.

I cannot say that I know my country. Maybe I never did. Here's what I thought I knew:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

As I mentioned, I can be terribly cheesy about this stuff.

We wish safety to all our friends, queer folks, trans folks, disabled folks, immigrants, people of color, and anti-fascists. We love you far more dearly than we could ever love this wretched, venal nation.

-- Gordon