When I was a girl, my favorite superhero was Katy Keene. I was in second grade when I first saw her comic books on the rack at our corner grocery store. This was in a small town on the Mississippi Gulf Coast where kids could play the slot machines anywhere.

All we needed were a few nickels and a footstool to reach the slot machine handle. I went to that store looking for three lemons in a row instead of the milk and eggs my mother sent me to the store to buy.

One day, I was kneeling by the magazine rack and I spied KATY KEENE comics. When I saw my very own name on a comic book, I hit the jackpot! My childhood nickname was Katie, but I forgave Katy Keene for not spelling her name like mine. 

I imagined Katy Keene had super powers, though I don’t believe she ever did. It’s just that she had the “world on a string,” was glamorous, and wore clothes that only superheroes like Wonder Woman wore. Looking back, I have to admit Katy was a career woman, a movie star, just with a bigger than life image and super self confidence. 

But for me, a scruffy kid with worn out Buster Browns and tattered shorts, she was a role model beyond my dreams. Her name lit up my own. Those bright letters on her dime comics were a marquee for me, too. Even when she became pals with Archie and Jughead, she was always KATY KEENE, a world apart, but as close as my battered comic book.