Look at what's happened to me...I can't believe it myself... I was six years old when The Greatest American Hero debuted on ABC. I'm sure a lot of what went on during the show's three-season run went well over my head, but the premise wasn't lost on me. Here was Ralph Hinkley (portrayed by William Katt, who was nearly cast as Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars films), an everyman, gifted by aliens with a cherry-red suit imbued with just about every imaginable super powe

Most people know Beverly Cleary for her Ramona books, but I've always been partial to the little mouse named Ralph. He's a courageous little rodent, to the consternation of his more timid relatives in the walls of the Mountain View Inn. Ralph makes friends with Keith, a boy staying at the run down hotel, and eventually figures out how to operate one of Keith's toy motorcycles as if it were the real thing. That's always been part of the magic of this book for me - Cleary deftl

I can't imagine why the classic character of Faust keeps coming to mind these days. The quest for temporary power and knowledge and pleasure at the expense of moral integrity and eternal salvation is played out every day in each of us, in ways both small and large, but rarely is it on so high-profile a display as during national elections. And rarely during national elections as nakedly unvarnished as what we've been subjected to this cycle. More on that later. Faust stems fr

1996's Jerry Maguire is not without flaws, but it's an entertaining movie. Tom Cruise's Jerry is sympathetic as he falls to earth, Renee Zellweger is fresh and adorable as single mom Dorothy, and just the right amount of sports cameos (Drew Bledsoe!) are sprinkled in to give the film verisimilitude. I like Jerry - his frenetic energy, his willingess to debase himself, his perpetual confusion. He's hanging on by a very thin thread, and I dig that about him. But it's clearly Cu

I'll say it one more time (though maybe not the last time) - we've been enjoying a virtual golden age of animated films the last decade or two, with Disney and Pixar and Dreamworks churning out fare both charming and engaging. Even Sony Pictures. a relative newcomer to the genre, has made worthwhile contributions, beginning with the entertaining two-film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs cycle. It's a silly adaptation of a silly children's book, but it succeeds where so much

Normally when I include a comic book character on this list, I've used a picture from the books, not the movies or shows that followed. That's because in nearly every case, I first got to know and appreciate that character through the print medium, often as a younger reader. Black Widow is an exception to that rule for me. In my years of reading Marvel comics I was always frankly a bit underwhelmed by Natasha Romanoff. She showed up initially in the pages of the Avengers as a