My littlest sister is turning twelve this year (we're going to carefully ignore the fact that I was confused for most of the year and actually thought she was turning thirteen). It seems like it was just a few weeks ago that she was sinking her teeth into my arm as I carried her to her room and throwing the most incredible tantrums. Instead of biting and shrieking, she now plays Guitar Hero with me and asks me about comic books.

Susannah is twelve years younger than I am, and it's always been more of a challenge for me to connect with her on any level. Then I called my mom one day and Susannah picked up the phone. "GUESS WHAT," she exclaimed when she realized it was me.

"What?" I asked.

"My PS2 memory card wiped itself again! I didn't touch anything!"

"Damn!" I was honestly shocked, because as every gamer knows, there are very few things worse than having your whole freaking memory card wipe itself. "We really need to get you either a Sony brand memory card or that off brand that I use, can't remember the name. I've never had any problems with them. Damn that sucks!"

She sighed. "I'm not really worried about the Champions of Norrath files or most of the other stuff on there, but I lost my Kingdom Hearts file! There are some hard bosses in that game!"

And it was right about then that I realized my little sister is a gamer.

She also just watched the X-Men movies and is suddenly very interested in comic books. I wanted to laugh with delight when she starting asking me "so does this happen in the comic book series? What about that? How did that happen in the comics? Can I borrow some of your comic books?"

I was just about her age, maybe a year older, when I bought my first comic book, an Uncanny X-Men.

She's old enough now that I suddenly see things I can relate to. I'm excited to start introducing her to comics. First the big name companies, Marvel and DC, then I can start showing her the smaller independents. I can take her to the Seattle ComiCon. I can play video games with her.

Dealing with a twelve year age difference is hard, but I think we're going to have a blast.