When life gives you lemons, the saying goes, make lemonade. In the case of CO2 Comics, it's more like sparkling ginger ale.

CO2 is a small comics publisher that, I confess, I never paid much attention to until a rather confusing e-mail landed in my in-box. Turns out they are serializing a 1980s graphic novel, The World of Ginger Fox, online, and suddenly they were getting lots of hits. The reason? Apparently there is a real Ginger Fox:

Nickelodeon's Ginger Fox, played by actress Ginger Rosselin Cynthia Fox, is a washed-up pop star trying to make a comeback. Her exploits were featured in an episode titled "iFix A Popstar" on the popular television show iCarly that stars Miranda Cosgrove as Carly.

There's a video, too, a parody of Britney Spears, and youngsters searching for that online have been running into the other, earlier Ginger Fox. Who actually seems like a pretty good role model, if the 12 pages of her comic that are up on the site are any indication; within a couple of pages, she has terrified the executives of a major movie studio, issued scathing critiques of all the work in progress, and taken on a killer kung fu cult, all without dislodging a hair from her exuberant 80s bouffant. The ostensible purpose of the press release is to advise parents of the potential for error — Ginger Fox is listed as an adult comic, although it looks pretty PG to me. It's hard to imagine the teeny-boppers sticking around to be corrupted, but for those of us who are old enough to remember the '80s, it's kind of awesome. Well played, CO2!