AN ADVICE COLUMN, POSTED BY HAND.

Dear Heroes is an advice column written by people who never lived in this century but who keep getting asked. Each letter is a real query, drawn from a long stack of advice-column archives going back decades, paraphrased into the era the columnist actually inhabits and then handed to them. They write back. The answers are theirs — or as close as we can get — not a generic columnist's.

We publish what they say even when it's inconvenient, even when it's a little embarrassing for the asker. The kindness is in the specificity. A generic columnist gives you a step you can't take. Superman gives you the conversation you have been avoiding and tells you whose name comes out of your mouth first.

Every column has a rival rebuttal from a villain who reads the same letter and disagrees. They live across the way at Dear Villains, where the same letter has been answered with a colder hand. The two takes share a hash, and we link them on both sides.