Cheryl Lee Carr clutched her phone, willing it to ring. The last time she’d answered it, a hospital surgeon told her he didn’t know if he could save her mother’s leg, let alone her life. But he would try to stop the hemorrhaging from her major leg artery, punctured by a doctor at a nearby clinic.

OMAHA — The 250,000 Nebraskans working full-time without paid sick days might soon have other choices than ignoring illness or sending sick kids to school to avoid missing a day’s pay.

Each July, comics fans, professionals and scholars descend on San Diego, California, for Comic-Con International – a celebration of the art and business of the comics industry. Comic books used to be a niche genre of interest to a narrow subset of popular culture enthusiasts. Since the 1970s, however, they increasingly have supplied the characters and stories on which film, television and streaming media empires are founded.