Comic book reviews: Elektra #100

As I’m sure I’ve mentioned on this blog before, in the last decade or so I really haven’t read much from either Marvel or DC Comics. When I do pick up something from the Big Two, it’s almost always because of who is writing or drawing it. I am much more interested in creators than characters, and have been for some time.

That’s how I came to purchase Elektra #100. Truthfully, I’ve never been all that interested in Elektra. I think the character worked well enough in her original appearances in Daredevil by her creator Frank Miller, and then he killed her off because he was finished telling her story… although he did later return to her to fill in the details of her history to good effect in the Elektra: Assassin miniseries. Of course, no one stays dead at Marvel Comics, and eventually she was resurrected and utilized in various different ways, some better than others, the majority of which I just didn’t even bother to read.

So why pick up Elektra #100? It’s written by Ann Nocenti, that’s why. I’ve blogged about Nocenti’s work on several occasions. I always find her writing to be thought-provoking and unconventional. So when I saw the previews of Elektra #100 and found out that Nocenti would be pitting Elektra against her own creation Typhoid Mary, the telekinetic pyrokinetic femme fatale who suffers from multiple personality disorder, I was definitely in. And it is an intriguing hook, having Daredevil’s two dangerous, toxic ex-girlfriends facing off against one another.

There are definitely parallels between Elektra and Typhoid Mary. They are both seriously damaged women who were previously involved with Matt Murdock and who have worked as assassins for his arch-adversary Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime. Nocenti compares and contrasts the two, putting Elektra, who has worked hard to distance herself from her violent past and turn over a new leaf, opposite Typhoid Mary, who time and again inevitably ends up getting drawn back into the Kingpin’s corrupt orbit.

“Twisters” is set “Weeks ago…” i.e. shortly before the recently-concluded Devil’s Reign crossover. Fisk is still the Mayor of New York City, ostensibly reformed while continuing to expand his criminal empire behind the scenes.  He dispatches Typhoid to look after Lady Midas, from whom he wants to acquire property in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. Elektra, having assumed Daredevil’s role of the protector of Hell’s Kitchen, wants to “persuade” Midas not to sell out to the Kingpin. And so these two women inevitably come to blows.

Reading “Twisters” it occurred to me that there is, ultimately, only so much Nocenti is allowed to do with these two characters. Elektra will always be the woman with a tragic, violent past struggling to achieve redemption. Typhoid Mary will always be the mentally ill woman struggling to find balance between her violently different personalities, ever unable to lead a “normal” life.  That said, Nocenti still manages to produce an interesting, entertaining story featuring this pair while working in a fictional universe where Status Quo is God.

I’m not completely sold on Sid Kotian’s artwork. He seems to be working in the vein of Humberto Ramos, utilizing a style that is half cartoonish exaggeration and half Manga-inspired. It’s a bit chaotic and wonky, but I suppose that it fits a story focusing on Typhoid Mary’s continuing efforts to juggle her various personalities.

There’s definitely some interesting layouts & storytelling being utilized by Kotian in this story. Also, he does capture the athleticism of the two characters especially well.

I did like the coloring by Edgar Delgado, which suits Kotian’s work, creating some effectively atmospheric scenes. VC’s Clayton Cowles utilizes some interesting lettering for the captions featuring Typhoid Mary’s chaotic stream of consciousness.

There’s a short back-up by writer Declan Shalvey, artist Stefano Raffaele and colorist Rachelle Rosenberg that is more an exercise in establishing a mood, in visualizing the dysfunctional relationship between Elektra and Daredevil and in telling a coherent story. It does provide Raffaele with the opportunity to show off his storytelling skill and illustrate some dynamic, fluid pages.

Unfortunately, Marvel made a big booboo and printed the two halves of a great double page spread by Raffaele on opposite sides of the same page. Oops! But from the digital edition here’s the full image, in all its dynamic glory. Click on it to embiggen…

Additionally, there are a couple of short, humorous pieces by Chris Giarusso and Ty Templeton at the back of the issue.

The cover to Elektra #100 is by Dan Panosian. I am constantly amazed at just how much Panosian has grown & developed as an artist since he first entered the comic book biz over 30 years ago. His recent artwork looks nothing like what he was doing in the early 1990s. His cover for this issue is a basic pin-up type image, but it is still executed well. It’s a reminder to me that I really need to check out Panosian’s recent independent and creator-owned projects.

By the way, if you’re like me, and you’re wondering just how the heck Marvel arrived at there being 100 issues of Elektra, there’s a four page cover gallery inside. In addition to her various ongoing series, they’re counting Elektra: Assassin, and the Elektra Lives Again graphic novel, and the Root of Evil miniseries, and various other odds & ends. So now you know.

It was nice to see Nocenti playing in the Marvel sandbox again. I wish they would give her more work. Oh, well… as with Panosian, I really need to seek out her recent creator-owned projects. I just need more money and a much bigger apartment in which to keep all of these comic books!

Comic book reviews: Gotham City Garage

It’s been a few years since I’ve regularly followed any DC Comics titles.  However, over the past several months I have bought a number of DC trade paperbacks.

I eventually noticed a general theme to these TPBs: They had stories that were set on Earth 2, or in the future, or in alternate realities. I’ve come to realize that while I like a lot of DC characters, I long ago got tired of monthly titles where there is a never-ending illusion of change. On the other hand, stories set on other Earths, or eras, or that fall under the “Elseworlds” umbrella provide creators with opportunities to present different takes on familiar characters, and tell stories that are more self-contained, with somewhat greater consequences.

(It’s funny… When I was a teenage comic book fan I was hung up on continuity, on whether or not stories were “real” and actually “counted.” Nowadays I just want to read an enjoyable, intelligent story, and it doesn’t matter to me if it takes place on Earth 67 or Earth B or whatever.)

Gotham City Garage falls into that “alternate reality” category.  No, it is NOT a book about the guy who repairs the Batmobile (although that was actually a pretty good episode of Batman: The Animated Series).  Inspired by a line of collectible statues that re-imagined several of DC’s female character as tattooed chopper chicks, Gotham City Garage was a digital first series that was then published as a twelve issue miniseries that was later collected into two trade paperbacks.

This past June artist Lynne Yoshii was a guest at the Women in Comics convention at the Brooklyn Public Library.  I was not previously familiar with Yoshii, but the art she had on display looked incredible, so I purchased one of the issues of Gotham City Garage which contained her work.  I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it, and subsequently got the first TPB.  The second one finally came out last month.

Gotham City Garage is written by Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing.  After the majority of the Earth was devastated by an environmental catastrophe, Lex Luthor seized control of Gotham City, which he has rebuilt as a domed city called the Garden.  Aided by a fascist Batman and an army of robots known as “Gardeners,” Luthor implanted “Ridealongs” within the brains of the population.  These  implants pacify negative emotions and instill loyalty to Luthor.

Only a handful of individuals escaped becoming brainwashed zombies in Luthor’s dystopia.  They are now based out of the Gotham City Garage, a safe haven in the wastelands built by Natasha Irons.

Kelly and Lanzing utilize the teenage Kara Gordon as the audience identification figure.  Seemingly a loyal member of Luthor’s staff, Kara has to hide the fact that her Ridealong does not work.  Outwardly she smiles brightly and chants “Lex loves you” but inwardly she is miserable, the only person with free will in a city of lobotomized slaves.

The first issue opens with the Gardeners finally rumbling to Kara’s secret.  She is only saved by the intervention of Jim Gordon, who tells her to flee the Garden.  He also informs the shocked teenager that she is not actually his daughter, that he adopted her when she was an infant to protect her from Luthor.  Escaping the city, exposed to yellow sunlight for the first time, Kara quickly realizes that she has superpowers, and is in fact an alien.

Fleeing the Gardeners, Kara encounters chopper-riding rebels from the Garage: Big Barda, Harley Quinn, Catwoman, and Silver Banshee.  Initially suspicious of her, the women nevertheless help Kara defeat the Gardeners and bring her to their headquarters.  Although naïve and inexperienced, Kara / Supergirl joins the rebels, quickly becoming an important ally in their struggle to stay free from Luthor’s control.

Gotham City Garage is a female-driven book.  The majority of the protagonists are women.  Kelly and Lanzing do excellent work writing Supergirl, Batgirl, Big Barda, Wonder Woman, Catwoman, and the other heroines.

I enjoyed the student & mentor relationship they set up between the young, idealistic Kara and the embittered Barda, who all these years later still suffers PTSD from her horrific upbringing on Apokolips.  The voices that Kelly & Lanzing give to both Kara and Barda feel authentic.

The series offers up interesting and visually striking re-imaginations of a number of DC’s iconic characters.  One of the most effective of these is Harley Quinn, not just visually, but also conceptually.  Although incredibly popular, Harley Quinn can nevertheless be a problematic figure.  She is a woman who was manipulated by, and is in an abusive relationship with, the psychotic Joker.  After she migrated from DC’s animated universe into its mainstream continuity and spun off into a solo title, Harley Quinn’s ties to the Joker were often downplayed.  Obviously the writers & editors at DC realized that it would be awkward to have a series starring a character who was a disciple to a mass murderer.  Nevertheless, you still had a character whose origins were rooted in emotional abuse and Stockholm Syndrome.

The way that Gotham City Garage improves upon Harley Quinn is by providing her with an agency lacking in her mainstream counterpart.  In this reality Dr. Harleen Quinzel was recruited by Luthor to develop the Ridealongs.  Agreeing to work with Luthor as much for self-preservation as to satisfy her scientific curiosity, Quinzel perfects the system that gives Luthor control of the city’s populace.  Too late realizing that she has enabled Luthor to turn the people into mindless drones, Quinzel rebels.  Attempting to both sabotage the Ridealongs and free herself from Luthor’s control, Quinzel deliberately scrambles her own brain patterns.  This results in a new, humorously irreverent, sarcastic personality with a penchant for extreme violence.

In what is an effective turn-around, it is Harley who creates the Joker.  She inspires Lloyd, one of her former patients who she liberated, to adopt her outrageous sense of fashion and her dedication to cartoonish acts of anarchy.

The twelve issue series is a more or less complete arc that reaches a definite conclusion that nevertheless leaves open the possibility of future stories.  There was at least one dangling subplot, namely what happens to Zatanna and Silver Banshee, but perhaps Kelly & Lanzing were leaving that for another day.

The artistic line-up for Gotham City Garage is impressive.  Certainly I have to give much praise to Lynne Yoshii, who got me interested in this series in the first place.  Yoshii has a really fun, dynamic style.  She also does really good work with her storytelling, her layouts delivering both action and emotional character moments.  Yoshii’s pencils for issue #2, which are inked by Jose Marzan Jr, were both exciting and humorous.  I hope that we see more from her in the near future.

I also like the artwork by Brian Ching.  He has a style somewhat reminiscent of Kieron Dwyer and Dan Panosian.  Ching’s work has a gritty tone that is also slightly cartoony & exaggerated, which is perfect for the post-apocalyptic setting.

Another effective contributor to Gotham City Garage is Aneke, who illustrates “Bad Seeds” in issue #3, which spotlights Harley Quinn, and flashes back to reveal her origin.  Plus I love how Aneke draws Harley’s wacky pet hyenas.

As I observed in the past, it appears to take a particular skill set to work on these “digital first” titles.  A penciler needs to be able to lay out the pages so that the top and bottom halves work as separate pieces on the computer screen, but also work together as a single, uniform page in the print edition.  I feel that most of the pencilers who contributed to Gotham City Garage did a fairly good job at accomplishing this.

The covers are mostly of the pin-up type.  I usually am not fond of these types of covers, since they reveal little about the actual contents inside the books.  Unfortunately that seems to be the default style for DC (and Marvel) cover art in the 21st Century.  At least most of them are well drawn.  Dan Panosian’s variant cover for issue #1 featuring Wonder Woman is certainly striking, and it was a good choice to re-use to for the first collected edition.

Also along for the motorcycle ride are colorist Kelly Fitzpatrick and letterer Wes Abbott, both of whom do good work.

Gotham City Garage is a fun series with good artwork, an enjoyable and thoughtful alternate take on the DC universe.

Comic book reviews: Grindhouse #5-8

Time for more insanely twisted fun as I take a look at the second half of Alex De Campi’s horror anthology miniseries Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight.  You can read my review of the first four issues here.  The two tales comprising Grindhouse #s 5-8 are “Bride of Blood,” illustrated by Federica Manfredi, and “Flesh Feast of the Devil Doll,” drawn by Gary Erskine.

When Alex De Campi was at Midtown Comics last October signing copies of Grindhouse #1, she commented that the third story arc, “Bride of Blood” would be “a medieval rape-revenge story.”  The movie that immediately leaped into my head is Meir Zarchi’s 1978 film I Spit On Your Grave, also known as Day of the Woman.  I’ve heard I Spit On Your Grave described as misogynistic, but I really do not think that is the case.  Yes, the movie’s heroine Jennifer, played by Camille Keaton, is brutally gang-raped by a group of men, but Zarchi films it in such a genuinely revolting manner that there is no way in hell that he intended for it to be sexy or erotic. In the final third of the story, once Jennifer recuperates and begins wrecking bloody retribution on the men who brutalized her, one of them does claim she was “asking for it” by dressing provocatively.  But this is obviously supposed to be the self-serving justification of a sexist pig, and soon after Jennifer enacts a particularly well-deserved & horrific revenge upon him.

“Bride of Blood” is the story of Branwyn, a young woman from the House of Creagh Mawr who is to wed the Lord of Callyreath in an arranged marriage of political & financial convenience.  Branwyn is understandably nervous about marrying an older man who she barely knows, but her mother assures her that everything will be okay.  However, soon after the ceremony begins a horde of Reavers descends, slaughtering the wedding guests.  Branwyn’s mother is stabbed, and Branwyn herself sexually assaulted, mutilated and left for death.

Sometime later, Branwyn awakens at a nearby convent and learns that she is believed to be the last surviving member of the House of Creagh Mawr.  After the funeral of her beloved brother Corrin, the traumatized Branwyn steals his armor and sets out to avenge herself on the Reavers and their allies utilizing guerilla warfare.  The second chapter of “Bride of Blood” has De Campi offering up two shock plot twists in rapid succession, closing out the story in a dramatic finale of poetic justice.

The artwork by Federica Manfredi is exquisitely detailed.  De Campi explained that one of the reasons why she wanted to work with Manfredi, a female artist, is that given the story’s content she did not want the sexual violence to come across as glamorized, even if unintentionally.  Indeed Manfredi truly brings home the sick brutality of the villains’ actions.  I was actually cringing when I read the first chapter.  It really is stomach-churning stuff.  And it is so amazing that Manfredi starts out drawing “Bride of Blood” with this beautiful, dream-like fairy tale atmosphere, and then she rapidly shifts to depicting gruesome violence.  Likewise, in the second chapter Manfredi illustrates a lovely, idyllic winter landscape as the setting for Branwyn’s violent, blood-spattered vengeance.  The coloring by Dorotea Gizzi, Andrea Priorini, Diego Farina and Manfredi herself certainly drives home the shocking dramatic contrasts.

De Campi’s final two part tale, “Flesh Feast of the Devil Doll,” is set in Oneida (that’s in Upstate New York, for all you provincial types).  In a prologue set in 1725, we see a sect of devil-worshipping European colonists in an underground chamber attempting to summon the demonic Azaroth via a willing virgin disciple.  Fortunately they are interrupted by the local Native American tribe who chuck a couple of barrels of gunpowder at the ceremony, blowing up the Satanists and sealing the cavern.

Flash forward to the present day, and the dark forces invoked centuries before have finally broken out due to a mining company engaging in fracking (see, the environmentalists were right, fracking is bad for the planet).  The long-ago virgin sacrifice emerges, her body now inhabited by a monstrous being.  She has a really nifty but gross trick, where she can twist her neck around 180 degrees and whip back her hair to reveal a gaping mouth full of spiraling razor-sharp teeth.  This “Devil Doll” begins stalking the countryside, looking for a new virgin sacrifice, in the process slaughtering numerous innocents, turning them into her undead servants.

Close by, the teenage girls of Oneida Field Hockey Camp are welcoming a new recruit.  Renae is a shy girl who really has no interest in sports, and is only there at her parents’ behest.  When the other gals engage in a bit of minor hazing, Renae runs to the bathroom to hide.  Tina, who projects an image of toughness & confidence, but underneath is a pretty decent person, goes to Renae and offers her some advice: “If you run away and cry every time you’re bullied, you will never ever stop being bullied…. Even if you feel like crying inside, pretend to be strong. Because here’s the thing: we’re all pretending. All the time.”

That night the girls, including Renae, head out via moped, looking for a place to hang out (De Campi stated in an interview that one of the reasons she asked Gary Erskine to illustrate “Flesh Feast of the Devil Doll” is because he knows how to draw mopeds).  Unfortunately it’s a very rural area, and the only place open late is Wal-Mart.  Some teenage boys also swing by the shopping center parking lot on their bicycles.  The two groups start some cheesy flirting, but before anything can really happen, they are quite rudely interrupted by the Devil Doll and her enthralled disciples, still searching for a virginal victim.  De Campi and Erskine give us some bloody devils & zombies vs. hockey sticks & guns action, as the teenagers fight off the hordes of Hell.  We even get the best laugh-out-loud use of a Phil Collins song since “In the Air Tonight” in the 2002 comedy The New Guy.

De Campi continues the theme that she worked through in her first four issues, of outsiders and marginalized individuals stepping up to the plate to become the true heroes.  During the time period that “Bride of Blood” is set, women are in a socially subservient role, with men assuming positions of power & influence.  But it falls to Branwyn to take the initiative and avenge the atrocities inflicted upon her family.  “Flesh Feast of the Devil Doll” shows the girls rescuing the guy, with quiet & introverted Renae finding the strength within her to help her new friends.

As with the first four issues of Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight, Francesco Francavilla and Dan Panosian provide alternating cover artwork.  The one that really stood out for me this time was Panosian’s stunning, atmospheric illustration for the cover to Grindhouse #6.  It is definitely tied with Francavilla’s cover from #3 for my favorite cover artwork from this miniseries.

Inside front cover artwork for all eight issues is courtesy of Marc Laming.  Assembled together, they form a very twisted but cool exploitation image.  I was searching about the Internet for a picture of the entire piece, but unfortunately I couldn’t find one.  But definitely check out Laming’s website for plenty of other cool art.

Apparently Grindhouse sold pretty well, and so De Campi is pitching a “season two.”  Hopefully Dark Horse will give her the green light.  The book is such a fun and twisted homage to exploitation B-movies.  At the same time, De Campi does superb work at genuine character development within her tales, along with genuinely witty, intelligent dialogue.  The result is a very nice blending of subtle character moments, irreverent humor, and over-the-top sex & violence.

Comic book reviews: Grindhouse #1-4

I was born a decade or so too late to have been the target audience for grindhouse movies, the kind of sleazy exploitation genre films to have played in second-rate cinemas back in the 1970s and early 80s.  By the time I was old enough to explore New York City on my own, most of those less-than-venerable institutions had closed their doors.  However, I caught quite a number of their successors via direct-to-video and cable TV releases.  And in the last decade, there’s been a surge in nostalgic interest in those old cheese-fests, at least partly brought on by the works of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

Already being something of a B-movie aficionado, I’ve seen a handful of those “classic” grindhouse flicks on DVD.  Most of them fall into the so-bad-they’re-good territory.  They’re campy and violent and quite often sexist.  But at the same time, it’s interesting to see what those filmmakers working on a shoestring budget could accomplish with imagination & ingenuity in those long-ago days before anyone with access to a laptop could easily whip up some CGI effects.

So naturally my interest was piqued when the eight issue Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight series was announced by Dark Horse Comics.  Written by Alex De Campi, the series is comprised of a quartet of two-part tales, each an homage to the exploitation films of days past.  In the first four issues, we have a pair of over-the-top romps into sex, violence, sci-fi and horror entitled “Bee Vixens From Mars” and “Prison Ship Antares.”

“Bee Vixens From Mars” sees the women of a small Southern town taken over by an alien insect queen, transforming them into horny, bloodthirsty femme fatales linked to a hive mind.  With nearly everyone in the town either mutated or brutally slaughtered, it falls to Deputy Garcia and the owners of the local convenience store, Wayne & Sergei, to battle the alien infestation.

I really think that Alex De Campi’s background as a woman who has lived & worked on three continents allows her to write from a different perspective.  In interviews, she has commented that one of the more interesting qualities of grindhouse fare was that often the protagonists were women and/or minorities.  Yeah, a lot of those movies were “sexploitation” or “blaxploitation” or whatever you want to call them, meaning the main characters were probably on the stereotypical or one-dimensional side.  But it nevertheless did provide some sort of avenue for depicting heroes who weren’t white males.  In contrast, as De Campi points out, the majority of big studio action & genre pictures nowadays usually feature handsome, macho, WASPy men as the main characters.

In contrast, in “Bee Vixens From Mars,” we have Deputy Garcia, an older Hispanic woman with white hair and an eye patch, as the ass-kicking savoir of humanity.  Backing her up are Wayne & Sergei, a gay couple originally from Eastern Europe.  You have a small group of individuals who can be considered outsiders to the traditional, mainstream population as the heroes.

The art on “Bee Vixens From Mars” is by Chris Peterson.  I’m not familiar with him, but he does great work on this book.  Peterson really draws the hell out of the erotically charged, ultra-violent story.  His layouts & storytelling are extremely strong.

“Prison Ship Antares” is basically a women-in-prison story in outer space.  A group of hardened female convicts are sent away from Earth to settle Alpha Centauri, accompanied by their warden Kalinka and her contingent of cloned guards.  Yeah, I know, it doesn’t really sound plausible, trying to colonize another planet with only women.  But that’s the situation De Campi sets up in order to tell her second zany tale.  I’ve seen far more nonsensical scenarios in actual B-movies, so whatever.

In any case, Kalinka turns out to be insane, a sadistic religious nut who believes she is the reincarnation of a samurai warrior.  She decides to “burn away the sinful parts” of her prisoners, gruesomely killing them with acid and fire.  The convicts, led by a gal by the name of Spanish Fly, realize that they had better seize control of the Antares, and quick, before they all end up dead or mutilated.

With a set-up like this, you might be concerned that the book would devolve into “lipstick lesbian” pornography.  But, aside from a couple of cheekily playful sequences, for the most part De Campi writes the inmates as realistic, well-rounded individuals, giving them a certain amount of personality & background.  There’s only so much development she can fit into a 48 page story, but on the whole these women come across as real people, rather than merely objects of titillation. They’re sexy, but intelligent and tough.

Simon Fraser is the artist on “Prison Ship Antares,” and I could not have thought of a better choice to illustrate this tale.  Fraser is the co-creator, with writer Robbie Morrison, of the Nikolai Dante feature in 2000 AD.  Dante was, in his early tales, sort of a ne’er-do-well rogue, a hedonistic adventurer who got involved in all sorts of wacky sexcapades.  The first couple of Dante stories I ever read were “The Movable Feast” and “The Cadre Infernal,” which were set in, respectively, a gigantic brothel on wheels and a BDSM club.  So, yeah, Fraser knows how to draw smut… and I mean that in the nicest way possible.  No, but seriously, Simon is a fantastic artist.  He really imbues his characters with a great deal of personality & individuality through facial expressions and diverse body types.

Truthfully, there is actually a lot more violence than sex in “Prison Ship Antares.”  Some of it is horrific.  Other parts are just plain hysterical, such as when the prisoners riot against the clone guards while singing the “Toreador Song” from Georges Bizet’s Carmen.  Frasier does a superb job with that sequence.

There is another distinct quality to both of these tales.  Since each of them are stand-alone stories, sometimes it really seems up in the air whether or not various characters will live or die.  Without a status quo to adhere to, you half-expect De Campi to bump off one or more of her lead characters.  It really does keep the reader a lot more on edge.

The covers for the first four issues of Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight are by Francesco Francavilla and Dan Panosian.  Both of them have designed a couple of nice, striking pieces, sort of faux movie posters which also have a rather retro, pulp feel.

If you are a fan of genre films and B-movies, you’ll probably enjoy Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight.  It’s a fun, strange homage to exploitation films, with something of a tongue-in-cheek feminist slant given to the old genre formulas.  I’m looking forward to seeing what De Campi and her collaborators have in store for the next four issues.  It should be crazy.

Happy birthday to Louise Simonson

I wanted to wish a very happy birthday to one of my favorite comic book writers, Louise Simonson, who was born on September 26, 1946.  When I was a young reader who was just getting into comic books in the mid-1980s, Simonson’s writing played a key role in capturing my interest.  With super-talented penciler June Brigman, she created Power Pack, a series about four young siblings who gained superpowers from a dying alien.  Alex, Julie, Jack and Katie Power used their fantastic new abilities to defend Earth against the belligerent alien Snarks, as well as a succession of other strange menaces.

I had a lot of identification with the four main characters in Power Pack.  They were all around my age.  In addition to fighting aliens & supervillains, they faced much more mundane problems such as disagreements among themselves, arguments with parents who they felt just did not understand them, making friends with other kids their age, and having trouble with homework.  Simonson did an amazing job scripting stories that young readers could relate to without ever talking down to them.

Simonson had previously edited writer Chris Claremont on both Uncanny X-Men and New Mutants.  The two of them seem to possess a really good rapport and (in my humble opinion) under Simonson’s editorship Claremont wrote some of his best stories.  Later on, when Simonson was writing Power Pack, her close creative relationship with Claremont resulted in her series occasionally featuring guest appearances by the X-Men, and the Power kids showing up now & again in the X-titles.  Those crossovers were a major part of my introduction to the wider X-Men universe and Claremont’s work.  For instance, Uncanny X-Men #205, written by Claremont with superb artwork by Barry Windsor-Smith, is an amazing story where we see Wolverine through young Katie Power’s eyes.  It was a really great introduction to the character of Logan.

(This is the point where I risk embarrassing myself.  When I was a kid, I used to make up stories where I gained superpowers and had adventures alongside Power Pack.  Years later at a convention I admitted this to Louise Simonson.  She smiled and told me that a lot of other readers had told her they did the exact same thing growing up.)

In 1986, Simonson took over as writer of X-Factor with issue #6.  With penciler Jackson “Butch” Guice, she quickly introduced a mysterious, powerful new villain named Apocalypse.  Her husband Walter Simonson came on-board as regular penciler four issues later, and together the two of them majorly revamped the original five members of the X-Men, as well as building up Apocalypse into a significant figure in the Marvel universe.  Louise Simonson stayed on X-Factor until issue #64, in her later stories working with such artists as Art Adams, Paul Smith, and Terry Shoemaker.  She also had a lengthy run on New Mutants that lasted from issue #55 to #97.

After departing from X-Factor and New Mutants in 1991, Simonson moved over to DC Comics.  There she paired up with Jon Bogdanove, who she had previously worked with on her later Power Pack issues, and the two of them launched Superman: The Man of Steel.  Both Simonson and Bogdanove would stay on the title for a lengthy eight year run.  During that time, amidst the “Death of Superman” story arc, they co-created John Henry Irons, aka Steel, who first took up his armored identity in memory of the (temporarily) deceased Kal-El.  Throughout her issues, while juggling the requirements of tying in with the storylines of the other three monthly books, Simonson managed to give Superman: The Man of Steel its own individual feel, introducing an interesting supporting cast and ongoing subplots.

When her run on Man of Steel ended, Simonson returned to Marvel for several projects.  Among these was Warlock, a really fun but all too short-lived series drawn by Pascual Ferry featuring the wacky techno-organic alien member of the New Mutants, and Chaos War: X-Men, a miniseries co-written with Chris Claremont.  She also penned the excellent X-Factor Forever, which was set in a timeline that picked up right after her point of departure from X-Factor in 1991.  On that five issue miniseries, she worked with Dan Panosian, who showed off his amazingly improved artwork.  He had really grown by leaps & bounds since his debut in the early 1990s.

There is a major theme running through much of Simonson’s writing.  She often takes a look at the importance of family, of establishing emotional ties to other people.  Power Pack was very much the story of the four Power children, their relationships with one another and their parents.  In her X-Factor issues, Simonson tackled the complicated state of Cyclops’ personal life, at how he had basically wrecked his marriage to Madelyne Prior, and now had to deal with the consequences of that, his confused feelings for the newly resurrected Jean Grey, and having to raise his infant son Nathan who he’d previously had with Madelyne.  (I think Simonson did an excellent job handling the extremely awkward editorial directive handed down to her and Claremont that had forced Scott Summers to leave Madelyne for Jean.)  In Man of Steel, Simonson introduced a young African American boy named Keith.  After his mother died, the orphaned Keith was adopted by Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White and his wife Alice, who had lost their own son some years before.  In Warlock, Simonson had her oddball alien hero forming a sort of family unit with Hope, Psimon, and Chi-Chee the monkey, each of whom had also become outcasts.

The entire X-Factor Forever miniseries was all about family and relationships.  Cyclops and Marvel Girl are still attempting to reconcile their feelings for one another, and to take care of baby Nathan.  Bobby Drake, a.k.a. Iceman, is continuing his romance with Opal Tanaka, with the pair visiting her parents and discussing the possibility of marriage.  Warren Worthington is in a growing friendship with policewoman Charlotte Jones and her son Timmy, all the while struggling to come to terms with his transformation from Angel to the dark Archangel by Apocalypse.  And Hank McCoy, the bouncing blue Beast, is working on his on-again, off-again relationship with reporter Trish Tilby, who is thinking of adopting an orphan child.

Even Apocalypse is, in his own way, searching for a family.  Born 20,000 years ago to a tribe of primitive humans, the man who would become Apocalypse was a freak anomaly, the world’s first mutant, gifted with shape-shifting abilities.  As the X-Men would discover in the present day, so too did Apocalypse learn in prehistoric times: his powers were a double-edged sword.  When he used them to serve as his tribe’s protector, they reacted with fear & hatred, driving him out.  We can interpret Apocalypse’s subsequent millennia-long mission to insure the future supremacy of mutant-kind as motivated by a wish to no longer be alone, to one day have another family.  In the 19th Century, he thought he had found a kindred spirit in young Nathaniel Essex, and transformed him into his apprentice Mr. Sinister.  One could say that Apocalypse regarded Sinister almost like a son.  And when Sinister rebelled, conducting his own dangerous experiments which threatened to destabilize all of his former mentor’s carefully-laid plans, on some level it must have hurt Apocalypse.  It really shows Simonson’s talent & skill as a writer, that she brought a degree of empathy and pathos to a ruthless schemer such as Apocalypse.

I definitely think Louise Simonson is an amazing writer.  I really enjoy her work, and I hope that we see more from her pen again in the near future.  It would be especially great if she had the opportunity to work with her husband Walter again, or with June Brigman.