Every day this month I'm going to feature a current comic book writing "star," someone who I think is a very good writer.

I'm mostly going to try to keep from the biggest names as much as possible, because, really, do I need to talk more about the awesomeness of Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis?

Here is the archive of previously featured writers.

Today we look at a veteran writer who is still doing strong work!

Enjoy!

Louise Simonson originally worked as an editor, although she had some writing work over at Eerie, under her former married name, Louise Jones.



When she began editing at Marvel, she also had some credits here and there...



Although I believe the following comic was her first as a freelance writer under her current married name.



Soon after, she came out with perhaps her best comic book work, the superpowered siblings known as the Power Pack (along with the great June Brigman on art)...



Power Pack was a realistic, heartfelt character piece. The book was so good that the other Marvel creators of the day bent over backwards to help the sales on the book. Chris Claremont had the Pack (or at least members of the Pack) guest star in the X-Men twice. John Byrne devoted a whole five-page sequence in an issue of Fantastic Four to promoting the storyline going on in Power Pack at the time.

Soon, though, Simonson would move on to more popular titles. First, she took over X-Factor...



Then she took over New Mutants from Claremont...



In both cases, Simonson brought her standard character-driven stories to the comics in question. Simonson is ALL about characterization.

When the X-Books became a bit more geared towards the young artists doing the books, Simonson moved over to DC, where she began a long run on a new Superman title, along with artist Jon Bogdanove (the pair had worked together on Power Pack after Brigman had left the book - Bogdanove actually followed Simonson as writer on the title, and did a good job - not as good as her, but still quite good).



These stories were also, naturally, character-driven pieces. She did a lot of work with the supporting cast in the comic, particularly a young boy from the streets, Keith.

She's done a number of different comic work (and novel writing, as well) since then, but just the other day, I saw her writing a new comic! An issue of Marvel Adventures: Super-Heroes.



It was a good book!

I look forward to more work from her.