Louise Simonson

• Born 1946-09-26

Louise Simonson is an American comic book writer and editor. She is best known for her work on comic book titles such as Power Pack, X-Factor, The New Mutants, Superman: The Man of Steel, and Steel. Among the comic characters she co-created are Cable, Steel, Power Pack, Rictor, Doomsday and the X-Men villain Apocalypse. She married artist Jeff Jones in 1966 and changed her name to Jones. After a divorce, she later married artist Walt Simonson in 1980 and changed her name to Simonson. In 1974, Jones started her professional comic book career at Warren Publishing. She went from assistant to senior editor of the comics line (Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella). In January 1980, Jones joined Marvel Comics, where she initially worked again as an editor, most notably on Uncanny X-Men, which she edited for almost four years (#137–182) and Conan the Barbarian (#114–148 ). At the end of 1983, Jones quit her editing job at Marvel to try her hand at full-time writing as Louise Simonson. She created the Eagle Award-winning Power Pack. Simonson wrote the majority of the title's first forty issues, even coloring one issue (#18). From 1986 she had long runs writing X-Factor and The New Mutants till 1991. In 1991, Simonson began writing for DC Comics. She, artist Jon Bogdanove, and editor Mike Carlin launched a new Superman title, Superman: The Man of Steel — a title she wrote for eight years until #86 in 1999. In 1992, Simonson (along with Carlin, Dan Jurgens, Roger Stern, and others) was one of the chief architects of "The Death of Superman" storyline. It was during that storyline that Simonson and Bogdanove introduced their character Steel, who graduated to his own title with Simonson as writer until #31. From 1993 through 2009, she wrote five picture books and eleven novels for middle-readers, many of which featured characters from DC.