Women writing Superheroes?

[Tiplodocus]

Name me some good comics, written by women, that have all the usual superhero hullaballoo in them?

[Natsan]

Gail Simone's stuff is usually quite good,so I hear.

[Mike Carroll]

Devin Grayson's done some nice stuff...

Link: http://www.devingrayson.com" target="_blank">Devin Grayson's website

[Mick Flynn]

Isn't Devin Grayson pretty much hated now for her run on Nightwing?

[Bico]

Gail Simone is by no means a bad writer, but she does overplay the "I am wommun" card when writing comics, particularly her stint on Birds Of Prey, which tried to retcon misogynistic Black Canary backstory into female empowerment rhetoric, which it simply wasn't.
Devin Greyson's record with running books into the ground speaks for itself. Apart from Titans (formally Teen) and Gotham Knights, Nightwing was a book which could do no wrong, and any imbecile could have taken it over and it would still have sold well off the fanboy associations of the Dick Grayson/original Robin selling point - but Greyson managed to destroy the character to the point that he was to be killed off by editorial decree in the Infinite Crisis crossover (and this was only averted by the writers of Infinite Crisis being long-time fanboys that outright refused to do the deed and bumped off Superboy instead).

Louise Simonson, however, has a good track record.  Unlike most comics editors who moved into writing, she actually had the ability to write, rather than the ability to recycle, introduced Apocalypse and Archangel (the reimagined Angel) into the X-Men books during her X-Factor run, and created Power Pack.  Power Pack especially has left a lasting influence on modern comics writers, most notably with books like Robert Kirkman's Invincible and Brian K Vaughn's Runaways - neither of which, despite being written in more permissive and open-minded times, have actually had the balls to address some of the issues PP dealt with in it's 62-issue run, like child abuse, gun violence and drug usage.  The book was also made into a tv pilot, although no series ever came of it.

[TordelBack]

Louise Simonson, however, has a good track record.

Power Pack I give you, an excellent little comic in its day, but Simonson utterly destroyed New Mutants during her tenure.  I've said it before, but Marvel missed a trick in not suing Lucasfilm over the use of Simonson's Bird Boy as the barely-disguised Jar Jar Binks.  Fecking Bird Boy, I ask you.

[eternalchampion86]

Which of these two characters do you think are more interesting/funny/"disturbing":

Gareth kennan

OR

Dwight Schrute

[Bico]

Gotta take the misses with the hits.  Every writer has their bad days, but I suppose it helped that I wasn't a big X-fan at the time, and didn't think Bird-Brain was any more ridiculous than anything else that had gone before.

Although if you think Simonson was bad, I'm curious what you thought of Rob Liefeld's version...

[TordelBack]

Although if you think Simonson was bad, I'm curious what you thought of Rob Liefeld's version...

Happily by then my balls had dropped and with them my interest in cute teenage mutants, and in the porn-vacuum of 80's Ireland I had to resort to talking to actual girls in the hopes of conning them into holding hands for thrills (variable success).  Which is by way of saying I'd given superhero comics up as a thoroughly bad idea, while still devouring the then-ever-improving Prog and teh scribblings of its prodigal son Mr. A. Moore, and unknowingly looking forward to the angsty wordplay of Sandman.  

I had had a brief but passionate affair with the Claremont X-books, having never really read American comics before (other than the (very) odd 'Spidey and the Hulk' Marvel UK reprint), but I fear one main hook was the endless locker room/ flimsy nightie scenes, or more fundamentally the adolescent-misfit-with-superpowers heroic-martyrdom wish-fulfillment element.  Jesus, but I was a sorry excuse for a teenager.

Once I realised that the characters were going to be effectively rebooted and be stripped of all their character development every year or so (worst offenders:  Kitty, Rahne, Sunspot and Cannonball - all seemed to go from insecure shorts-wearing teenager to mature confident tux-wearing adult and right back again in roughly 15-issue cycles), I just lost heart.  And mercifully that was long before CABLE!!!! and pals showed up.

By then I was tucked up with the messianic mysognistic Cerebus and looking forward to the glorious future of a comics industry reborn into a myriad of self-published B&W serialised graphic novels that always shipped on time and never canged creative teams.  Ah well, maybe the transpancy of Illyana's nightie wasn't the worst delusion I suffered.