DC announced yesterday that Ann Nocenti will be taking over the writing chores on Green Arrow, as of issue #7.  JT Krul was previously (currently, if you’re at the shop) writing Green Arrow.

Nocenti, while having done a small amount of work for DC (a Kid Eternity series for Vertigo and a handful of Batman-related material 7 years ago), is best known for her work at Marvel: a well-regarded run on Daredevil with John Romita, Jr. and the original Longshot mini-series with Arthur Adams.  Besides Longshot, Nocenti’s lasting contributions to the Marvel universe include Typhoid Mary and Blackheart.

You may recall DC was taking a lot of heat from fans over the lack of female creators when the “New 52” was announced.

Nocenti’s been out of comics for quite a while.  DC went out and brought her back.  Nocenti’s name also appeared a few times after Dan DiDio asked who he ought to hire (after a fan confrontation about the lack of women on the new titles).  We just might be witnessing a publisher listening to its fanbase and acting on it.  This is not such a common occurrence in comics.  Good for you, DC.

It’s likely I’ll be giving Green Arrow a look when it hits #7.  Not because a woman’s writing it, but because I liked Nocenti’s Daredevil run.

1 COMMENT

  1. Nocenti’s Daredevil run was unlike anything on the news stands at the time. I remember it fondly and and more clearly than most other books published during the period. She has an interesting voice. I hope she gets enough editorial freedom to let it sing.

  2. I couldn’t remember her name at all wanted to go see if I had read any of her run. Yes. I had. This was back when I was really young and didn’t really pay attention to creative teams… but I do remember being hypnotized by these books. I think in part because I kind of felt like they were a little more adult than I should have been reading, but… yes, this was a striking era.

    http://daredevil.omegacen.com/DaredevilNocenti.html

    Typhoid Mary, alone, is one of the best tortured characters of comics. It was a bummer to see how she “came back” under Bendis only to be thrown away almost immediately.

  3. Bringing in Ann Nocenti to write a mid-level DC superhero book is a good FIRST STEP; but I think I’ll wait for the follow-through to see if editorial is inadvertently going to trip her up.

  4. While she was out of comics, Ann was the editor for awhile of a great screenplay magazine called Scenario.

    Her Daredevil run was extremely memorable, as was that crazy “Spider-Man in a mental institution” story she wrote in the late ’80s.

  5. Nocenti’s Marvel writing was uniformly awesome (and she had an impressive tenure there as an editor too) — but the last project of hers I read, Batman/Catwoman: Trail of the Gun was absolutely awful.

    Here’s hoping she brings the authorial mojo that powered her Longshot, Daredevil, and Typhoid Mary stories to Green Arrow. I’m not going to pre-order issue 7 at this point, but if Nocenti’s run starts strong I’ll happily get on board.

  6. “You may recall DC was taking a lot of heat from fans over the lack of female creators when the “New 52″ was announced.”

    Fixed: You may recall DC was taking a lot of heat from a few fans which was then fueled by internet coverage over the lack of female creators that they knew about, some who just weren’t known at the time, when the New 52 was announced.

  7. Or, to those of us that are more cynical, is this merely a desperate attempt at placation?

    Ann’s Daredevil was among the first (monthly) comics I ever read (and loved) so I wish her nothing but success. I just hope she was hired for the right reasons.

  8. . . . but I think I’ll wait for the follow-through to see if editorial is inadvertently going to trip her up.

    I wonder how much trouble, if any, Nocenti will have adapting to the current style requirements? Michel Fiffe’s tribute to Nocenti and DAREDEVIL #260 indicates that she can write very powerful material.

    SRS

  9. ” OR Did a Publisher Just Listen to it’s Fans?”

    I know you are going with the “hiring a female” angle, but maybe they also listen to they fans complaining about how unreadable Green Arrow has been for the last two years!!

  10. “You may recall DC was taking a lot of heat from a few fans…”

    Fixed: You may recall a bunch of internet whiners complaining about a little negative publicity, and then attempting to silence or dismiss the outcry when their favorite publisher of whack-off material got bashed for their gross negligence.

  11. I’m tempted to say that the story here is that a respected creator who’s been out of the business for a while is returning. And she’s working on a character for whom she is quite suited, given that she shares his bleeding heart liberal politics.

    But no, it really is a big deal that DC hired another woman after the big blow-up at San Diego. I seriously doubt this is a coincidence.

    I confess that I didn’t love her run on Daredevil, though there’s no denying Typhoid’s importance as an addition to Daredevil’s rogues’ gallery. She created a lot of pretty good characters, actually; I always thought Bullet was interesting. It’s just that, even though I’m a bleeding heart myself, I found the political bent of the comic heavy-handed. The dialogue was always sort of melodramatic, even for the 80s.

    She did write some great X-Men Classic backups, though. And I’d be willing to give Kid Eternity another look, though I did not like it when I first read a few issues of it.

  12. People who complain there aren’t enough female creators and then complain that this is just to placate the complainers are ridiculous. You have to start somewhere if you are going to fix the problem. Great move by DC and I hope to see future announcements along these lines.

  13. Cuz there’s nothing like hiring creators who knew and worked with Bob Harrass in the 80s, right?

    Wake me when new female creators are given the kind of chances JT Krul has got.

  14. Wake me when new female creators are given the kind of chances JT Krul has got.

    People with good track records, and reputations for getting material in on time, are always going to have advantages over new creators. Putting a creator on a serial is much more like hiring a new employee than anything else. Even if a creator has flashes of brilliance, the brilliance will rarely, I’m sure, compensate for missed deadlines and sloppy work. From a business standpoint, I can’t think of a reason to hire someone who has a rep for missing deadlines over all the other people who don’t. Hiring someone without a track record is a jump into the unknown.

    SRS

  15. Love her work…Nocenti at her best balanced superheroes with real-world issues and wrote really interesting, complex women characters…besides her great run on DAREDEVIL she also wrote a very nice INHUMANS graphic novel (with art by Bret Blevins) that dealt with abortion…I will definitely be buying GREEN ARROW as long as she’s involved…

  16. I really enjoyed Nocenti’s Inhumans GN and especially her X-Men back-ups — those were some awesome character pieces. Glad to see her doing superhero work again.

  17. While it’s nice to see DC double its staff of female writers by adding one person, the more important point is that Ann Nocenti is a good writer with a proven record who has written a book which the majority of people can see has some synergy with this new gig.

  18. I have to laugh, DC announces this and I saw the pirates have started putting out special packs of her work so that people can see what her work was like. Shame no commercial company is that responsive!

  19. I read an issue of Ann Nocenti’s run on Daredevil when I was 9 or 10. It was about a CIA agent with wires in his head, attached to the reptillian part of his brain. He used to twist them to remember things.

    So, yeah.

    The woman traumatised me when I was a kid.