Happy Birthday! Legendary Comics Writer Louise Simonson Turns 69 Today!

09/26/2015 01:40 am EDT

Happy birthday to the co-creator of Apocalypse, Steel, Power Pack and the first woman credited as an ongoing writer of a Superman title! Louise Simonson is celebrating her 69th birthday today.

Simonson is best known for her work on Power Pack, Superman: The Man of Steel and X-Factor.

Born Mary Louise Alexander, Simonson's first marriage in 1966 took her to New York City, where in 1971 she modeled for the image above -- Berni Wrightson's cover to House of Secrets #92, the first appearance of Swamp Thing. At that point going by Louise Jones, she met famed comic book artist Walter Simonson in 1973 and they eventually married in 1980.

From the mid-1970s until 1979, Louise worked as an editor for horror comics, before moving to Marvel to edit comics, including Uncanny X-Men, The New Mutants, Indiana Jones and Star Wars. In 1983, she left editing to pursue full-time work as a writer, creating Power Pack. After developing a number of ideas for X-Factor when assigned to write an inventory story for the title, she was hired on as the book's full-time writer with X-Factor #6, in which she and artist Jackson Guice introduced Apocalypse, the villain who will serve as the X-Men's primary antagonist in next year's big-budget blockbuster X-Men: Apocalypse.

Five or so years later, both she and Guice would be working regularly on the Superman titles. Simonson and Jon Bogdanove launched a new monthly title in 1991, Superman: The Man of Steel, an assignment Simonson would keep for nearly 90 issues of the title's 136-issue run. She was key to a number of best-selling and acclaimed stories during her time on the title, including The Death and Return of Superman, and the character's marriage to Lois Lane.

During the Reign of the Supermen! storyline, Simonson and Bogdanove created the character of Steel, who would become one of Superman's most significant supporting characters and even get his own feature film adapatin (albeit one that wasn't generally beloved).

During her decades-long career in comics, Simonson has written a vast array of characters from Marvel and DC to licensed properties and beyond. In 2014, Simonson wrote Super Secret Crisis War, a crossover event featuring numerous characters from Cartoon Network shows and published by IDW Publishing.

Happy birthday, Louise Simonson!

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