One of Comics’ Coolest Creators Returns Because ‘It’s So Hard to Do a Perfect Comic’

Ann Nocenti wrote some of the most inventive, daring, and pointed superhero comics of the 1980s. We’re all really lucky that she makes a triumphant return to the medium this week, with The Seeds #1. It’s not an exaggeration to say Nocenti was one of the most important comics creators of the 1980s. During her tenure as writer and editor at Marvel, she wrote an incendiary run on Daredevil, co-created classic characters like Longshot, and sharpened the Chris Claremont era of Uncanny X-Men. At various turns at DC, she wrote numerous Batman stories, an entire run of Kid Eternity at Vertigo, and a Klarion miniseries. When her comics career waned, a lifelong passion for journalism led her to editing at High Times and Prison Life magazines, as well co-directing a documentary film called The Baluch. Nocenti’s never been too far away from comics, though, and has done smaller stints at Marvel and DC over the last two decades. Part of the hotly anticipated Berger Books imprint headed by Vertigo founder and hall-of-fame editor Karen Berger at Dark Horse and drawn by David Aja, The Seeds marks her return to regular comics-making. I spoke to Nocenti at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con about what’s changed in the medium and why she keeps coming back. io9: You’ve been in and around comics for so long and the craft of the medium has changed. How did you come to grips with the tools changing—things like captions and other storytelling mechanics—from the last time… [Read full story]