Ann "Annie" Nocenti (; born January 17, 1957) is an American journalist, filmmaker, teacher, comic book writer and editor. She is best known for her work at Marvel in the late 1980s, particularly a four-year stint as the editor of Uncanny X-Men and The New Mutants (written by Chris Claremont) as well as her run as a writer of Daredevil, illustrated primarily by John Romita Jr. Nocenti has created such Marvel characters as Longshot, Mojo, Spiral, Blackheart, and Typhoid Mary.
Nocenti is noted for her outspoken political views, including on animal rights, which characterized her run on Daredevil.
Early life
When Ann Nocenti was a child, her parents frowned upon comics, though there were some in her house, including Archie Comics, a Pogo anthology that Nocenti loved, and a Dick Tracy anthology whose grotesquely-rendered characters piqued Nocenti's curiosity, more so than the heroes. Nocenti attended college at SUNY New Paltz, during which she discovered the work of Robert Crumb. She got her first regular comics assignment with Marvel's superhero series Spider-Woman, starting with issue #47 (December 1982). It was not a promising assignment; Marvel had already decided to end the series with issue #50 (June 1983) due to flagging sales. With guidance from editor Mark Gruenwald (who had himself written the series for a time), Nocenti ended the series with the death of the titular character, a decision she came to regret. She recalled, "It was before I understood the intense, personal attachment the readers have to the characters. In retrospect, I realized it wasn't a nice thing to kill a character off. As I worked in the field for a while, I developed a strong personal attachment to a lot of characters and I realized how alive they were." on such titles as The Incredible Hulk, The Defenders, Doctor Strange, and The Thing.
thumb|left|Nocenti with [[Whilce Portacio and Arthur Adams at the 2015 East Coast Comicon, during the 30th anniversary year of their collaboration on Longshot, and the first time they had appeared in public together since publication of that miniseries]]
Nocenti and artist Arthur Adams created the character Longshot in a titular, six-issue miniseries (September 1985 – February 1986). Explaining the concept of the character, which Nocenti borrowed from existentialist writers, she states, "Longshot is the idea of stripping someone of everything that they are. I never read comics, so the idea of a hero to me was different. I couldn't think of it in terms of a 'super hero' hero. I thought of it more as a conceptual hero. Not having a comic book background, I tend to come up with the metaphysics before I come up with the characters. I knew that I wanted to deal with the metaphysics of luck. It was a concept that interested me ... what luck is, what probability is, how you could shift probabilities towards yourself. What are the repercussions of that? So, I did a character centered around that idea. At the time, Nocenti was pursuing her master's degree at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, working at the magazine Lies of Our Times, and reading the work of writers such as Marshall McLuhan, Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman and Walter Lippmann. Longshot's archvillain, Mojo, a slaver and dictator who rules his dimension through the television programs he produces, was created as a direct result of these influences. A character named Manufactured Consent after the Chomsky book of the same name, who appeared in the Nocenti's 1990 book The New Mutants Summer Special in 1990, was also born of these works. as well as the demon Blackheart in #270 (September 1989).
In addition to contributing occasional stories to such anthologies as Marvel Comics Presents and Marvel Fanfare, Nocenti also produced the graphic novel Someplace Strange in collaboration with artist John Bolton. She also wrote The Inhumans Graphic Novel in 1988, and the 1998 X-Men novel Prisoner X.
In Marvel Comics Presents #150 (1994), Nocenti introduced Jessie Drake, a teenaged mutant, who revealed in issue #151 that she was transgender, marking Marvel's first transgender mutant, and hero. After a 25-year absence, the character reappeared in Marvel's Voices: Pride #1, which Marvel published in June 2021 as part of Pride Month.
For the DC Comics imprint Vertigo, Nocenti wrote the 16-issue run of Kid Eternity (May 1993 – September 1994). Later in the mid-1990s, for Marvel, she wrote a four-issue miniseries each starring Typhoid Mary and the supernatural supervillain Nightmare. After writing two issues of Marvel's The All New Exiles in 1996, plus the four-page dramatic story "Old Man", with artist Bolton, in the Dark Horse Comics anthology Strange Wink #3 (May 1998),
Nocenti wrote Green Arrow starting with issue #7 published in March 2012. In September 2012, Nocenti became the writer of Catwoman with issue #0. She launched a Katana series the following February.
Journalism and film
In the 1990s, Nocenti began to focus on journalism and filmmaking. She edited High Times magazine for one year (2004) and was an editor on Prison Life Magazine. Her journalism has been published in The Nation, Print, Utne, Heeb, The Brooklyn Rail, CounterPunch, Filmmaker, and Details, as well for MoveOn.org.
Nocenti's story "The Most Expensive Road Trip in the World" was collected in The Best American Travel Writing 2008, edited by Anthony Bourdain (Houghton Miifflin). She was an editor and writer for Stop Smiling, guest editing the "Gambling Issue". As editor of the screenwriting magazine Scenario, shot in Baluchistan, and made the short Creep for Glass Eye Pix.
In 2009, Nocenti taught screenplay writing at the Ciné Institute in Haiti
Nocenti made a short documentary film with Wendy Johnson titled Disarming Falcons in 2014 which premiered at DOCNYC.
In 2016 she was one of the producers and writers on "Magic City: The Art of the Street", for SC Exhibitions in Dresden, Germany. In 2018 she was an executive producer on "Marvel: Universe of Super-Heroes" at MoPOP museum in Seattle, Washington. In 2018 she wrote The Seeds (with artist David Aja) and in 2019 she wrote Ruby Falls (with artist Flavia Biondi), both for Karen Berger's new comic imprint Berger Books at Dark Horse Comics.
Cameos and homages
Nocenti appears on the photo cover of Spider-Woman #50, in costume as Tigra.
Nocenti appears in The Avengers #215 (Jan. 1982) as a secretary at an advertising agency that Steve Rogers visits looking for work.
Nocenti, along with John Byrne, Ron Wilson, Jim Shooter and Roger Stern are featured in The Thing #7 (January 1983). The issue features the titular character storming into a fictionalized Marvel Comics and encountering the creators behind his own strip.
Nocenti makes a cameo appearance in The Incredible Hulk #291 (January 1984). At the time, Nocenti was assistant editor to Larry Hama on The Incredible Hulk and X-Men. She also appeared in a spoof comic strip in 1984's The Defenders #127.
Arthur Adams visually based the character Ricochet Rita, Spiral's alter ego, on Nocenti.
In Ultimate X-Men, a re-imagination of the X-Men in the alternate universe Ultimate Marvel imprint, Longshot has the civilian name Arthur Centino — his last name an anagram of Nocenti and his first name an homage to artist Arthur Adams, the original character's co-creators.
Awards
Nocenti received an Inkpot Award in 2018.
Personal life
Nocenti lives in New York City. anthology, Slave Labor Graphics, 1997)
- Dark Horse:
- Strange Wink #3: "Old Man" (with John Bolton, anthology, 1998)
- The Seeds #1–2 (of 4) (with David Aja, Berger Books, 2018)
- Following lengthy delays after issue #2, the series was postponed indefinitely.
- The story was eventually completed and released in its entirety as The Seeds (tpb, 128 pages, 2021, )
- Ruby Falls #1–4 (with Flavia Biondi, Berger Books, 2019–2020) collected as Ruby Falls (tpb, 112 pages, 2020, )
- IDW Publishing:
- Womanthology: Heroic: "What's Lost is Lost" (with Alicia Fernandez, anthology graphic novel, hc, 300 pages, 2012, ; sc, 2015, )
- True Blood vol. 2 (co-written by Nocenti and Michael McMillian, art by Michael Gaydos, Greg Scott (#6) and Beni Lobel (#7–9), 2012–2013) collected as:
- Where Were You? (includes #1–4, hc, 120 pages, 2013, )
- Shake for Me (includes #6–9, hc, 128 pages, 2013, )
- Mine! (A Celebration of Liberty and Freedom for All Benefiting Planned Parenthood): "Tiger" (with Natacha Bustos, anthology graphic novel, hc, 304 pages, ComicMix, 2018, ; sc, 2018, )
- Edgar Allan Poe's Snifter of Terror #3: "Tar Feathers" (with Fred Harper, anthology, Ahoy Comics, 2018) collected as Edgar Allan Poe's Snifter of Terror Volume 1 (tpb, 192 pages, 2019, )
- Ripley's Believe It or Not! vol. 3 #2: "Irish Giant" (with Fred Harper, anthology, Zenescope, 2018) collected as Ripley's Believe It or Not! (tpb, 120 pages, 2019, )