Kelly Thompson

There are few comic series that feel quite as tailored to my interests as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Pink. A brand new series out today, the comic is a collaboration between two of my favorite comic writers, Brenden Fletcher and Kelly Thompson, writing for one of the female leads from one of my favorite TV shows growing up. When Boom Studios announced the series earlier this year, I am instantly sold simply on that information alone. But Fletcher and Thompson’s work on issue one, with artist Daniele Di Nicuolo, colorist Sarah Stern, and letterer Ed Dukeshire, goes beyond just nostalgic fare for the Mighty Morphin fan.

A-Force #5 begins a new storyline, and introduces a very exciting new creative team. Kelly Thompson, writer of IDW's Jem and the Holograms, has been co-writing with G. Willow Wilson since the second issue, but with the fifth she takes over as sole writer. Meanwhile Ben Caldwell, recently of DC's Prez, is the new artist. Caldwell's versions of the main characters are unique and lovely, and he also does an excellent giant dragon (which is relevant to the plot of #5, it turns out).

This week at Comixology, IDW has launched a big sale on their all-ages titles, and folks, if you have been waiting for the opportunity to jump onto the epic, ongoing saga that is Angry Birds (written by Jeff Parker and Paul Tobin, for real!), now is your opportunity. But even if your interest goes beyond flinging birds at pigs, there's plenty in there to check out, including Top Shelf titles from James Kochalka, Aaron Renier's Spiral Bound, and of course, their massively successful My Little Pony comics. But mixed in with the rest of the books, there's one title that stands out as the unquestionable star of the show: The first volume of Kelly Thompson and Sophie Campbell's Jem and the Holograms, which is not only one of ComicsAlliance's favorite ongoing titles, but may actually be the best possible adaptation of Jem - and you can grab it today for only four bucks.

Jem and the Holograms is about an all-woman glitter rock band and their quest to rise from the ranks of the Sufficiently Outrageous to become Truly Outrageous. The group has run into a problem: the lead singer, Jerrica, is terrified of singing in public. Thanks to Jerrica’s deceased father, though, they also have a solution: a holographic supercomputer that helps Jerrica create a stage persona that lets her get over her phobia. There would be a lot of resonant storytelling with me if it just stopped there, since I know a thing or two about how a persona you can put on and take off can make things easier –- and harder. Like Jerrica, I also have a secret identity. However, sometimes solutions just free you up to tackle new problems, and the new problem that plagues Jem and the Holograms is their rival band, the Misfits, who claim that their songs are better and that they are going to get her.

IDW is unleashing a wave of "Deviations" this month, taking some of its best known comics and telling stories set in worlds that deviate dramatically from the source material in order to see how fan-favorite characters would respond to a drastically changed landscape. The featured series include The X-Files, Transformers, and G.I. Joe, while the creative team of writer Kelly Thompson and artist Nelson Daniel get to introduce readers to an alternate reality Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters: Deviations imagines a world where the team did not cross streams at the end of the movie, meaning that Gozer --- in the form of the Staypuft Marshmallow Man --- was victorious in their climactic battle. It's a sugar-spewn apocalypse, with our four heroes stuck right in the middle. ComicsAlliance spoke to Thompson and Daniel to find out what it means for the Ghostbusters to be trapped in the fluffiest end-times imaginable. IDW also provided us with the first-look preview of the lettered pages for issue #1, which you can check out below.

It seems that the launch of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was so successful that Boom Studios is following it up with Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Pink, a solo miniseries starring Kimberly, the Pink Ranger, co-written by Brenden Fletcher of Gotham Academy and Batgirl, and Kelly Thompson of Jem and the Holograms, with art by Mirror's Edge: Exordium's Daniele Di Nicuolo, and covers by Elsa Charretier and Marguerite Sauvage.

Jem and the Holograms has been one of the best comics on the stands ever since its debut, and one of the things that really makes it work is how it expands on the original cartoon in ways that make perfect sense. Jerrica's stage fright, Stormer and Kimber's super-cute relationship, and the recasting of Rio as a music reporter put off by Jem's standoffish nature, have all helped to build Kelly Thompson, Sophie Campbell and Emma Vieceli's story into a great, fleshed-out world. Now, with "Dark Jem" kicking off this week, they're turning that world upside-down. The Misfits have lost a lead singer, the Holograms are going dark, and something's wrong with Synergy. To find out more, ComicsAlliance spoke with Thompson about the direction for the next arc, the challenge of making Pizzazz and the Misfits sympathetic, and why the current arc has an awful lot to do with The Karate Kid.

Y'all know about Techrat, right? He's the single most ludicrous character in the entire Jem and the Holograms franchise, and considering that the baseline for weirdness in that show included a record executive with a completely unnecessary secret identity and a group of punked-up glam rockers who tried to murder their enemies on several occasions, including throwing them into an active volcano once, that's saying something. Techrat, on the other hand, is a full-on evil genius supervillain, and by that, I mean he's the character who invented a working time machine on the show. So needless to say, I've been waiting for him to show up and make an impact ever since the new series launched at IDW. Now, thanks to Kelly Thompson and Emma Vieceli, he's not only appearing, he's appearing in a disguise that's a reference to The Karate Kid, so it looks like we've got another strong contender for the best single issue of the year. Check out a preview and watch the Misfits crashing Jem's Halloween party below!

Glamour takes a twisted turn and glitter goes Goth in the upcoming Jem And The Holograms story arc 'Dark Jem', launching in Jem and the Holograms #11 from the reunited launch team of writer Kelly Thompson and artist Sophie Campbell, with variant covers by Jen Bartel. The storyline, unveiled today at New York Comic-Con, features a dark mirror of super-computer Synergy called Silica (amazing) and corrupted takes on all our girls. The first issue of the story will launch with five variant covers that will also be available all together as a metallic foil box set. You can check out one of the covers above --- an awesome Dark Shana, dripping with shadows --- revealed exclusively here at ComicsAlliance.

The comics world is full of questions, from, “Who would win in a fight?” to, “Who came up with that weird idea?” Here at ComicsAlliance, we spend a lot of time thinking about all of it, from the big questions that matter a lot to the small ones that probably don’t matter at all but are still kinda fascinating. With The Question, we’re going to give our writers the opportunity to answer some of these brain-ticklers, because if we’re thinking about these things, you might be thinking about them too. This time we asked our writers; what's your favorite comic by women about women? This year's Ignatz and Eisner wins suggest that women in comics are beginning to get the recognition they deserve, both as creators and as an audience. But there have always been great comics by women and great comics about women, and some comics that are both, and they exist across genres, borders, and cultures.