Mairghread Scott

One of the biggest strides in the comic industry over the past decade has come in the form of a wave of exciting and accessible educational comics by established creators. It's something that First Second has noticed too, as the publisher is throwing its weight behind its established line of Science Comics and announcing thirteen more titles in the series, covering a wide range of topics, from cats and dogs to robots and drones.

The comics world is full of questions — like “Who would win in a fight?”; “Which one of the Powerpuff Girls is best?”; and “Who is the handsomest hero and why is it Gambit?” Here at ComicsAlliance, we spend a lot of time thinking about everything from the big questions that matter a whole lot to the small ones that are still kinda fascinating. With The Question, we’re going to give our writers the opportunity to give their answers, because if we’re always thinking about this stuff anyway, we might as well write it down. For our latest question, we wanted to keep things simple. We’re now more than halfway through the year, and 2016 has brought so many exciting new comics. With all that in mind: What's your favorite comic of the year so far?

For those of us who have been waiting thirty years for MASK, Transformers, GI Joe and a handful of other Hasbro properties to be thrown into the same universe, but it raises a lot of questions about what it's going to mean for the books that have been around for a while once the big Revolution event happens. For the Transformers especially, the franchise at the center of the action, there are a lot of questions about how it all ties together. Now, with IDW revealing their post-Revolution plans at San Diego Comic-Con, we've got some answers from Optimus Prime writer John Barber, Transformers: Lost Light writer James Roberts, and Transformers: Til All Are One writer Mairghread Scott. Read on for their thoughts on integrating their complicated history into a new universe, the metaphors behind Cybertronian politics, and whether Roberts feels bad for making me cry about Chromedome and Rewind.

What a week! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sit back and read some comics. The weekend is finally here, and the world can relax and rest once more - but the comics industry has been busy too, you know, and the last seven days have seen a flurry of comics-based news and announcements fly past at high speed. ComicsAlliance have got your back, though: when it comes to comics, we never slow down, and so here’s a look back and just what’s been going on. New comics, new stories, new hirings, new podcasts, new art being made - it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

With her work on Transformers: Windblade, Toil and Trouble, and a pretty great backup story in Power Rangers, Mairghread Scott has become a creator that I'll follow to any project that she decides to write --- and now, that means that I'm about to become very familiar with Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs. Based on an anime series imported to America in the mid '80s, the series is returning in comics form courtesy of Lion Forge, with Scott writing and Sendol Arts providing art. To find out more, ComicsAlliance spoke to Scott about her approach to recreating the series for new fans, how each character was rebuilt, how the Star Sheriffs stack up against the Power Rangers' Zords, and why communication is the key to surviving a firefight.

I am a person who somehow knows all the lyrics to the theme song from Bionic Six --- currently taking up valuable memory space that could be used for literally anything else --- so as you can imagine, it's not every day that I come across a cartoon from the late '80s that I have never even heard of before. But today, friends, was the day I found out about Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs. Adapted from Japan's Star Musketeer Bismarck by the same company that brought Voltron to America, Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs was apparently about spacefaring cowboys who defend the frontier of the future from interdimensional conquerors called Outriders. And if you're like me and you missed it the first time around, here's some good news: Lion Forge is bringing it back in March as a comic from Mairghread Scott and Sendol Arts, and you can check out a preview right here!

You'd think the Power Rangers would've had more luck with comic books. They are, after all, superheroes, and not only that, but they're superheroes in a story that brings in pretty much everything superhero fans love: Secret identities, star-crossed romance, giant robot dinosaurs, moon witches, a disembodied head floating in a tube. Admittedly, some of those might just be things I'd like to see in superhero stories, but the point stands. The show's coming up on 23 years of success on television, and while it seems like everything it needs to make a good comic is right there already, every attempt up to now has resulted in what you could charitably refer to as a mixed bag. Now, it looks like that might finally change. This week, Boom Studios is launching an ongoing Power Rangers series with a zero issue, and I have to admit that for a first issue, it's got everything I want from a Power Rangers comic. And by that, I mostly mean that there's a Bulk and Skull solo story.

Earlier this year, after decades --- literal, actual decades --- of rolling my eyes dismissively whenever anyone brought up the franchise, I agreed to sit down with a complete run of IDW's current Transformers comics and write about the experience of reading them. By the end of it, I wasn't just a fan, but I had to admit that they were, bar none, some of the best comic books I have ever read in my life. Now I'm a dude who got really excited about paying fifty bucks to buy an Ultra Magnus figure that included Minimus Ambus. The system works. The only way I could've liked it more is if they'd somehow combined what they were doing on those titles with something that I already loved, like, say, Christmas. This week, they did that very thing, so in order to talk about it, I'm reviving The Transformed Man for a very special look at this year's Transformers Holiday Special, in which presents are given, trees are decorated, and Thundercracker tries to kill Santa Claus.

You have to give it up for Mairghread Scott and Kelly and Nicole Matthews; it takes a lot of moxie to look at Macbeth, one of the most storied tragedies in the portfolio of Shakespeare and to say, "let's see what we can add to this." Issue #3 of Toil & Trouble introduces another major player to the scene; none other than Lady Macbeth. We also see one of the Wyrd Sisters take radical action --- in the form of a mermaid. Check out a preview.

I've never liked the Transformers. The franchise didn't get its hooks into me as a kid, and while I've tried to give it a shot as an adult, it never really clicked. But now, with a recommendation from almost everyone I know and a well-timed Humble Bundle sale that left me with three years worth (and counting) of IDW's More Than Meets The Eye and Robots In Disguise comics, I'm going on a quest to see if these comics can turn me from someone who has never cared at all about Optimus Prime into someone who uses words like "Cybertron" and "alt-mode" with alarming regularity. And Primus help me, it's working. This week, Windblade embarks on her first solo adventure in the Transformers equivalent of Speed Racer.