Jenny Blake Isabella
Jenny Blake Isabella
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Jenny Blake Isabella

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Jenny Blake Isabella

Jenny Blake Isabella (born December 22, 1951), who writes under the names Tony Isabella and Jenny Blake, is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, artist and critic. She is the creator of Marvel Comics superhero Black Goliath, and of DC Comics' first major African-American superhero, Black Lightning. She was a columnist and critic for the Comics Buyer's Guide magazine.

Isabella was born in Cleveland, Ohio on December 22, 1951. She discovered comics at the age of four, when her mother began bringing her I. W. Publications titles she bought at Woolworth. Early influences from the comic book world included Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Robert Kanigher, and Len Wein; Isabella also cited being influenced by William Shakespeare, Harlan Ellison, Ed McBain, Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Lester Dent, Dave Barry, Max Allan Collins, Don Pendleton, and Studs Terkel.

As a teenager, she had many letters published in comic book letter columns under her earlier name of Tony Isabella, primarily in the pages of Marvel titles. She was an active member of the comics fandom, a member of CAPA-alpha (an amateur press association for comics), and a regular contributor to comics fanzines.

Isabella's fanzine work attracted the attention of Marvel editor Roy Thomas (whose earliest published writings had been in fanzines such as Alter Ego), and in 1972 Thomas hired Isabella as an editorial assistant. With Marvel's establishment of Marvel UK that year, Isabella oversaw reprints used in Marvel UK's nascent comics line. She briefly edited for Marvel's black-and-white magazine line.

As a writer, Isabella scripted Ghost Rider, the characters It! The Living Colossus in Astonishing Tales, Luke Cage in Hero for Hire and Power Man, the Living Mummy in Supernatural Tales, Tigra in Marvel Chillers, Daredevil, and Captain America. While writing the "Iron Fist" feature in Marvel Premiere, she co-created the supporting character Misty Knight with artist Arvell Jones. Isabella developed the concept of The Champions series and wrote the first several issues.

During her mid-1970s run on Ghost Rider, Isabella wrote a two-year story arc in which Johnny Blaze occasionally encountered an unnamed character referred to as "the Friend" who protected him from Satan, the source of his supernatural powers and identity as Ghost Rider. Isabella said in 2007:

Getting prior approval from editor Roy Thomas, as I would from later editors Len Wein and Marv Wolfman, I introduced "The Friend" into the series. He looked sort of like a hippie Jesus Christ and that's exactly who He was, though I never actually called Him that.... It allowed me to address a disparity that had long bothered me about the Marvel Universe. Though we had no end of Hell(s) and Satan surrogates in our comics, we had nothing of Heaven.... [After two years] I'd written a story wherein, couched in mildly subtle terms, Blaze accepted Jesus as his savior and freed himself from Satan's power forever. Had I remained on Ghost Rider, which was my intent at the time, the title's religious elements would have faded into the background. Blaze would be a Christian, but he'd express this in the way he led his life. ... Unfortunately, an assistant editor took offense at my story. The issue was ready to go to the printer when he pulled it back and ripped it to pieces. He had some of the art redrawn and a lot of the copy rewritten to change the ending of a story two years in the making. "The Friend" was revealed to be, not Jesus, but a demon in disguise. To this day, I consider what he did to my story one of the three most arrogant and wrongheaded actions I've ever seen from an editor.

Isabella later identified the assistant editor as Jim Shooter. In 2020, Shooter said he was concerned that this "basically established the Marvel universe is a Christian universe" and could alienate readers by suggesting "that all other religions are false". Shooter said he made the changes after consulting with editor Marv Wolfman.

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