Spitfire (New Universe)

Spitfire and the Troubleshooters (renamed to Spitfire with issue #8 and to Codename: Spitfire with issue #10) was a short-lived comic book series from Marvel Comics' New Universe line. It followed "Spitfire" (Professor Jenny Swensen) and a group of brilliant but eccentric college students as they used high-tech exoskeletons to combat the mysterious terrorist organization called The Club.

Following the series' cancellation, Swensen was redesigned as the armor-skinned paranormal Chrome, and became a regular character in DP7.

A different version of the character - Dr Jennifer Swann - was introduced in 2007 as part of Warren Ellis' newuniversal, a single-title reworking of the New Universe concepts.

Publication history

Spitfire and the Troubleshooters was created for the New Universe line by Eliot R. Brown and Jack Morelli; Brown recalls that it was Morelli who first came up with the idea of doing the series. Recalling how Spitfire was conceived, Brown commented, "It was more than Iron Girl, it was a different technological attitude, more reality-based. Iron Man was not unreal, but Iron Man as a concept did too much. Even in the 1980s, the suit was so smart, it could have gone off and had its own adventures. I tried to do something that was more of a garbage can with legs and a good brain in it, something more mechanical." The concept of the Troubleshooters was based on a series of escapades Brown shared with a childhood friend, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while visiting him at the MIT campus in the mid-1970s.