Barbara Kesel
comic book writer and editor
Barbara Randall Kesel (; née Randall, born October 2, 1960) is an American writer and editor of comic books. Her bibliography includes work for Crossgen, Dark Horse Comics, DC Comics, IDW Publishing, Image Comics, and Marvel Comics.
Biography
Kesel initially entered the comics industry as college student after writing a 10-page letter to editor Dick Giordano regarding the portrayal of female comic book characters, when Giordano then offered her a writing job. Her first published comics story (credited as "Barbara J. Randall") was "He with Secrets Fears the Sound...", a Batgirl backup feature, in Detective Comics #518 (Sept. 1982). After receiving her college degree in drama studies in 1983, she became an associate editor at DC Comics in 1984, and was promoted to editor the following year. In 1988, she wrote a Batgirl Special and then co-wrote, with then-husband Karl Kesel, a Hawk and Dove miniseries, followed by an ongoing series that ran from 1989 until 1991. As a solo writer, Kesel scripted the licensed Dungeons & Dragons series Spelljammer in 1990–1991 and an adaptation of the D&D novel trilogy Avatar in 1991.
Kesel became an editor at Dark Horse Comics in 1991 and later was part of Team CGW, responsible for most of the design and creation of the setting and characters in the Golden City location. In the second half of the 1990s, she also wrote for Image Comics, scripting all seven issues of Savant Garde, the miniseries Shattered Image with fellow writer Kurt Busiek, and issues of Stormwatch and WildC.A.T.s.
The public source identifies “Barbara Kesel” as comic book writer and editor. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Barbara, Kesel and comic.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q807502. VIAF identifies the subject as 47833465. The Library of Congress control number is n97026041. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1982, 1983 and 1984.
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This entry incorporates text from “Barbara Kesel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.