Dazzler (Alison Blaire) is a superheroine appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics, often in association with the X-Men. She first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #130 (February 1980). A mutant with the ability to convert sound vibrations into light and energy beams, Dazzler was developed as a cross-promotional, multi-media creation between Casablanca Records and Marvel Comics until the tie-ins were dropped in 1980. The character was created by a committee of Marvel staff, principally writer/editor Tom DeFalco and illustrator John Romita Jr. She starred in a self-titled series in the early 1980s which lasted forty-two issues, a Marvel Graphic Novel titled Dazzler: The Movie, a four-issue limited series co-starring The Beast titled Beauty and the Beast, and later joined the cast of Uncanny X-Men. She has also featured in other Marvel teams.

Dazzler’s sexuality has given the character notoriety among the LGBT community. Dazzler made her live-action debut in Dark Phoenix played by Halston Sage. Dazzler was originally conceived in early 1979 as a joint venture between Marvel Comics and Casablanca Records, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group that had achieved considerable success with notable disco acts including Donna Summer and Village People. Accounts differ as to which party made the first move; in 1986 Louise Simonson would tell Amazing Heroes that Casablanca approached Marvel;[ however, in a 2011 blog post Jim Shooter would credit the idea to Marvel employee Alice Donenfeld and based on the success of The Archies, who later pitched it to Casablanca supremo Neil Bogart. Bogart was enthusiastic, not only wanting to produce music ‘by’ the character (who initially had the working name of ‘Disco Queen’) but also launch it with a half-hour animated special featuring numerous Marvel characters.Marvel began shaping the character; Shooter assigned the development to Tom DeFalco (who, like Shooter, had experience working at Archie Comics),

Roger Stern, Roberta ‘Dickie’ Mackenzie and John Romita Jr. while continuing to oversee the project himself. Shooter recalled that DeFalco originally pitched the name ‘Evelyn Free’ (a pun on “evil and free”) for the character’s civilian identity before the group decided on Alison Blaire.At this stage much about the character was in flux; Romita Jr. initially designed her as African American, heavily based on singer/actress Grace Jones with a costume inspired by the skin-tight and revealing eveningwear he had seen on women at New York nightclubs; her name was changed, first to Disco Dazzler and then to simply Dazzler at the suggestion of Stern; and initially her powers were to be an ability to make people tell the truth. DeFalco objected to the latter, feeling it was “not very interesting for a comic book”. Instead he successfully suggested that as her name was Dazzler light-based powers made more sense.Casablanca held final approval over the character at this stage, and vetoed some of Marvel’s ideas. DeFalco would recall that the numerous delays led the creative team to believe disco “would be dead” before Dazzler’s debut as the various parties hammered out the initial story, which DeFalco and Romita turned into an origin story