title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori opened his hard-court season by competing at the 2015 Citi Open defeating James Duckworth, Leonardo Mayer, Sam Groth, and Marin Čilić en route to the final where he beat John Isner in three tight sets to capture his third title of the year and 10th title overall. At the 2015 Rogers Cup, he reached the semifinals without losing a set and defeated Rafael Nadal for the first time in eight tries in the quarterfinals. He lost to Andy Murray in the semifinals in straight sets. He withdrew from the Cincinnati Masters citing fatigue and hip injury, which affected his semifinal match against Murray the previous week. He lost in the first round of the 2015 US Open to Benoît Paire.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori started the Asian Fall by participating in his hometown tournament, Rakuten Japan Open, where he reached the semifinals, including victories over Borna Ćorić, Sam Querrey and Marin Čilić. He was upset in his semifinal match by unseeded Benoît Paire. He reached third rounds of the Shanghai Rolex Masters before losing to Kevin Anderson. He then played in the BNP Paribas Masters. However, he retired in the third round match against Richard Gasquet due to an abdominal injury.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori qualified for the ATP World Tour Finals for the second straight year in a row, clinching eighth place. He defeated Tomáš Berdych, but lost to Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer. He failed to qualify for the semifinals, finishing in third place in his group.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori began the season ranked No. 8. In January, he entered the Brisbane International as the No. 2 seed where he advanced to the quarterfinals with a bye and a straight sets win over Mikhail Kukushkin, but was eventually upset by seventh seed Bernard Tomic in three sets. At the Australian Open, Nishikori was seeded seventh. He began with victories over Philipp Kohlschreiber, Austin Krajicek and Guillermo García López before beating ninth-seeded Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to reach his third Australian Open quarterfinal, where he lost to Novak Djokovic. Nishikori next competed at the Memphis Open where he was seeded first and was the three-time defending champion. Nishikori received a bye into the second round and advanced to the semifinals without dropping a set. In the semifinals, Nishikori beat Sam Querrey in three sets and later beat young American Taylor Fritz in straight sets to win his fourth straight Memphis title and his 11th ATP title overall. He joined Jimmy Connors as the only four-time winners of the event.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: During the March Masters, Nishikori reached the quarterfinals in the Indian Wells Masters for the first time in his career after defeating Mikhail Kukushkin, Steve Johnson in straight sets and saving a match point against ninth seed John Isner in Nishikori's serve in the third set. He lost to fourth seed Rafael Nadal in straight sets. Nishikori improved his feat by reaching the quarterfinal again in the Miami Open by beating Pierre-Hugues Herbert, Alexandr Dolgopolov and Roberto Bautista Agut in straight sets. He then reached the semifinals of the tournament for the second time in his career after saving five match points and beating Gaël Monfils in a comeback three-set match. He then reached his second final in a Masters 1000 after dismantling Nick Kyrgios in straight sets. He lost to then world No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the final in straight sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: For the 5th consecutive year, Nishikori did not play in Monte Carlo and instead turned his focus to defending his Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell title. He reached the final without losing a set, but lost in straight sets to resurgent nine-time champion Rafael Nadal in the final. He followed his good run by reaching the semifinals in the Mutua Madrid Open, beating Fabio Fognini, Richard Gasquet for the first time in 7 meetings and rising teenage star Nick Kyrgios. He lost in the semifinal to Novak Djokovic in straight sets despite a close 2nd set. Nishikori then replicated his Madrid run by reaching the semifinals of the Italian Open for the first time after beating Viktor Troicki in the opener in three sets, followed by wins over Richard Gasquet and Dominic Thiem in straight sets. He lost in the semifinal against world Novak Djokovic in a marathon 3 hours three-setter despite winning the first set 6–2 and managed to pull off a tiebreak in the third set. He later participated at the French Open but lost to an in-form Gasquet in the fourth round in 4 sets. Nishikori began his grass season at the Halle Open, but retired in the 2nd round due to a hip injury. His next tournament was at Wimbledon, where he retired in the fourth round against Marin Čilić, once again due to injury.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: With Murray, Federer and Nadal absent, Nishikori was seeded 3rd for the Rogers Cup Masters in Toronto. After beating Grigor Dimitrov and Stan Wawrinka in the quarterfinals and semifinals respectively, Nishikori then lost to Djokovic in straight sets in the finals, going 0–5 so far in the season against the Serb. Nishikori then participated in the 2016 Summer Olympics, where he reached the semis before being defeated by World No. 2 Andy Murray in straight sets. However, he later acquired the bronze medal after he defeated Rafael Nadal 6–2, 6–7 (1), 6–3, becoming the first Japanese man to win an Olympic tennis medal since Ichiya Kumagae in the 1920 Summer Olympics.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori nearly replicated his 2014 US Open run by reaching the semifinals of the US Open, defeating Benjamin Becker, Karen Khachanov and Nicolas Mahut respectively in four sets, followed by a straight sets fourth-round win against Ivo Karlović, and a 5-set victory over world No. 2 Andy Murray in the quarterfinals that lasted nearly 4 hours; this was arguably his biggest victory since the 2014 US Open. After leading by a set and a break against eventual champion Stan Wawrinka in the semifinals, a clearly fatigued Nishikori lost in 4 sets, hence ending his U.S hardcourt season with a finals and semifinals run in the Canadian Open and the US Open respectively.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: After an indifferent Asian swing season where he retired in his home tournament, the Rakuten Japan Open, Nishikori returned to action again in Basel, where he was the No. 3 seed. He enjoyed a successful tournament there, but lost to Marin Čilić in the finals.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori next represented Japan in the Davis Cup Play-Off against Ukraine and played in the doubles rubber alongside Yūichi Sugita, winning the match in straight sets, giving Japan an unassailable 3–0 lead to promote his country back into the 2017 Davis Cup World Group.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori made his third successive appearance at the year-end championships after becoming the fifth player to qualify for the 2016 ATP World Tour Finals. He won his first match, upsetting third seed, Stan Wawrinka in straight sets 6–2, 6–3 before losing his other two round-robin matches to Andy Murray and Marin Čilić respectively, both in three sets. Having done enough to nevertheless make the semifinals however, he was then defeated by a resurgent Novak Djokovic in straight sets, ending his season with a singles ranking of world No. 5 for both the second time in his career and in the past three years as well.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori began the year by reaching the finals of Brisbane, beating Wawrinka along the way, before falling to champion Grigor Dimitrov. In the Australian Open, after defeating Andrey Kuznetsov in five sets in the first round, Kei beat his next two opponents in straight sets. His run ended in another five-set match to eventual champion Roger Federer.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori withdrew from the US Open in Cincinnati with a right wrist problem and subsequent scans revealed a tear in one of the tendons. Soon after that, he announced that he would miss the rest of the season. As a result of his extended absence, following the conclusion of Paris he fell to World No.22, his lowest ranking since January 2012 and his first time out of the top 20 in the rankings since March 2014.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori returned after a 5-month injury layoff and started his 2018 season by playing at the American challenger tour events. In Newport Beach he lost in the first round against American qualifier Dennis Novikov. In the following week, Novikov and Nishikori met again in the first round. This time, Nishikori won in straight sets. Kei Nishikori went on to win his next four matches en route to win his sixth ATP Challenger career titles in Dallas, by defeating Mackenzie McDonald in the final.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori made his return to the ATP Tour competition (since August 2017 Montreal) at the inaugural ATP 250 Tournament in New York. Nishikori made a back-to-back winning return in New York by defeating Noah Rubin and Evgeny Donskoy in the first and second round respectively. He defeated Radu Albot in the quarterfinals in three sets, before losing to Kevin Anderson in the semifinal. Kei Nishikori was unseeded at the 2018 Abierto Mexicano Telcel in Acapulco and lost against Denis Shapovalov in the first round.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: In a bid to regain match fitness, Nishikori entered the Monte-Carlo Masters for the first time since 2012, having never progressed past the third round at the tournament before. Unseeded for the tournament, he beat Tomas Berdych, Daniil Medvedev, Andreas Seppi, Marin Cilic, and Alexander Zverev to reach his 4th career Masters 1000 finals, before losing to Rafael Nadal in straight sets in the finals. He thus became the active player with the most Masters 1000 finals without a title. At the 2018 Italian Open, he advanced past Feliciano López, third seed Grigor Dimitrov, and Philipp Kohlschreiber before losing to Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals in three sets. At the 2018 French Open, Nishikori was seeded 19th. He defeated Maxime Janvier, Benoît Paire, and Gilles Simon before falling to seventh seed Dominic Thiem in the fourth round.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: In the lead up to Wimbledon, Nishikori lost to Karen Khachanov in the 2nd round at the Halle Open. Entering Wimbledon with continued injury woes, expectations were low for Nishikori to make a deep run. He beat Christian Harrison and Bernard Tomic before upsetting Nick Kyrgios in the 3rd round. In the 4th round, despite facing some elbow pain, Nishikori came from a set down to beat Ernests Gulbis, reaching the quarterfinals of Wimbledon for the first time. Thus, Nishikori had succeeded in reaching the quarterfinals of every grand slam event. In the quarterfinals, he lost to eventual champion Novak Djokovic in four sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the US Open, Nishikori was seeded 21st. He defeated Maximilian Marterer in straight sets in the first round, facing Gaël Monfils in the second. Monfils was forced to retire in the second set after sustaining a wrist injury during the match. Nishikori then defeated 13th seed Diego Schwartzman and Philipp Kohlschreiber to reach his third quarterfinal at the US Open. There, he faced Marin Čilić in a rematch of the 2014 final. He dropped the first set 2–6, but pulled out a close five-set victory, breaking Čilić in the final game of the fifth set to win 6–4. He advanced to the semifinals, losing to Novak Djokovic in straight sets, 6–3, 6–4, 6–2.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori was the top seed at the Moselle Open. He defeated Peter Gojowczyk and Nikoloz Basilashvili before being upset by qualifier Matthias Bachinger in the semifinals in three sets. He then participated in the Japan Open seeded third, defeating compatriot Yūichi Sugita in the first round, Benoît Paire in the second, fifth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in the quarterfinals, and eighth seed Richard Gasquet in the semifinals. In the final, he was upset by unseeded Daniil Medvedev.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the Shanghai Masters, Nishikori was seeded eighth, defeating Wu Yibing and Sam Querrey to reach the quarterfinals, where he was defeated by top seed and defending champion Roger Federer. At the Vienna Open, Nishikori was seeded fifth. He defeated Frances Tiafoe, Karen Khachanov, top seed Dominic Thiem, and Mikhail Kukushkin to reach his third final of the year, where he was defeated by second seed Kevin Anderson.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the Paris Masters, Nishikori was seeded tenth. He defeated Adrian Mannarino before facing Kevin Anderson in the third round, this time defeating him in straight sets. He was then defeated by third seed Roger Federer in the quarterfinals. However, by reaching this stage of the tournament, he accrued enough points to secure a spot in the ATP Finals.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the ATP Finals, Nishikori was seeded seventh. He was drawn in Group Lleyton Hewitt and faced second seed Roger Federer in his first match, defeating him in straight sets. This was Nishikori's first victory over Federer since 2014 and ended a six-match losing streak against him. He was eliminated in the group stage after losing his next two matches against Kevin Anderson and Dominic Thiem. He ended the season ranked World No. 9.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori started his 2019 season at the Brisbane International, where he was seeded second. He defeated Denis Kudla, sixth seed Grigor Dimitrov, and Jérémy Chardy to reach the final, where he defeated fourth seed Daniil Medvedev in three sets to win the title. This was his first tournament victory since February 2016 and broke his streak of nine consecutive final losses.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the Australian Open, Nishikori was seeded eighth. In the first round, he faced qualifier Kamil Majchrzak, who was making his Grand Slam main draw debut. Majchrzak took the first two sets in just 90 minutes, before suffering from cramps. Nishikori won 15 of the next 17 games, before Majchrzak retired down 3 games to none in the fifth set. In the second round, he faced Ivo Karlovic, against whom he took the first two sets before dropping the third and fourth. The fifth set proceeded to a tiebreak, which Nishikori won 10–7. In the fourth round, he faced 23rd seed Pablo Carreño Busta. He dropped the first two sets before staging a major comeback, winning the third and fourth and leading by a break in the fifth before failing to serve out the match. Nishikori narrowly forced a tiebreak, trailing until a crucial point at 8–5, in which Busta contested an incorrect late call. The umpire awarded the point to Nishikori, who proceeded to win the tiebreak 10–8. He thus advanced to his fourth Australian Open quarterfinal, where he retired in the second set against Novak Djokovic.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At Rotterdam, Nishikori was the top seed. He defeated Pierre-Hugues Herbert, Ernests Gulbis and Márton Fucsovics before he lost in the semifinals to Stan Wawrinka. At Dubai, he entered as first seed, defeating Benoît Paire in the first round before being upset by Hubert Hurkacz. At Indian Wells, he was the sixth seed in the singles draw, defeating Adrian Mannarino before losing again to Hubert Hurkacz. He also entered the doubles draw, teaming with Máximo González. They lost to Raven Klaasen and Michael Venus in the first round. At the Miami Open, seeded fifth, he lost his first match to Dušan Lajović.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the Monte-Carlo Masters, Nishikori was defending an appearance in the final, but lost to Pierre-Hugues Herbert in the second round. At Barcelona, he entered seeded fourth, defeating Taylor Fritz, Felix Auger-Aliassime and Roberto Carballés Baena, being defeated by Daniil Medvedev in the semifinals. At the Madrid Masters, he was seeded sixth. He defeated Hugo Dellien before losing to Stan Wawrinka in the third round. At Rome, he entered as sixth seed, defeating Taylor Fritz and Jan-Lennard Struff before losing to Diego Schwartzman in the quarterfinals.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the French Open, Nishikori was the seventh seed. He defeated Quentin Halys and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga before defeating Laslo Đere and Benoît Paire in tight five-set matches in the third and fourth rounds, respectively. In the quarterfinals, he was defeated in straight sets by defending champion Rafael Nadal, who went on to defend his title.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At Wimbledon, Nishikori was seeded eighth. He reached the fourth round without dropping a set, defeating Thiago Monteiro, Cameron Norrie, and Steve Johnson. He dropped a set against Mikhail Kukushkin in the fourth round, but won the match in four, reaching the quarterfinals at Wimbledon for the second consecutive year. He was defeated in four sets by Roger Federer.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori started his year playing in the 2021 ATP Cup, losing both of his singles matches to Daniil Medvedev and Diego Schwartzman. At the Australian Open, Nishikori lost in the first round to Pablo Carreño Busta in straight sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori made his first quarterfinal since Wimbledon 2019 in Rotterdam, after beating 7th seed Félix Auger-Aliassime and Alex de Minaur. He lost to Borna Ćorić in 2 tiebreak sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: He also made the quarterfinals in Dubai, beating Reilly Opelka, 5th seed David Goffin and Aljaz Bedene. He lost to eventual finalist Lloyd Harris in 3 sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori was seeded at an event for the first time since the 2019 US Open in Miami. Seeded 28th, he once again beat Bedene, but lost in the third round in 3 sets to Stefanos Tsitsipas.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori's clay-court swing also showed progress of his return. His first tournament was Barcelona, where after beating Guido Pella and 13th seed Cristian Garín, he took a set off Rafael Nadal before losing in 3 sets. Nishikori reached the second round in Madrid, and the third round in Rome, losing both matches to Alexander Zverev. He recorded his best Grand Slam result in over a year at the French Open, beating Alessandro Giannessi and 23rd seed Karen Khachanov in 5 sets. After his third round opponent, Henri Laaksonen retired, he progressed to the fourth round, losing once again to Zverev.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: His grass court swing was much more quiet, losing in Halle to Sebastian Korda and in Wimbledon to Jordan Thompson.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the Olympics, Nishikori recorded his first top 10 win since 2018 by beating Andrey Rublev in straight sets in the first round. He also beat Marcos Giron and Ilya Ivashka to reach the quarterfinals, where he lost in straight sets to Novak Djokovic.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori then participated in Washington, where he beat Sam Querrey and 9th seed Alexander Bublik in straight sets. He then beat Cameron Norrie to reach the quarterfinals. There, he beat Lloyd Harris in straight sets to advance to the semifinals. He lost to Mackenzie McDonald in 3 sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: On January 25, 2022 Kei Nishikori announced that he will be undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his left hip and will be aiming to come back on tour in about six months.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori announced he was aiming to be able to return for the 2023 Australian Open, stating that he has a 'strong desire' to return.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori made his Davis Cup debut for Japan in April 2008 in the Asia/Oceania Zone Group I semifinal against India in New Delhi. He was 18 years and 104 days old, the youngest player to play for Japan. He played the singles rubber on the first day, but lost to Rohan Bopanna in five sets. He then defeated Mahesh Bhupathi in a dead rubber to record his first Davis Cup match win. To date, Nishikori has compiled a 19–3 win–loss record overall (17–3 in singles and 2–0 in doubles).


title: Kei Nishikori

text: In the 2014 Davis Cup World Group first round in Tokyo, Japan defeated Canada 4–1, and Nishikori had a hand in three Japan victories in the tie. He beat Peter Polansky and Frank Dancevic in the singles rubbers, and teamed up with Yasutaka Uchiyama for a victory in doubles over Dancevic and Daniel Nestor. Japan advanced to the quarterfinals in the World Group for the first time, but Nishikori missed the quarterfinal against Czech Republic due to a left groin injury.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori represented Japan at his maiden Olympics in Beijing 2008. He lost in the first round to Rainer Schüttler of Germany in three sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the London 2012 Olympics, Nishikori competed in the singles and doubles competitions, partnering Go Soeda. In the singles, as the 15th seed, he reached the quarterfinals, knocking out Bernard Tomic, Nikolay Davydenko, and fourth seed David Ferrer on the way. He became the first Japanese man to reach the quarterfinals since Takeichi Harada in the 1924 Paris Olympics. However, his run was ended by eighth seed Juan Martín del Potro of Argentina. In doubles, Nishikori and Soeda were eliminated in the first round by Switzerland's defending champions Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Fresh from his Rogers Cup finals appearance in Toronto, Nishikori represented Japan at the Rio 2016 Olympics, where he was seeded fourth. In the semifinals, he lost to Andy Murray and faced Rafael Nadal for the bronze medal match, which he won in three sets; it was the first Olympic tennis medal for Japan in 96 years.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori and Wawrinka have met eleven times, with Nishikori trailing 4–7. Wawrinka won both of their first two meetings in 2012, in the third round of the Cincinnati Masters and in the quarterfinals of Buenos Aires, respectively. Nishikori recorded his first win against Wawrinka in the quarterfinals of the 2014 US Open in a thrilling five-set match; Nishikori later became the finalist of the tournament.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: They met in another Grand Slam quarterfinal, this time at the 2015 Australian Open. Wawrinka beat Nishikori in straight sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: They met three times in 2016. Nishikori won two of those meetings. They both qualified for the 2016 ATP World Tour Finals and were drawn in the same group. Nishikori defeated Wawrinka in their round-robin match.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori and Raonic have met seven times, with Nishikori leading their head-to-head 5–2. They met once in 2012, four times in 2014, and twice during the 2015 season. At their first meeting in the 2012 Rakuten Japan Open final, Nishikori won in three sets. Their first meeting in 2014 was at the Madrid Masters, with Nishikori winning in two tiebreak sets. At Wimbledon in 2014 in the fourth round, Raonic scored his first win against Nishikori, beating him in four sets to advance to the quarterfinals. They met again in the US Open fourth round, where the match tied the all-time latest finish for a match at the US Open with Nishikori prevailing in five tight sets; the match lasted 4 hours and 19 minutes. They had a rematch of their 2012 final in the Rakuten Japan Open 2014 final, where Nishikori won again in three sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: In 2015, the duo first met at the Brisbane International, with Raonic prevailing in three tiebreaks. This was followed later on in the same year in the Davis Cup, where Nishikori won in another epic five-setter to keep Japan's hopes for a quarterfinal place alive.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori and the now-retired David Ferrer met 14 times, with Nishikori leading 10–4. They played for the first time in the 2008 US Open, with Nishikori registering his first win over a top-10 player, beating Ferrer in a five-set thriller as a teenager. From 2011 to 2013, they met four times, with Ferrer winning three times in straight sets and Nishikori winning only once in the 2012 Olympics in three sets. Nishikori turned the tables in their head-to-head play in 2014, winning all four of their encounters. Their first meeting was at the Miami Masters where Nishikori beat Ferrer in three tight sets after saving four match points to progress to the quarterfinals. They next had an epic encounter at the Madrid Open, with Nishikori beating Ferrer in another tight three-setter to progress to the final of a Masters 1000 for the first time in his career. Their next two encounters were in the BNP Paribas Masters and the ATP World Tour Finals, where Nishikori again defeated the Spaniard in three sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: In 2015, Ferrer had a remarkable start to the season, but was beaten in the Australian Open by Nishikori in a dominant straight-sets victory. However, Ferrer ended his losing streak to Nishikori in the Abierto Mexicano Telcel, where he beat Nishikori in straight sets in the final. In Madrid, in the quarterfinals, Nishikori took revenge and beat him in straight sets.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori and Cilic have met 16 times, with Nishikori leading 10–6. Cilic won their first ATP World Tour meeting in 2008 at Indian Wells, beating Nishikori in straight sets in the first round. In 2010, Nishikori avenged that loss at the US Open, beating Cilic in a tough five-setter lasting almost five hours. In 2011, they met at the Chennai Open where Nishikori beat Cilic in three sets. In 2012, they encountered each other at the US Open where Cilic avenged his past US Open loss to Nishikori by beating him in four sets to progress to the 4R. In 2013, they met at the Memphis Open where Nishikori beat him in straight sets to progress to the SF and he would later go on to win the title.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: In 2014, their rivalry was more intense with 3 ATP meetings. They first met in 2014 at the Brisbane International where Nishikori beat him in three sets to book his semifinal spot. They met again at the clay courts of the Barcelona Open where Nishikori dominated Cilic in another straight sets victory where he would later go on to win his first title on clay. Their most significant meeting would be at the 2014 US Open, they met in the finals after Nishikori overpowered world No. 1 Novak Djokovic and Cilic overcame world No. 2 Roger Federer in the semifinals. Their meeting in the final made the 2014 US Open the first Grand Slam where none of Federer, Nadal and Djokovic reached the final since the 2005 Australian Open. However, Nishikori was defeated in straight sets by an in-form Marin Cilic in the final.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: In 2015, the pair met in the semifinals of the 2015 Citi Open, with Nishikori coming back from a set down to prevail in three, and gain a place in his 15th career final. They meet again later on in the 2015 Japan Open where Nishikori came back from a set down to defeat Cilic in three tight sets. In 2016, the duo met in the 4th round of the 2016 Wimbledon where Nishikori retired mid-match in the 2nd set after losing the first set due to a rib injury which had disrupted his grass season. They met again in the final of the Swiss Indoors, where Cilic prevailed in straight sets. During the round-robin stage of the Year-End 2016 ATP World Tour Finals, Cilic came from a set down to defeat Nishikori and ultimately prevail. Most recently, Nishikori defeated Cilic in the quarterfinals of the Monte-Carlo Masters by a score of 6–4, 6–7, 6–3.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: At the 2018 US Open, Nishikori and Cilic again met in the quarterfinals. In a five set thriller, Nishikori won a spot in the semifinal of the US Open for only the third time (and only the third time advancing past the quarters in any of the four majors).


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Nishikori has endorsed the Wilson Wilson Burn 95; however, it is believed by racquet enthusiasts that he used an older modified Wilson nCode nTour underneath the Steam paint job. In the past, special versions of the Steam racquet have been sold by Wilson, exclusively in Japan, capitalizing on Nishikori's popularity in his home country. Most recently, in 2012 the Steam Pro was available for sale, and was advertised as having the same specifications as Nishikori's actual racquet.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: He wears Uniqlo clothing and as of the beginning of 2017 red Nike Vapor Tour shoes after having played for almost a decade in Adidas. He is also sponsored by Nissin Foods, TAG Heuer, Fast Retailing, LVMH Moët Hennessy, Japanese financial services firm Jaccs Co., Wowow, mattress topper Air Weave, EA Games, Delta Air Lines and Japan Airlines, in a deal which has his image emblazoned on a Boeing 777-300ER dubbed "JET-KEI". He is often seen wearing a Cup Noodles badge on his sleeve during matches. In 2011, he filmed a commercial for Morinaga & Company's sports drink Weider in Jelly. He also carries around a character called Mr. Saturn from the popular video game "Mother / Earthbound".


title: Kei Nishikori

text: With solid and consistent shots on both wings, Nishikori plays most comfortably at the baseline, using dominating groundstrokes to push his opponents around and hit winners. He can generate a lot of pace, especially on his flat backhand, while his Western forehand is accurate and consistent. However, he also has the ability to play defensively and hit consistently to wear out his opponents. Because of this, many people have commented that he has the offensive ability of Fernando González and the defensive skills of Novak Djokovic. Many critics and fellow players have said that Nishikori's two handed backhand is one of the best on the tour, on par with that of Djokovic and Murray. Under the coaching of Michael Chang, Nishikori has gained the habit of taking balls earlier without compromising consistency, reminiscent of Andre Agassi, allowing him to take time away from his opponents. Nishikori has a slightly unusual style of hitting groundstrokes on both wings, winding up the racket with a short but compact backswing, and hitting the ball right at its peak. These make his groundstrokes powerful, accurate and unpredictable due to the delayed backswing, which prevents opponents from anticipating which direction the ball will go.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: He has also been praised for his return of serves, which he executes well due to his ability to take them quickly. He is known to hit winners off return of serves with strong and accurate groundstrokes.


title: Kei Nishikori

text: Although his serve is not exceptionally strong, it is consistent enough to prevent opponents from easily winning points off it. He has a flat first serve that can reach speeds of up to 120 mph and employs a topspin second serve.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In the history of video games, the first generation era refers to the video games, video game consoles, and handheld video game consoles available from 1972 to 1983. Notable consoles of the first generation include the Odyssey series (excluding the Magnavox Odyssey 2), the Atari Home Pong, the Coleco Telstar series and the Color TV-Game series. The generation ended with the Computer TV-Game in 1980, but many manufacturers had left the market prior due to the market decline in 1977 and the start of the second generation of video game consoles.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: Most of the games developed during this generation were hard-wired into the consoles and unlike later generations, most were not contained on removable media that the user could switch between. Consoles often came with accessories and cartridges that could alter the way the game played to enhance the gameplay experience as graphical capabilities consisted of simple geometry such as dots, lines or blocks that would occupy only a single screen. First generation consoles were not capable of displaying more than two colours until later in the generation, and audio capabilities were limited with some consoles having no sound at all.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In 1972, two major developments influenced the future of the home video game market. In June, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded Atari, which would go on to be one of the most well-known video game companies and play a vital role in the early generations of consoles. In September, Magnavox, an established electronics company, released the Odyssey. While highly limited in its capabilities compared to future consoles and a commercial failure, the Odyssey introduced features that became standards in the industry including removable cartridges and multiple detached controllers for two players. Inspired by the Odyssey's ping-pong game, Atari would soon go on to market the game "Pong" in both arcade and home versions; Nintendo, a well-established Japanese company that made a number of different products, entered the video game console market for the first time in 1977 with its Color TV-Game series.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In 1951, Ralph Baer conceived the idea of an interactive television while building a television set from scratch for Loral in the Bronx, New York. Baer did not pursue the idea, but it returned to him in August 1966 when he was the Chief Engineer and manager of the Equipment Design Division at Sanders Associates. By December 1966, he and a technician created a prototype that allowed a player to move a line across the screen. After a demonstration to the company's director of research and development, some funding was allotted and the project was made official. Baer spent the next few months designing further prototypes, and in February 1967 assigned technician Bill Harrison to begin building the project. Harrison spent the next few months in between other projects building out successive modifications to the prototype. Baer, meanwhile, collaborated with engineer Bill Rusch on the design of the console, including developing the basis of many games for the system. By May, the first game was developed and by June, multiple games were completed for what was then a second prototype box. This included a game where players controlled dots chasing each other and a light gun shooter game with a plastic rifle. By August 1967, Baer and Harrison had completed a third prototype machine, but Baer felt that he was not proving successful at designing fun games for the system; to make up for this he added Bill Rusch, who had helped him come up with the initial games for the console, to the project. He soon proved his value to the team by coming up with a way to display three dots on the screen at once rather than the previous two, and proposing the development of a ping pong game.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: As Sanders was a military contractor and not in the business of making and selling commercial electronics, the team approached several cable television industry companies to produce the console, but were unable to find a buyer. By January 1969 the team had produced the seventh and final prototype, nicknamed the "Brown Box". After a Sanders patent attorney recommended approaching television manufacturers, they found interest first at RCA and finally at Magnavox, who entered negotiations in July 1969 and signed an agreement in January 1971. Magnavox designed the exterior of the machine, and re-engineered some of the internals with consultation from Baer and Harrison; they removed the ability to display color, reduced the number of controller types, and changed the system of selecting games from a dial to separate game cards that modified the console's circuitry when plugged into the console. Magnavox named the console the Magnavox Odyssey and announced the system's launch date for September 1972.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In the late 1960s, Nolan Bushnell saw "Spacewar!" at Stanford University. "Spacewar!" is a 1962 mainframe game developed by a group of students and employees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bushnell had worked at an amusement park, and felt that an arcade game version of the game would be very popular. The high price of computers capable of running the game, however, meant that any such arcade game would not be economically feasible. By 1970, however, minicomputers were beginning to come down in price. He and his office mate, Ted Dabney, agreed to work together to try and design a prototype of the game. By the end of November 1970, the pair had abandoned the project as untenable, as economically feasible computers were not powerful enough. Dabney soon thought of a way to manipulate the video signal on the screen without a computer controlling it, and from there Syzygy Engineering came up with the idea of removing the computer altogether and building specialized hardware to handle everything for the game instead. "Computer Space", the first commercial arcade video game, was released by the pair as Syzygy Engineering through Nutting Associates at the end of 1971 and after its release they incorporated as Atari in the following year and began designing more games. Bushnell saw a demonstration of the Odyssey console playing its "Table Tennis" game in early 1972 and assigned their first employee, Allan Alcorn, to produce an arcade table tennis game. The result, "Pong", was the first major arcade video game success, and inspired a large number of arcade and dedicated console versions and clones, including Atari's Home Pong in 1975.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: The first generation of consoles did not contain a microprocessor and were based on custom codeless state machine computers consisting of discrete logic (TTL) circuits comprising each element of the game itself. Over the generation, technology steadily improved and later consoles of the generation moved the bulk of the circuitry to custom integrated circuits such as Atari's custom Pong chips and General Instruments' AY-3-8500 series.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: Graphical capabilities were limited throughout the generation, often supported with physical accessories and screen overlays, but saw some improvement towards the end of the generation. While the Odyssey could only display 3 square dots in black and white, as the generation progressed, consoles started being able to display color as well as more complex shapes and text. Early consoles such as the Odyssey and TV Tennis Electrotennis required players to keep track of scores manually but later, many introduced score counters on the display to assist players in score tracking. Audio capabilities were slow to improve over the generation, starting with the Odyssey, which had no audio, and later moving on to consoles which had buzzers that could produce a small range of beeps and buzzes.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In 1976, General Instruments produced a series of affordable integrated chips that allowed companies to simplify console production and lower costs. Due to this, many companies had entered the home console market by the late 1970s. A significant number released consoles that were essentially clones of Atari's Home Pong and many were poorly made and rushed to market, causing the home console market to saturate. The demand for the chip was so high that General Instruments could not supply enough to satisfy all the orders it was receiving causing problems for some smaller companies. Coleco received their order early on allowing them to build up strong production capabilities and have success with their Telstar range.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: The start of the second generation and the next major advancement in home console technology began in 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F. The technology behind the first generation quickly became obsolete as consumers had the ability to purchase new games for second generation consoles instead of having to purchase new systems when they wanted new content as with the dedicated consoles of the first generation. In comparison to the limited game library for each dedicated console, the Atari VCS launched with Combat, a cartridge containing 27 games. As people transitioned to the newer systems, some companies were left with surplus stock and were selling at a loss. The combination of market saturation and the start of the second generation caused many companies to leave the market completely. These events became known as the video game crash of 1977, as sales of second generation consoles were only modest for the next few years until the arrival of the killer app, the home port of "Space Invaders" for the Atari VCS in 1980.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: There were hundreds of home video game consoles known to have existed in the first generation of video games. This section lists the most notable.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In 1972 Magnavox released the world's first home video game console, the Magnavox Odyssey. It came packaged with board game paraphernalia such as cards, paper money and dice to enhance the games. It had features that became industry standard in subsequent generations such as detachable controllers, light gun accessories and interchangeable game cartridges. While no game data was stored on the cartridges as they would be in future consoles, they could be used to select one of the twelve games built onto the hardware. Magnavox licensed its video game patents to other companies for a fee and prosecuted companies who released consoles without a licensing agreement.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: It was with the Odyssey that Nintendo first became involved in the home video game market. According to Martin Picard in the "International Journal of Computer Game Research": "in 1971, Nintendo had – even before the marketing of the first home console in the United States – an alliance with the American pioneer Magnavox to develop and produce optoelectronic guns for the Odyssey, since it was similar to what Nintendo was able to offer in the Japanese toy market in [the] 1970s."


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In 1974 Philips purchased Magnavox and released a series of eight Odyssey consoles in North America from 1975 to 1977. All of them were dedicated consoles, and each subsequent release was an improvement over the previous, adding features such as additional game variations, on-screen displays, and player-controlled handicaps such as smaller paddle sizes and variable ball speed. Three Odyssey series consoles were also released in Europe with similar features from 1976 to 1978.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: On September 12, 1975, several months before the release of "Home Pong" in North America, Epoch released Japan's first home console, the TV Tennis Electrotennis. The technology was licensed from Magnavox and it contained a single ball and paddle style game that resembled Pong but without an onscreen score display. The game controls were contained within the base unit and it connected to a television set through an ultra high frequency (UHF) antenna, as opposed to being directly connected, which was unique to the console at the time. Compared to popular consoles of the generation, it performed poorly with an approximate 20,000 units sold.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In late 1975 Atari released a home version of their popular arcade game "Pong". It was the first use of a microchip in an Atari product and had been in development since 1974 under the lead of Allan Alcorn and Harold Lee. By the end of 1975, Atari had become a major company in the home console market due to "Home Pong". Following Pong's success, Magnavox filed suit against Atari for infringement on its technology patents and ended up settling out of court with Atari becoming a licensee of Magnavox.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: Home video games achieved widespread popularity with the release of a home version of "Pong" and its success sparked hundreds of clones, including the Coleco Telstar, which went on to be a success in its own right with over a dozen models, and the "Binatone TV Master" by British company Binatone.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: Starting in 1976, Coleco released a series of fourteen dedicated consoles up until 1978, when they suffered a significant loss due to the combination of dock workers' strike, preventing it from shipping the final product in time for the holidays, and the start of the second generation. The series featured a number of different styles of ball games and external accessories to enhance gameplay such as the Telstar Arcade, which had a unique triangular design that came with a light gun and steering wheel attached to the casing. The series was marketed at a lower price than its competitors and sold well with over a million sales.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In the late 1970s, Nintendo released a series of five consoles for the Japanese market. The first of the series and the first console created by Nintendo, the Color TV-Game 6, was released in 1977 and contained six ball-and-paddle games. The last, the Computer TV-Game, was a 1980 port of Nintendo's first arcade game, "Computer Othello". The third console in the series, the Color TV-Game Racing 112, was the first project of Shigeru Miyamoto, who would go on to become the creator of some of the most well-known video game franchises.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: All of the handheld systems from the first generation are dedicated consoles and started late into the first generation. It was not until the second generation and the release of the Microvision that players could purchase games separately for the systems. The early dedicated handheld consoles were eventually eclipsed in popularity by programmable video games, which became popular in the fourth generation with the introduction of the Game Boy.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: One notable example is the Mattel handheld game series, which were released from 1977 to 1982. The first to be released were "Mattel Auto Race" and "Mattel Football". They were followed by other titles based on sports and some licensed properties such as "Battlestar Galactica". Each game had basic controls, a simple LED interface and a buzzer for sound. The series was popular, sold well and, at times, was difficult to find due to high demand.


title: First generation of video game consoles

text: In the same year, Coleco began to release handheld consoles after the end of the Telstar home console series. They released "Electronic Quarterback", which expanded on the popular American football style games by adding new features. Alongside "Mattel Football", it became the other popular sports game of the period.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Valkyrie is a fictional superheroine appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character, based on the Norse mythological figure Brynhildr, was created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema. First appearing in "The Avengers" #83 (December 1970), Valkyrie became a mainstay of the superhero team known as the Defenders and a close ally and one-time love interest of the superhero Thor.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Valkyrie, also known by her Asgardian name Brunnhilde, was selected by Odin to lead his personal unit of shield-maidens, the Valkyrior. Renowned for her prowess in battle, Valkyrie is often accompanied by her winged horse Aragorn and carries the enchanted sword Dragonfang. In the 2010s, Valkyrie became a founding member of the Secret Avengers and co-leader of the Fearless Defenders with Misty Knight. Among Valkyrie's other aliases are Barbara Norris, Samantha Parrington, Sian Bowen and Annabelle Riggs, who all, at one point, hosted her spirit. Samantha Parrington, one of Valkyrie's previous hosts, later received superhuman powers and became a member of the Defenders herself.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Tessa Thompson portrays the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films "" (2017), "" (2019), and "" (2022).


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: The Valkyrie first appeared as a guise of the Enchantress in "The Avengers" #83 (December 1970) and was created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema. Thomas used another iteration of the character when the Valkyrie persona was placed into a mortal woman named Samantha Parrington as an adversary for the Hulk in "The Incredible Hulk" vol. 2 #142 (August 1971).


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Roy Thomas publicly stated the character's creation, "I wanted a sort of female Thor, but of course at first I just made her a disguise of the Enchantress in THE AVENGERS. I left the look mostly to John Buscema, though I may have said I wanted her to be blonde."


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Writer Steve Englehart and artist Sal Buscema put the Valkyrie's essence into another mortal woman, Barbara Norris, in "The Defenders" #4 (February 1973) and had the character join the group as a longtime member. Englehart has stated that he added the Valkyrie to the Defenders "to provide some texture to the group". Steve Gerber introduced Jack Norris as the estranged husband of Barbara but the Valkyrie persona had no memory of him. Writers David Anthony Kraft and Ed Hannigan explained some of the Valkyrie's backstory in "The Defenders" #66-68 (Dec. 1978–Feb. 1979). Three years later, writers J. M. DeMatteis and Mark Gruenwald wrote a follow-up story in "The Defenders" #107-109 (May–July 1982) which resolved remaining plot points from the Kraft and Hannigan story.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: The Valkyrie remained a member of the Defenders through most of the series' run and is apparently killed in the final issue, #152 (Feb. 1986). According to writer Peter B. Gillis, the Valkyrie's death was part of an editorial edict to free up the surviving Defenders for use in "X-Factor". The character was restored to life in a "Doctor Strange" storyline written by Gillis in 1988 and made only a few appearances in the 1990s.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: In 2001, writer Kurt Busiek and co-writer/penciller Erik Larsen revived the "Defenders" series and restored Samantha Parrington as the mortal incarnation of the Valkyrie.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: The Valkyrie's Asgardian iteration was restored in a one-shot comic book and the character appeared regularly throughout the "Secret Avengers" series, from issue #1 (July 2010) through its final issue #37 (March 2013). Valkyrie appears in the 2013 series "Fearless Defenders" by Cullen Bunn and Will Sliney.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Valkyrie began appearing as part of the Asgardians of the Galaxy team in 2018, and she plays a part in the War of the Realms storyline in 2019.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Brunnhilde was selected by Odin, King of the Gods of the realm of Asgard, to lead the Valkyrior (the Choosers of the Slain), a group of warrior goddesses who would appear over the battlefields of mortal worshippers of the Asgardian gods and choose which of the fallen were worthy to be taken to Valhalla, the land of the honored dead. Brunnhilde served capably in this capacity for centuries.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: According to a sentient, disembodied eye that claimed to have once belonged to Odin, the Asgardian monarch once gave his son Thor the mortal identity of the warrior Siegmund. Circumstances forced Odin to decree that Siegmund must be slain. Brunnhilde, recognizing that Odin was acting against his true wishes, sought to protect Siegmund, but Odin himself then caused Siegmund's death. Brunnhilde helped Siegmund's pregnant lover, Sieglinde get to safety. As punishment for her defiance, Odin removed Brunnhilde's Asgardian powers and immortality and cast her into a trance. She was eventually awakened by Siegfried, the son of Siegmund and Sieglinde and another mortal incarnation of Thor.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Brunnhilde and Siegfried became lovers, and she made him invulnerable so long as his back was not turned on his foe. Siegfried fell under the influence of magic and betrayed her. He was later murdered, and Brunnhilde, still in love with him, leapt into his blazing funeral pyre (this part of her background was based on the Volsunga saga). Odin restored both of them to life, restoring their Asgardian roles and powers, but removing their memories of their earthly lives. It is unclear how much truth, if any, there is to this account by the eye.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Brunnhilde and her fellow Valkyries continued to gather heroic mortal warriors for Valhalla until roughly a millennium ago, when Odin was forced to cease virtually all interaction with the Earth in accordance with a pact that he and the leaders of Earth's other pantheons of gods made with the extraterrestrial Celestials. From then onward, the Valkyries could only choose slain heroes from among fallen Asgardian warriors. Brunnhilde was bitter over being barred from choosing warriors on Earth and roamed Asgard in pursuit of something meaningful to do. In a tavern on the outskirts of Marmoragard, Brunnhilde encountered Amora the Enchantress, who offered her a life of adventure. For several weeks Brunnhilde accompanied the Enchantress on her conquests. Brunnhilde soon discovered Amora's immoral nature and tried to end their partnership. In response the Enchantress trapped Brunnhilde within a mystic crystal of souls. While Brunnhilde's body remained in suspended animation, her immortal soul became Amora's plaything. Over the centuries the Enchantress used Brunnhilde's spiritual essence to give the Valkyrie's powers to herself or to her pawns.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Specific instances of Amora's exploitation of the Valkyrie before recent years are not yet known. The first time the Enchantress assumed the Valkyrie's physical aspect in recent years was in a plot to lead a handful of female superhumans against the male Avengers as the Lady Liberators. Her true identity was discovered and her plan thwarted. Months later, the Enchantress bestowed the Valkyrie's power upon a socialite named Samantha Parrington in an attempt to get revenge on the Hulk.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Finally, a woman driven mad by being trapped in another mystical dimension, Barbara Norris, was given the Valkyrie's power and consciousness by the Enchantress to help her then-allies, the group of superhumans called the Defenders, escape from the clutches of the sorceress Casiolena. Amora did not undo her spell on Norris after Casiolena's defeat. As a result, Norris' body now possessed Brunnhilda's consciousness, appearance, and powers, while Norris' own mental essence was trapped in Brunnhilde's real body in Asgard. Aware that she was an immortal essence in a mortal woman's body, the Valkyrie briefly left the Defenders in an attempt to discover Barbara Norris' past. She meets Norris' father, Alvin Denton, shortly before his death and then returns to the Defenders.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: It was not until a minor Asgardian warrior named Ollerus attempted to take over Valhalla that the Valkyrie's two mixed aspects met for the first time. Brunnhilde's mental essence trapped in Norris's transformed body, fought Norris’ mental essence trapped in Brunnhilde's real body. At the end of that encounter, the Valkyrie's body, still possessed by Norris’ mind, was consigned to Niffleheim, the realm inhabited by the spirits of the non-heroic Asgardian dead, while Brunnhilde's mind in Norris’ transformed body accompanied the Defenders, who had made the other dimensional journey with her, back to Earth.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: For reasons yet unknown, Brunnhilde was not concerned at this time about reuniting her mind with her true body. It was not until Barbara Norris’ body was murdered that the Valkyrie's spirit and mind were inadvertently freed from their mortal host. With the help of Doctor Strange's magic, Brunnhilde regained her true body, which was rescued from Niffleheim by the Enchantress. Back in her real body, Brunnhilde regained her full memory and normal warrior personality as well. Brunnhilde then battled Amora and banished her to the crystal of souls. Feeling estranged from Asgard in general and Odin in particular for their neglect of her centuries-long plight, Brunnhilde chose to return to Earth with the Defenders.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Odin placed the dangerously powerful self-styled goddess Moondragon into Brunnhilde's charge. Brunnhilde was to teach Moondragon humility, and Moondragon served alongside Brunnhilde in the Defenders. Brunnhilde was to take action against Moondragon should she again become a menace. Eventually Moondragon reformed, but later she fell once again under the malevolent influence of the alien entity called the Dragon of the Moon. Moondragon attacked the Defenders, but Brunnhilde, given temporary additional powers by Odin for this occasion, including the power to grow to gigantic stature, opposed her. Brunnhilde summoned other Valkyries to her aid and together with two other Defenders, the Angel and Cloud, they defeated Moondragon but failed to capture her.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Months later Moondragon returned to attack the Defenders. During this encounter, her power was vastly augmented by the alien Beyonder. In order to defeat the Dragon, Brunnhilde and the Eternal called Interloper projected their immortal life forces against it. They were joined by Defenders member Andromeda and the Defenders' former foe Manslaughter, for it was necessary that Brunnhilde's and Interloper's life forces pass through "mortal instruments" in order that Moondragon be defeated as well. Joining hands, the four allies hurled the tremendous power of their combined life forces at the Dragon, Moondragon, and the Gargoyle II, whose body was now under the Dragon's control. Three other Defenders went to rescue endangered innocents, and when they returned, Brunnhilde, Interloper, Andromeda, Manslaughter, Moondragon, and Gargoyle had all seemingly been transformed into statues of ashes and dust, and the Dragon of the Moon was apparently gone.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Brunnhilde was restored to life by Doctor Strange, now in the host body of a woman known as Sian Bowen. The other Defenders, Interloper, Andromeda, and Manslaughter were restored to life as well and they formed the Dragon Circle to battle the Dragon of the Moon. After the Dragon of the Moon was defeated, Brunnhilde returned to Asgard. Brunnhilde was killed in battle just before Loki's destruction of Asgard.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: With the return of the Asgardians to Earth, Brunnhilde was next seen as a member of the Secret Avengers. Writer Ed Brubaker confirmed that the Valkyrie on the team was indeed the original Brunnhilde.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: After the 2011 storyline "Fear Itself", Brunhilde seemingly defects from the Secret Avengers, embarking in a mission to steal and recover for herself the hammers used by the "Worthy", Cul's servants. She later reveals to have stopped consuming the Apples of Idunn, thus lessening her stamina and resilience and reverting to a mortal form, and as a Valkyrior she is able to seal within herself the hammers. She plans to die after the deed is over, so as to banish the worthy from the human plane of existence for the rest of eternity. At the end of the series, the All Mother (Freyja, Gaea, and Idunn) task her with selecting a new group of Valkyries. Only this time the new Valkyries are to be all women from Earth. The story continues in the 2013 "The Fearless Defenders" series in which Valkyrie recruits Misty Knight, Danielle Moonstar, Hippolyta, and the mortal scientist Annabelle Riggs as part of the new Valkyrior to stop Caroline le Fey, the daughter of Morgan le Fey, and the Doommaidens, corrupted undead Valkyries who have awakened in the Valkyrior's absence. During this time, Valkyrie develops a brief romance with Riggs, who later becomes host to Valkyrie's spirit after Riggs sacrifices herself to save the team.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: During the 2014 "AXIS" storyline, Valkyrie is among the heroes recruited by an inverted Doctor Doom to join his team of Avengers. During the 2017 "Monsters Unleashed" storyline, Valkyrie and Hippolyta are seen fighting Leviathon Tide monsters in Edinburgh. Angela recruits her to join the Asgardians of the Galaxy.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: During the "War of the Realms" storyline, Valkyrie and the rest of the Valkrior are massacred by Malekith and his forces invading New York where Valkyrie is beheaded by Malekith.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Valkyrie is the strongest of all Valkyrior. Like all her people, her body is several times denser than that of humans. She is not immortal, but she ages far more slowly than humans. Valkyrie is immune to all earthly diseases and is difficult to injure. Her Asgardian physiology grants her enhanced levels of stamina. Valkyrie can perceive the approach of death, in the form of a "deathglow" surrounding a person's body. She does not know how death will come but she can tell that it is imminent. Valkyrie can transport herself and a dying or dead body to and from the realm of the dead by willing it. Valkyrie has had extensive training in sword fighting as well as unarmed combat and horseback riding. Her natural fighting ability is among the best of all Asgardians, matched only by Sif.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: The Enchantress first transformed Samantha Parrington into the Valkyrie temporarily to gain revenge against the Hulk. On Earth, Pluto and Lorelei much later restored the Valkyrie's powers within Samantha Parrington. Pluto tricked Lorelei though, erasing her memory, draining her powers, and turning her into a duplicate of Valkyrie. While Samantha was used by Pluto to turn Earth into a realm of the dead, Lorelei was found by the Defender Nighthawk, who believed she was the real Valkyrie and made her a Defender, though she never spoke. When the Defenders tried to stop Pluto, Lorelei battled Samantha and was restored to her former self. Samantha was freed from Pluto's control and she became part of the Defenders again as Valkyrie. She and her teammate Hellcat later got an apartment together and Parrington remembered her real name when someone called her by her nickname "Sam". The two superheroines then met her parents, who thought that her transformation into Valkyrie was just a phase she was going through. Much to Parrington's chagrin, her parents are proud of her and turned their mansion into the Defenders base.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Jane Foster became Thor for a time, and lost her powers. All Valkyries died during "The War of the Realms", and Foster becomes the new Valkyrie by the end of it.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Valkyrie is a 19-year-old girl named Barbara Norris who aspires to play the public role of superhero, despite, at first, having no actual powers or skills. She describes herself as a female Thor, only without the hammer, strength, or weather-powers. When Hank Pym was dismissed from the Ultimates, he decided to join the Defenders, a group of good hearted, but delusional, somewhat farcical individuals enamored with superheroes but without powers or exceptional abilities. This is how he met Barbara, who called herself "Thor-Girl", telling Pym during introductions that while she doesn't have any powers, she is extensively proficient in martial arts. This turned out to be a lie to impress Pym; she later confesses to him that she barely made it to an Orange Belt in karate and it took her several tries to pass the test.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: Valkyrie next appears in "The Ultimates 3" #1, now apparently super-powered, riding a black Pegasus and wielding a large, supposedly mystical sword that she uses to cleave Venom nearly in two, but seems to have no idea where these powers or weapons came from. At that point, she has been in a romantic live-in relationship with Thor for weeks and despite cultural differences, they are very close and allude to being in love. Since her last appearance, she appears to have been granted super strength and limited invulnerability; other superhuman attributes and abilities remain unknown. She speaks with a distinct valley girl accent, and while she does not seem to be the most intelligent of her teammates, she makes up for it with her loyalty, especially to Thor, and her big heart, along with being very powerful. At several points, she makes references to having lived a quiet, normal human life before becoming superhuman. She suggests she is more akin to Thor than it may seem, possibly meaning they may have some sort of shared Asgardian heritage. Her deepest fear is returning to the powerless, poor, and somewhat comically ordinary existence she had before. When confronted with this fear by the illusion-casting Mastermind, just before her two captors decide to assault her sexually, she is broken free of the illusion by a shadowy figure who claims to be the source of her new powers; she then retaliates by killing Mastermind and dismembering his partner Pyro, taking both his hands off at the wrists with her sword.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: During the 2009 "Ultimatum" storyline it is revealed that Valkyrie was killed and transported to Valhalla, the Asgardian afterlife for fallen warriors run by Hela, an Asgardian goddess, who is presented as above most other Asgardian gods in power and station. Thor learns of this and transports himself to Hela's dimension, demanding he let Valkyrie live again. Hela, then states that if he is able to overcome the challenge presented to him, he may bring Valkyrie back to the land of the living. In the middle of the ensuing battle, Thor finds that Captain America's soul is also there, having been killed in the real world as well. Thor and Capt. America win the challenge and Hela grants Thor's request, but with the catch that once a soul has entered Hela's realm, it cannot leave without being substituted, so Thor gives up his soul so that Valkyrie may live and Hela returns her to Earth, whole and unharmed (Capt. America is given a reprieve on his soul as well and is returned to the land of the living, but how this worked with the "Soul Quota" stipulation is not addressed), while Thor's soul remains in the afterlife. Valkyrie, enraged and heart broken at the loss and sacrifice of her love, joins the battle once more and attacks Magneto while trying to receive Thor's hammer and severs his arm. Magneto then uses his powers to slit her throat. She is then briefly shown, still alive, until Magneto collapses the ceiling on her. Her fate is unknown until where it is revealed she now wields Thor's hammer. She loses it in battle with the Defenders who now have superpowers due to Loki's intervention. She is killed in the battle which allows Thor to resurrect and face Loki. During the battle, Loki is suddenly killed by a spear thrown by Valkyrie. Although apparently alive again, she reveals that she is now a servant of Hela and departs with Loki's body but not before asking Thor to defend the Earth to which she once belonged.


title: Valkyrie (Marvel Comics)

text: In January 2018, Marvel announced that a version of Valkyrie inspired by Tessa Thompson's portrayal of the character in "" would join the Exiles in a series by writer Saladin Ahmed and artist Javier Rodriguez. Ahmed said, "Though she's not technically from the Marvel Cinematic Universe reality, she's basically the literalization of the larger-than-her-physical-frame swagger that Tessa Thompson displayed in "Thor: Ragnarok", turned up to 11."


title: Karl Rove

text: Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) is an American Republican political consultant, policy advisor, and lobbyist. He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation on August 31, 2007. He has also headed the Office of Political Affairs, the Office of Public Liaison, and the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives.


title: Karl Rove

text: Prior to his White House appointments, he is credited with the 1994 and 1998 Texas gubernatorial victories of George W. Bush, as well as Bush's 2000 and 2004 successful presidential campaigns. In his 2004 victory speech, Bush referred to Rove as "the Architect". Rove has also been credited for the successful campaigns of John Ashcroft (1994 U.S. Senate election), Bill Clements (1986 Texas gubernatorial election), Senator John Cornyn (2002 U.S. Senate election), Governor Rick Perry (1990 Texas Agriculture Commission election), and Phil Gramm (1982 U.S. House and 1984 U.S. Senate elections). Since leaving the White House, Rove has worked as a political analyst and contributor for Fox News, "Newsweek", and "The Wall Street Journal".


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove was born on Christmas Day in Denver, Colorado, the second of five children, and was raised in Sparks, Nevada. His parents separated when he was 19 years old and the man whom Rove knew as his father was a geologist.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1965, his family moved to Salt Lake City, where Rove entered high school, becoming a skilled debater. Encouraged by a teacher to run for class senate, Rove won the election. As part of his campaign strategy he rode in the back of a convertible inside the school gymnasium sitting between two attractive girls before his election speech. While at Olympus High School, he was elected student council president his junior and senior years. Rove was also a Teenage Republican and served as Chairman of the Utah Federation of Teenage Republicans. During this time, his father got a job in Los Angeles and visited the family during holidays.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove's mother suffered from depression and had contemplated suicide more than once in her life. Rove stated that although he loved his mother, she was seriously flawed, undependable and, at times, unstable. In December 1969, after a heated fight with his wife, the man Rove had known as his father left the family and divorced Rove's mother soon afterwards. Rove's mother moved back to Nevada, and his siblings briefly lived with relatives after the divorce. Rove learned from his aunt and uncle that the man who had raised him was not his biological father; both he and his older brother Eric were the children of another man. Rove has expressed great love and admiration for his adoptive father and for "how selfless" his love had been. Rove's father and mother expressed deep regret over the failure of the marriage and briefly tried dating each other after the divorce, but they refused to explain the breakup of the marriage, only stating that they still "loved each other dearly." Rove was unable to convince his parents to get back together, as they were adamant about the divorce, a situation which Rove still does not understand. Rove's relationship with his adoptive father was briefly strained for a few months following the divorce, but they maintained a very close relationship for the rest of his life.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove had only infrequent contact with his mother in the 1970s. She frequently withheld child support checks and spent them for herself. She and her second husband lost most of their money due to poor financial decisions on her part and his gambling and overspending. On September 11, 1981, Rove's mother died by suicide in Reno, Nevada, shortly after she decided to divorce her third and final husband, to whom she had been unhappily married for only three months.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove began his involvement in American politics in 1968. In a 2002 "Deseret News" interview, Rove explained, "I was the Olympus High chairman for (former U.S. Sen.) Wallace F. Bennett's re-election campaign, where he was opposed by the dynamic, young, aggressive political science professor at the University of Utah, J.D. Williams." Bennett was reelected to a third six-year term in November 1968. Through Rove's campaign involvement, Bennett's son, Robert "Bob" Foster Bennett—a future United States Senator from Utah—would become a friend. Williams would later become a mentor to Rove.


title: Karl Rove

text: In the fall of 1969, Rove entered the University of Utah, on a $1,000 scholarship, as a political science major and joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. Through the University's Hinckley Institute of Politics, he got an internship with the Utah Republican Party. That position, and contacts from the 1968 Bennett campaign, helped him secure a job in 1970 on Ralph Tyler Smith's unsuccessful re-election campaign for Senate from Illinois against Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson III.


title: Karl Rove

text: In the fall of 1970, Rove used a false identity to enter the campaign office of Democrat Alan J. Dixon, who was running for Treasurer of Illinois. He stole 1000 sheets of paper with campaign letterhead, printed fake campaign rally fliers promising "free beer, free food, girls and a good time for nothing", and distributed them at rock concerts and homeless shelters, with the effect of disrupting Dixon's rally. (Dixon eventually won the election.) Rove's role would not become publicly known until August 1973 when Rove told "The Dallas Morning News". In 1999 he said, "It was a youthful prank at the age of 19 and I regret it." In his memoir, Rove wrote that when he was later nominated to the Board for International Broadcasting by President George H.W. Bush, Senator Dixon did not kill his nomination. In Rove's account, "Dixon displayed more grace than I had shown and kindly excused this youthful prank."


title: Karl Rove

text: In June 1971, after the end of the semester, Rove dropped out of the University of Utah to take a paid position as the Executive Director of the College Republican National Committee. Joe Abate, who was National Chairman of the College Republicans at the time, became his mentor. Rove then enrolled at the University of Maryland in College Park in the Fall of 1971, but withdrew from classes during the first half of the semester. In July 1999 he told "The Washington Post" that he did not have a degree because "I lack at this point one math class, which I can take by exam, and my foreign language requirement."


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove traveled extensively, participating as an instructor at weekend seminars for campus conservatives across the country. He was an active participant in Richard Nixon's 1972 Presidential campaign. A CBS report on the organization of the Nixon campaign from June 1972 includes an interview with a young Rove working for the College Republican National Committee.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove held the position of executive director of the College Republicans until early 1973. He left the job to spend five months, without pay, campaigning full-time for the position of National Chairman during the time he attended George Mason University. Lee Atwater, the group's Southern regional coordinator, who was two months younger than Rove, assisted with Rove's campaign. His campaign was managed by Daniel Mintz, of the Maryland College Republicans. Karl spent the spring of 1973 crisscrossing the country in a Ford Pinto, lining up the support of Republican state chairs.


title: Karl Rove

text: The College Republicans summer 1973 convention at the Lake of the Ozarks resort in Missouri was quite contentious. Rove's opponent was Robert Edgeworth of Michigan. The other major candidate, Terry Dolan of California, dropped out, supporting Edgeworth. A number of states had sent two competing delegates, because Rove and his supporters had made credential challenges at state and regional conventions. For example, after the Midwest regional convention, Rove forces had produced a version of the Midwestern College Republicans constitution which differed significantly from the constitution that the Edgeworth forces were using, in order to justify the unseating of the Edgeworth delegates on procedural grounds, including delegations, such as Ohio and Missouri, which had been certified earlier by Rove himself. In the end, there were two votes, conducted by two convention chairs, and two winners—Rove and Edgeworth, each of whom delivered an acceptance speech. After the convention, both Edgeworth and Rove appealed to Republican National Committee Chairman George H. W. Bush, each contending that he was the new College Republican chairman.


title: Karl Rove

text: While resolution was pending, Dolan went (anonymously) to "The Washington Post" with recordings of several training seminars for young Republicans where a co-presenter of Rove's, Bernie Robinson, cautioned against doing the same thing he had done: rooting through opponents' garbage cans. The tape with this story on it, as well as Rove's admonition not to copy similar tricks as Rove's against Dixon, was secretly recorded and edited by Rich Evans, who had hoped to receive an appointment from Rove's competitor in the CRNC chairmanship race. On August 10, 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, the "Post" broke the story in an article titled "GOP Party Probes Official as Teacher of Tricks".


title: Karl Rove

text: In response, then RNC Chairman George H.W. Bush, had an FBI agent question Rove. As part of the investigation, Atwater signed an affidavit, dated August 13, 1973, stating that he had heard a "20 minute anecdote similar to the one described in "The Washington Post"" in July 1972, but that "it was a funny story during a coffee break". Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, has been quoted as saying "based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him."


title: Karl Rove

text: On September 6, 1973, three weeks after announcing his intent to investigate the allegations against Rove, George H. W. Bush chose him to be chairman of the College Republicans. Bush then wrote Edgeworth a letter saying that he had concluded that Rove had fairly won the vote at the convention. Edgeworth wrote back, asking about the basis of that conclusion. Not long after that, Edgeworth stated "Bush sent me back the angriest letter I have ever received in my life. I had leaked to "The Washington Post", and now I was out of the Party forever."


title: Karl Rove

text: As National Chairman, Rove introduced Bush to Atwater, who had taken Rove's job as the College Republican's executive director, and who would become Bush's main campaign strategist in future years. Bush hired Rove as a Special Assistant in the Republican National Committee, a job Rove left in 1974 to become Executive Assistant to the co-chair of the RNC, Richard D. Obenshain.


title: Karl Rove

text: As Special Assistant, Rove performed small personal tasks for Bush. In November 1973, he asked Rove to take a set of car keys to his son George W. Bush, who was visiting home during a break from Harvard Business School. It was the first time the two met. "Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma – you know, wow", Rove recalled years later.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1976, Rove left D.C. to work in Virginian politics. Initially, Rove served as the Finance Director for the Republican Party of Virginia. Rove describes this as the role in which he discovered his love for direct mail campaigns.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove's initial job in Texas was in 1977 as a legislative aide for Fred Agnich, a Texas Republican state representative from Dallas. Later that same year, Rove got a job as executive director of the Fund for Limited Government, a political action committee (PAC) in Houston headed by James A. Baker, III, a Houston lawyer (later President George H. W. Bush's Secretary of State). The PAC eventually became the genesis of the Bush-for-President campaign of 1979–1980.


title: Karl Rove

text: His work for Bill Clements during the Texas gubernatorial election of 1978 helped Clements become the first Republican Governor of Texas in over 100 years. Clements was elected to a four-year term, succeeding Democrat Dolph Briscoe. Rove was deputy director of the Governor William P. Clements Junior Committee in 1979 and 1980, and deputy executive assistant to the governor of Texas (roughly, Deputy Chief of Staff) in 1980 and 1981.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1981, Rove founded a direct mail consulting firm, Karl Rove & Co., in Austin. The firm's first clients included Texas Governor Bill Clements and Democratic congressman Phil Gramm, who later became a Republican congressman and United States Senator. Rove operated his consulting business until 1999, when he sold the firm to take a full-time position in George W. Bush's presidential campaign.


title: Karl Rove

text: Between 1981 and 1999, Rove worked on hundreds of races. Most were in a supporting role, doing direct mail fundraising. A November 2004 "Atlantic Monthly" article estimated that he was the primary strategist for 41 statewide, congressional, and national races, and Rove's candidates won 34 races.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove also did work during those years for non-political clients. From 1991 to 1996, Rove advised tobacco giant Philip Morris, and ultimately earned $3,000 a month via a consulting contract. In a deposition, Rove testified that he severed the tie in 1996 because he felt awkward "about balancing that responsibility with his role as Bush's top political advisor" while Bush was governor of Texas and Texas was suing the tobacco industry.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1977, Rove was the first person hired by George H. W. Bush for his unsuccessful 1980 presidential campaign, which ended with Bush as the vice-presidential nominee.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1982, Rove returned to assisting Governor Bill Clements in his run for reelection, but was defeated by Democrat Mark White.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1982, Phil Gramm was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a conservative Texas Democrat.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1984, Rove helped Gramm, who had become a Republican in 1983, defeat Republican Ron Paul in the primary and Democrat Lloyd Doggett in the race for U.S. Senate.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1986, Rove helped Clements become governor a second time. In a strategy memo Rove wrote for his client prior to the race, now among Clements' papers in the Texas A&M University library, Rove quoted Napoleon: "The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack."


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1986, just before a crucial debate in the campaign, Rove claimed that his office had been bugged by Democrats. The police and FBI investigated and discovered that the bug's battery was so small that it needed to be changed every few hours, and the investigation was dropped. Critics, including other Republican operatives, suspected Rove had bugged his own office to garner sympathy votes in the close governor's race.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1988, Rove helped Thomas R. Phillips become the first Republican elected as Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. Phillips had been appointed to the position in November 1987 by Clements. Phillips was re-elected in 1990, 1996 and 2002.


title: Karl Rove

text: Phillips' election in 1988 was part of an aggressive grassroots campaign called "Clean Slate '88", a conservative effort that was successful in getting five of its six candidates elected. (Ordinarily there were three justices on the ballot each year, on a nine-justice court, but, because of resignations, there were six races for the Supreme Court on the ballot in November 1988.) By 1998, Republicans held all nine seats on the Court.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1989, Rove encouraged George W. Bush to run for Texas governor, brought in experts to tutor him on policy, and introduced him to local reporters. Eventually, Bush decided not to run, and Rove backed another Republican for governor who lost in the primary.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1990, two other Rove candidates won: Rick Perry, the future governor of the state, became agricultural commissioner, and Kay Bailey Hutchison became state treasurer.


title: Karl Rove

text: One notable aspect of the 1990 election was the charge that Rove had asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate major Democratic officeholders in Texas. In his autobiography, Rove called the whole thing a "myth", saying:


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1991, United States Attorney General Dick Thornburgh resigned to run for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, one made vacant by John Heinz's death in a helicopter crash. Rove's company worked for the campaign, but it ended with an upset loss to Democrat Harris Wofford.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rover had been hired by an intermediary Murray Dickman to work for Thornburgh's campaign. Subsequently, Rove sued Thornburgh directly, alleging non-payment for services rendered. The Republican National Committee, worried that the suit would make it hard to recruit good candidates, urged Rove to back off. When Rove refused, the RNC hired Kenneth Starr to write an amicus brief on Thornburgh's behalf. "Karl Rove & Co. v. Thornburgh" was heard by U.S. Federal Judge Sam Sparks, who had been appointed by George H.W. Bush in 1991. After a trial in Austin, Rove prevailed.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove was fired from the 1992 Bush presidential campaign after he planted a negative story with columnist Robert Novak about dissatisfaction with campaign fundraising chief Robert Mosbacher Jr. Novak's column suggested a motive when it described the firing of Mosbacher by former Senator Phil Gramm: "Also attending the session was political consultant Karl Rove, who had been shoved aside by Mosbacher." Novak and Rove denied that Rove leaked, but Mosbacher maintained that "Rove is the only one with a motive to leak this. We let him go. I still believe he did it."


title: Karl Rove

text: During testimony before the CIA leak grand jury, Rove apparently confirmed his prior involvement with Novak in the 1992 campaign leak, according to "National Journal" reporter Murray Waas.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove helped Hutchison win a special Senate election in June 1993. Hutchison defeated Democrat Bob Krueger to fill the last two years of Lloyd Bentsen's term. Bentsen had resigned to become Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1994, a group called the Business Council of Alabama hired Rove to help run a slate of Republican candidates for the state supreme court. No Republican had been elected to that court in more than a century. The campaign by the Republicans was unprecedented in the state, which had previously only seen low-key contests. After the election, a court battle over absentee and other ballots followed that lasted more than 11 months. It ended when a federal appeals court judge ruled that disputed absentee ballots could not be counted, and ordered the Alabama Secretary of State to certify the Republican candidate for Chief Justice, Perry Hooper, as the winner. An appeal to the Supreme Court by the Democratic candidate was turned down within a few days, making the ruling final. Hooper won by 262 votes.


title: Karl Rove

text: Another candidate, Harold See, ran against Mark Kennedy, an incumbent Democratic justice and the son-in-law of George Wallace. The race included charges that Kennedy was mingling campaign funds with those of a non-profit children's foundation he was involved with. A former Rove staffer reported that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. Kennedy won by less than one percentage point.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1993, Karl Rove & Company was paid $300,000 in consulting fees by Ashcroft's successful 1994 Senate campaign. Ashcroft paid Rove's company more than $700,000 over the course of three campaigns.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 1993, Rove began advising George W. Bush in his successful campaign to become governor of Texas. Bush announced his candidacy in November 1993. By January 1994, Bush had spent more than $600,000 on the race against incumbent Democrat Ann Richards, with $340,000 of that paid to Rove's firm.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove has been accused of using the push poll technique to call voters to ask such things as whether people would be "more or less likely to vote for Governor Richards if [they] knew her staff is dominated by lesbians". Rove has denied having been involved in circulating these rumors about Richards during the campaign, although many critics nonetheless identify this technique, particularly as used in this instance against Richards, as a hallmark of his career.


title: Karl Rove

text: A former campaign worker charged that, at Rove's behest, he distributed flyers that anonymously attacked Harold See, their own client. This put the opponent's campaign in an awkward position; public denials of responsibility for the scurrilous flyers would be implausible. Rove's client was elected.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove was an adviser for Bush's 1998 reelection campaign. From July through December 1998, Bush's reelection committee paid Rove & Co. nearly $2.5 million, and also paid the Rove-owned Praxis List Company $267,000 for use of mailing lists. Rove says his work for the Bush campaign included direct mail, voter contact, phone banks, computer services, and travel expenses. Of the $2.5 million, Rove said, ""[a]bout 30 percent of that is postage"". In all, Bush (primarily through Rove's efforts) raised $17.7 million, with $3.4 million unspent as of March 1999. During the course of this campaign Rove's much-reported feud with Rick Perry began, with Perry's strategists believing Rove gave Perry bad advice in order to help Bush get a larger share of the Hispanic vote.


title: Karl Rove

text: For the race to succeed Perry Hooper, who was retiring as Alabama's chief justice, Rove lined up support for See from a majority of the state's important Republicans.


title: Karl Rove

text: In early 1999, Rove sold his 20-year-old direct-mail business, Karl Rove & Co., which provided campaign services to candidates, along with Praxis List Company (in whole or part) to Ted Delisi and Todd Olsen, two young political operatives who had worked on campaigns of some other Rove candidates. Rove helped finance the sale of the company, which had 11 employees. Selling Karl Rove & Co. was a condition that George W. Bush had insisted on before Rove took the job of chief strategist for Bush's presidential bid.


title: Karl Rove

text: During the Republican primary, Rove was accused of spreading false rumors that John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child. Rove denies the accusation.


title: Karl Rove

text: When George W. Bush was first inaugurated in January 2001, Rove accepted an appointment as Senior Advisor. He was later given the title Deputy Chief of Staff to the President after the successful 2004 Presidential election. In a November 2004 speech, Bush publicly thanked Rove, calling him "the architect" of his victory over John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. In April 2006, Rove was reassigned from his policy development role to one focusing on strategic and tactical planning in anticipation of the November 2006 congressional elections.


title: Karl Rove

text: Rove played a leading role in the lead-up to the Iraq War. In 2002 and 2003, Rove chaired meetings of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), an internal White House working group established in August 2002, eight months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. WHIG was charged with developing a strategy "for publicizing the White House's assertion that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States.". The group pushed narratives within the administration about the Hussein regime possessing weapons of mass destruction (the regime had no active WMD program) and its ties to international terrorism (the Hussein regime had no operational relationship with al-Qaeda). Members of WHIG included Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, her deputy Stephen Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio, and communication strategists Mary Matalin, Karen Hughes, and James R. Wilkinson.


title: Karl Rove

text: Quoting one unnamed WHIG member, "The Washington Post" explained that the task force's mission was to "educate the public" about the threat posed by Saddam and (in the reporters' words) ""[to] set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad"". Rove's "strategic communications" task force within WHIG helped write and coordinate speeches by senior Bush administration officials, emphasizing Iraq's purported nuclear threat. The White House Iraq Group was "little known" until a subpoena for its notes, email, and attendance records was issued by CIA leak investigator Patrick Fitzgerald in January 2004.


title: Karl Rove

text: In 2015, Rove defended the decision to invade Iraq, telling an Iraq War veteran that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. In 2010, Rove said his biggest mistake regarding the Iraq War was to not push back on the narrative that the Bush administration lied the U.S. into the Iraq War.


title: Karl Rove

text: On August 29, 2003, retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV claimed that Rove leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, in retaliation for Wilson's op-ed in "The New York Times" in which he criticized the Bush administration's citation of the yellowcake documents among the justifications for the War in Iraq enumerated in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address.


title: Karl Rove

text: In late August 2006, it became known that Richard L. Armitage was responsible for the leak. The investigation led to felony charges being filed against Lewis "Scooter" Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice. Eventually, Libby was found guilty by a jury.


title: Karl Rove

text: On June 13, 2006, prosecutors said they would not charge Rove with any wrongdoing. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stated previously that ""I can tell you that the substantial bulk of the work of this investigation is concluded.""


title: Karl Rove

text: On July 13, 2006, Plame sued Cheney, Rove, Libby, and others, accusing them of conspiring to destroy her career.


title: Karl Rove

text: On May 2, 2007, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to Attorney General Gonzales compelling the Department of Justice to produce all email from Rove regarding the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, no matter what email account Rove may have used, with a deadline of May 15, 2007, for compliance. The subpoena also demanded relevant email previously produced in the Valerie Plame controversy and the investigation regarding the CIA leak scandal (2003). On August 31, 2007, Karl Rove resigned without responding to the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena, saying, "I just think it's time to leave."


title: Karl Rove

text: Scott McClellan claims in his book "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception", published in the spring of 2008 by Public Affairs Books, that the statements he made in 2003 about Rove's lack of involvement in the Valerie Plame affair were untrue, and that he had been encouraged to repeat such untruths. His book has been widely disputed, however, with many key members of McClellan's own staff telling a completely different story. Former CNN commentator Robert Novak has questioned if McClelland wrote the book himself. It was also revealed that the publisher was seeking a negative book to increase sales.


title: Karl Rove

text: On October 24, 2006, two weeks before the Congressional election, in an interview with National Public Radio's Robert Siegel, Rove insisted that his insider polling data forecast Republican retention of both houses. In the election the Democrats won both houses of Congress. The "White House Bulletin", published by Bulletin News, cited rumors of Rove's impending departure from the White House staff: ""'Karl represents the old style and he's got to go if the Democrats are going to believe Bush's talk of getting along', said a key Bush advisor."" However, while allowing that many Republican members of Congress are "resentful of the way he and the White House conducted the losing campaign", "The New York Times" also stated that, ""White House officials say President Bush has every intention of keeping Mr. Rove on through the rest of his term.""


title: Karl Rove

text: In Rove's analysis, 10 of the 28 House seats Republicans lost were sacrificed because of various scandals. Another six, he said, were lost because incumbents did not recognize and react quickly enough to the threat. Rove argued that, without corruption and complacency, the Democrats would have gained around a dozen seats and Republicans could have kept narrow control of the House regardless of Bush's troubles and the war.


title: Karl Rove

text: Due to investigations into White House staffers' e-mail communication related to the controversy over the dismissal of United States Attorneys, it was discovered that many White House staff members, including Rove, had exchanged documents using Republican National Committee e-mail servers such as gwb43.com and georgewbush.com or personal e-mail accounts with third party providers such as BlackBerry, considered a violation of the Presidential Records Act. Over 500 of Rove's emails were mistakenly sent to a parody website, who forwarded them to an investigative reporter.


title: Karl Rove

text: On May 22, 2008, Rove was subpoenaed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers to testify on the politicization of the Department of Justice. But on July 10, Rove refused to obey the congressional subpoena, citing executive privilege as his reason.


title: Karl Rove

text: On February 23, 2009, Rove was required by Congressional subpoena to testify before the House Judiciary Committee concerning his knowledge of the controversy over the dismissal of seven U.S. Attorneys, and the alleged political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, but did not appear on that date. He and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers later agreed to testify under oath before Congress about these matters.


title: Karl Rove

text: On July 7 and July 30, 2009, Rove testified before the House Judiciary Committee regarding questions about the dismissal of seven U.S. Attorneys under the Bush Administration. Rove was also questioned regarding the federal prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, who was convicted of fraud. The Committee concluded that Rove had played a significant role in the Attorney firings.