  Various aspects of heavy flavor production in heavy ion collisions in the
context of elementary collisions are reviewed. The interplay between theory in
experiment in $\epem$ and $\pbarp$ data is been found to be non-trivial, even
with new NLO calculations. Quarkonium suppression in p+A and A+A show puzzling
features, apparently connected to features of inclusive particle production.
Open charm is found to scale as expected for a hard process, but strangeness is
also found to share these features. These features contribute to heavy flavor
as a interesting probe of strong interactions.
