Gail Simone's Blog, page 1008

Hi Gail. I've been enjoying the Night of the Owls crossover and I've got a question. When a company has a crossover taking place in multiple books written by many different people, does one writer take the lead and dictate how the story will go or does eve

It’s different depending on the event. In some cases, a writer will have an idea and editorial helps coordinate it because it’s a big crossover. In that case, the writer guides the main book, the editors do most of the organizing with the tie-in books.

In the case of Night Of The Owls, it was Scott Snyder’s idea for the main story all the way, and he was the key factor all the way through, with a lot of help from the various book editors, including my editors at the time, Bobbie Chase, Katie Kubert, and group editor Michael Marts, who all did a wonderful job keeping things cohesive.

But it was Scott’s idea, that we all thought was so cool, that made everything work, and Scott gave us lots of room to tell individual stories. I had a blast on that crossover, I got to tell what I think is a unique story, and Scott was 100% supportive, an absolute pleasure to work with.

Most writers don’t really want to TELL other writers what to do, most of us are happier giving suggestions and support, rather than dictating. And for editors, it’s always easier if the writers are telling a story they actually want to tell.  So the ham-fisted approach, that’s kind of a last resort in most cases.

Hi Gail. I've been enjoying the Night of the Owls crossover and I've got a question. When a company has a crossover taking place in multiple books written by many different people, does one writer take the lead and dictate how the story will go or does eve

It’s different depending on the event. In some cases, a writer will have an idea and editorial helps coordinate it because it’s a big crossover. In that case, the writer guides the main book, the editors do most of the organizing with the tie-in books.

In the case of Night Of The Owls, it was Scott Snyder’s idea for the main story all the way, and he was the key factor all the way through, with a lot of help from the various book editors, including my editors at the time, Bobbie Chase, Katie Kubert, and group editor Michael Marts, who all did a wonderful job keeping things cohesive.

But it was Scott’s idea, that we all thought was so cool, that made everything work, and Scott gave us lots of room to tell individual stories. I had a blast on that crossover, I got to tell what I think is a unique story, and Scott was 100% supportive, an absolute pleasure to work with.

Most writers don’t really want to TELL other writers what to do, most of us are happier giving suggestions and support, rather than dictating. And for editors, it’s always easier if the writers are telling a story they actually want to tell.  So the ham-fisted approach, that’s kind of a last resort in most cases.

APE IN A CAPE: A Trans Girl's Guide To Gotham

APE IN A CAPE: A Trans Girl's Guide To Gotham:

jemeryl:

gailsimone:

This is an extraodinary essay I hope everyone reads, by a remarkably talented woman named Natalie Reed. It actually took my breath away.

I haven’t posted a lot of positive reviews for Batgirl here on Tumblr, for a lot of reasons. First, I don’t know, it seems kind of, needy, I guess? I repost…

The fact that there’s a vocal base of trans batgirl readers was enough for me to instantly jump on comixology and buy Batgirl #1. Then I read it and at one point in the comic I cried a little bit. Then I read the essay that Gail talks about here, the Trans Girl’s Guide to Gotham and it was spot on. After that I wrote a letter to Gail Simone’s tumblr telling her how much it moved me and I cried a little more. I mean, I never cry… but in the last two weeks I’ve burst into enormous tears once and shed tears, like, 3 or 4 times. 

ANYWAYS READ THE ARTICLE GUYS REALLY

I hope some of those tears were good tears!

And thank you…Natalie is PFA (pretty fucking amazing!)

so i am going to my first ever comic-con, HerosCon in Charlotte, NC towards the end of june, and i was wondering about etiquette? i know writers & artists are there, but do they sign stuff, or is that a big faux pas to ask that of them? if they do, i assum

Congrats! Go have fun, you will love it.

Okay, regarding signing. The VAST majority of comic book people are happy to sign your books for free. Most have no limit on the number of signatures, but use your best judgment, if it’s a really long line and a short signing, maybe just ask for a few signatures. If it’s an open signing, or at a creator’s table, most are happy to sign as many as you can bring. Very rarely, a con or event will put a cap on the number of signatures we can do per person, but that’s very uncommon.

My rule is, if you bring it, I’ll sign it. I don’t care how many you bring, if you bring 200 books, I will sign them (I may take care of other people in line in between).

Now, a tiny number of superstar creators do charge for a signature…I think Neal Adams does, I think Stan Lee does. A few others. In such cases, they will have it posted.

Some artists will do quick sketches for free at cons, very quick ones, usually. They will almost always have a price list if their sketches aren’t free.

Media guests as a rule DO charge for their signatures and for photographs. Always ask, if the price list isn’t visible.

And finally, if a guest is eating or going to the bathroom or something, please wait to ask for a signature til they get back to their booth or table. It’s okay to ask questions but it’s very difficult to sign on the run at a major convention.

Most creators turn their badges around if they are ‘off-duty.’ If you see that, that would mean it’s their private time and they would prefer not to be approached for that brief span.

Hope that helps!

so i am going to my first ever comic-con, HerosCon in Charlotte, NC towards the end of june, and i was wondering about etiquette? i know writers & artists are there, but do they sign stuff, or is that a big faux pas to ask that of them? if they do, i assum

Congrats! Go have fun, you will love it.

Okay, regarding signing. The VAST majority of comic book people are happy to sign your books for free. Most have no limit on the number of signatures, but use your best judgment, if it’s a really long line and a short signing, maybe just ask for a few signatures. If it’s an open signing, or at a creator’s table, most are happy to sign as many as you can bring. Very rarely, a con or event will put a cap on the number of signatures we can do per person, but that’s very uncommon.

My rule is, if you bring it, I’ll sign it. I don’t care how many you bring, if you bring 200 books, I will sign them (I may take care of other people in line in between).

Now, a tiny number of superstar creators do charge for a signature…I think Neal Adams does, I think Stan Lee does. A few others. In such cases, they will have it posted.

Some artists will do quick sketches for free at cons, very quick ones, usually. They will almost always have a price list if their sketches aren’t free.

Media guests as a rule DO charge for their signatures and for photographs. Always ask, if the price list isn’t visible.

And finally, if a guest is eating or going to the bathroom or something, please wait to ask for a signature til they get back to their booth or table. It’s okay to ask questions but it’s very difficult to sign on the run at a major convention.

Most creators turn their badges around if they are ‘off-duty.’ If you see that, that would mean it’s their private time and they would prefer not to be approached for that brief span.

Hope that helps!

so i am going to my first ever comic-con, HerosCon in Charlotte, NC towards the end of june, and i was wondering about etiquette? i know writers & artists are there, but do they sign stuff, or is that a big faux pas to ask that of them? if they do, i assum

Congrats! Go have fun, you will love it.

Okay, regarding signing. The VAST majority of comic book people are happy to sign your books for free. Most have no limit on the number of signatures, but use your best judgment, if it’s a really long line and a short signing, maybe just ask for a few signatures. If it’s an open signing, or at a creator’s table, most are happy to sign as many as you can bring. Very rarely, a con or event will put a cap on the number of signatures we can do per person, but that’s very uncommon.

My rule is, if you bring it, I’ll sign it. I don’t care how many you bring, if you bring 200 books, I will sign them (I may take care of other people in line in between).

Now, a tiny number of superstar creators do charge for a signature…I think Neal Adams does, I think Stan Lee does. A few others. In such cases, they will have it posted.

Some artists will do quick sketches for free at cons, very quick ones, usually. They will almost always have a price list if their sketches aren’t free.

Media guests as a rule DO charge for their signatures and for photographs. Always ask, if the price list isn’t visible.

And finally, if a guest is eating or going to the bathroom or something, please wait to ask for a signature til they get back to their booth or table. It’s okay to ask questions but it’s very difficult to sign on the run at a major convention.

Most creators turn their badges around if they are ‘off-duty.’ If you see that, that would mean it’s their private time and they would prefer not to be approached for that brief span.

Hope that helps!

so i am going to my first ever comic-con, HerosCon in Charlotte, NC towards the end of june, and i was wondering about etiquette? i know writers & artists are there, but do they sign stuff, or is that a big faux pas to ask that of them? if they do, i assum

Congrats! Go have fun, you will love it.

Okay, regarding signing. The VAST majority of comic book people are happy to sign your books for free. Most have no limit on the number of signatures, but use your best judgment, if it’s a really long line and a short signing, maybe just ask for a few signatures. If it’s an open signing, or at a creator’s table, most are happy to sign as many as you can bring. Very rarely, a con or event will put a cap on the number of signatures we can do per person, but that’s very uncommon.

My rule is, if you bring it, I’ll sign it. I don’t care how many you bring, if you bring 200 books, I will sign them (I may take care of other people in line in between).

Now, a tiny number of superstar creators do charge for a signature…I think Neal Adams does, I think Stan Lee does. A few others. In such cases, they will have it posted.

Some artists will do quick sketches for free at cons, very quick ones, usually. They will almost always have a price list if their sketches aren’t free.

Media guests as a rule DO charge for their signatures and for photographs. Always ask, if the price list isn’t visible.

And finally, if a guest is eating or going to the bathroom or something, please wait to ask for a signature til they get back to their booth or table. It’s okay to ask questions but it’s very difficult to sign on the run at a major convention.

Most creators turn their badges around if they are ‘off-duty.’ If you see that, that would mean it’s their private time and they would prefer not to be approached for that brief span.

Hope that helps!

shaolinsuckerpunch:soulofmysuit:My AWESOME friend made me a...

shaolinsuckerpunch:

soulofmysuit:

My AWESOME friend made me a ragdoll Ragdoll. What a cute little dandy freak!

Obviously my friends need to step their game up.

Wait. What?

WHAT?

LOOK AT THAT!

Oh, MAAAAAAAAAAAAN! That is adorable!

A Trans Girl's Guide To Gotham

This is an extraodinary essay I hope everyone reads, by a remarkably talented woman named Natalie Reed. It actually took my breath away.

I haven’t posted a lot of positive reviews for Batgirl here on Tumblr, for a lot of reasons. First, I don’t know, it seems kind of, needy, I guess? I repost nice things readers say, sometimes, but posting really positive reviews comes across weird to me. But additionally, I know that a lot of readers still have mixed feelings, or hard feelings, about the New52, and Batgirl in particular.

And I get that, and it feels weird to be posting reviews, it seems like it’s only being done to counter any negative arguments, and I really don’t want to go that route. I don’t want to use people’s real lives to make a point, for one thing. And I don’t want to flood people’s feeds with that stuff when we could be looking at pictures of Ragdoll cosplayers. ;)

But the thing that’s true and powerful that I would actually like to talk about is that Batgirl IS very meaningful to a lot of people. I get emails and letters that are sometimes incredibly moving…I got two last week forwarded from DC, snail mail letters from two people whose stories were almost overwhelming (one survived a trauma that left her paralyzed, and another was born with a specific disability).  Their generous comments had me literally shaking.  I’m not going to go any further, except to say that they found something inspiring in the new Batgirl’s struggles.

When I took the book, the idea was that almost all the DC characters would be de-aged, moved back closer to their starting point. But nobody wanted erasure. It’s already tricky enough, no one wanted to say Barbara never had struggled and survived and triumphed over the events in the Killing Joke. I could just about accept a healing in the magic- and science-heavy DCU, but I could not accept that she had never been disabled.

So after a lot of thought, I agreed to write the book, for several complicated reasons (none of which had anything to do with commerce), but I have always understood the people who disagreed with the move. I love Oracle, I love what she represented, she was a PWD icon, all that stuff, I will always love classic Oracle and the Classic Birds of Prey, possibly above all other things in comics.

I agreed to do this on the condition that we could continue to focus on Barbara’s inspiring nature, in this case, that of a trauma victim.  She’s the victim of a vicious and psychologically devastating home invasion. This sort of thing is routinely forgotten in comics, like characters can shed this stuff like a layer of skin. But most of us have either been the victims of such an event, or know someone close to us who has. And it doesn’t get treated believably in comics, as a rule.

Most real trauma victims can’t just forget and move on, not that easily. I’ve done a lot of volunteer work at Crisis Centers and you can see how deeply these wounds go, mentally and physically.  I wanted to show that she could survive and be a hero, and still go through all those emotions that most trauma survivors experience, the PTSD and the survivor’s guilt and flashbacks and the body that betrays you when you least expect it.

It’s really resonated with a lot of people, and many of them have sent me their stories. I don’t want to belabor it any further, but it’s meant a lot to a lot of people. I don’t think Batgirl is like every other superhero book out there, and I don’t think Barbara should ever just be another girl in  a cowl.

And then there is this.

An excellent writer named Natalie Reed, who is a trans woman, noticed that Batgirl had a large number of very vocal trans readers.  And she asked me why I thought that was the case. I have a couple theories, but I didn’t want to speak for anyone.

Natalie took it further and wrote this very passionate essay about comics and Batgirl and trans readers. It absolutely took my breath away. I hope you will read it, and if you liked it, maybe leave Natalie a message of support for her great work. It is really, really worth your time, even if you disagree with her position.

Thanks for reading this, everyone. And thanks for the wonderful article, Natalie! You inspire me!

http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/06/04/a-trans-girls-guide-to-gotham/

thehappysorceress:Black Alice as Estrogan by Jackie...

thehappysorceress:

Black Alice as Estrogan by Jackie Santiago

Magic Monday

And here’s another…wow!

Here’s a secret about me, I HATE PUNS. I hate them, I think they are one of the lowest forms of humor, despite the fact that people as diverse as Peter David and Alfred Hitchcock seem to adore them. They grate on me like sliding down a cactus.

But…well, she needed to do the Etrigan rhyme, and the ‘Estrogan’ name came to me and I just couldn’t resist it. I might have hated myself for doing it, but I still think it’s funny. :)