Gail Simone's Blog, page 1086

Cass Cain, Angel of the Bat

Cass Cain, Angel of the Bat:

dreamsofawesome:

iamgwenslongroadhome:

fyeahlilbitoeverything:

bringbacklianharper:

As hokey as it sounds, I've teared up a little re-reading this.

This is the pitch Gail Simone made back when Cassandra Cain was still Batgirl. It would've involved Cass saving a minister from a robbery, and in the midst of her violent beatdown upon the thugs who've attacked him, the minister would've begged for Cass to stop. Cass is, at first, unable to comprehend his ability to forgive so easily, and she begins visiting him in the hospital. His faith in God and his compassion really moves Cassandra, and she begins to study the bible. From that point Cass becomes truly devout and spends her time helping the downtrodden of Gotham that the Bat Family doesn't normally deal with. The poor, the mentally ill, the immigrants, the runaways, and the homeless. She would've adopted an all-white costume, and people would start calling her the Angel of the Bat, Essentially, it would've been about Cass finding religion, but not in a hamfisted, Lifetime Movie/Mel Gibson's Passion sort of way.

For whatever reason, this idea was considered too controversial to the editing staff at the time, and they decided to go with Cass becoming evil and leading the League of Assassins, which was met with universal disdain and resulted in a few years of writers attempting to rectify the damage, only for Cass to give up the Batgirl name and give it to Stephanie Brown.

I don't know if I would've supported it then. I mean, back when Cass had just turned evil, I had only broken the surface of mainstream comics and started collecting them regularly instead of doing research on obscure characters from the 40s to 80s, buying the odd issue, and trade paperbacks. The only Batman books I bought were Batman, Detective Comics, and Nightwing (though that stopped after three or four issues).

I have to give Miss Simone credit for attempting to write a story about a character finding religion, especially when she herself has admitted to being an atheist. At least I believe's she an atheist. I also can't help but note a parallel between Cassandra finding religion, and the subject matter that Peter David handled when he wrote Supergirl, which dealt with redemption and joy and an analysis of certain religious beliefs in the case of Matrix and Linda Danvers.

All I know is, this seems like another representation of a boneheaded move made by DC's editing staff.

 I'm unsure how I feel about this pitch because I think in general there's this attitude in fiction of Christianity = Salvation that just doesn't exist for other religions so to an extent I think this would've made me uncomfortable. Particularly given the hypocrisy in most organized relgion.

BUT, I think if handled delicately and not done 100 percent "in your face", it might have worked. In particular I like how a lot of writers have handled Huntress' religion without having her force it on people or act like it's her defining characteristic.

While I cannot speak for anyone else outside of the Christian faith I have to say I find storylines like this exhausting. No matter how hard the attempt to avoid it there is always something that reeks of proselytizing because it is *always* Christianity that saves the souls. This story has been explored to the nth degree, I do not want to read it again, to watch it again. All other religions are explored as largely secular stereotypes while Christianity is a complex thing of beauty that changes lives. Fuck that. Seriously. Fuck that shit. 

********************

Right, that would definitely be a pitfall to avoid. It was really about the compassion of the priest, vs. the way Batman shows compassion.

This makes me miss The Spectre and John Ostrander's writing in general. Now there is a writer who knew how to handle religious stuff in comics amazingly. Find me anyone who can tell me with a straight face that Spectre run wasn't fantastic and I'll have found you a dummy.

No disagreement on any of this. John is my dear friend, my hero, and a brilliant, brilliant cat.

Cass Cain, Angel of the Bat

Cass Cain, Angel of the Bat:

fyeahlilbitoeverything:

bringbacklianharper:

As hokey as it sounds, I've teared up a little re-reading this.

This is the pitch Gail Simone made back when Cassandra Cain was still Batgirl. It would've involved Cass saving a minister from a robbery, and in the midst of her violent beatdown upon the thugs who've attacked him, the minister would've begged for Cass to stop. Cass is, at first, unable to comprehend his ability to forgive so easily, and she begins visiting him in the hospital. His faith in God and his compassion really moves Cassandra, and she begins to study the bible. From that point Cass becomes truly devout and spends her time helping the downtrodden of Gotham that the Bat Family doesn't normally deal with. The poor, the mentally ill, the immigrants, the runaways, and the homeless. She would've adopted an all-white costume, and people would start calling her the Angel of the Bat, Essentially, it would've been about Cass finding religion, but not in a hamfisted, Lifetime Movie/Mel Gibson's Passion sort of way.

For whatever reason, this idea was considered too controversial to the editing staff at the time, and they decided to go with Cass becoming evil and leading the League of Assassins, which was met with universal disdain and resulted in a few years of writers attempting to rectify the damage, only for Cass to give up the Batgirl name and give it to Stephanie Brown.

I don't know if I would've supported it then. I mean, back when Cass had just turned evil, I had only broken the surface of mainstream comics and started collecting them regularly instead of doing research on obscure characters from the 40s to 80s, buying the odd issue, and trade paperbacks. The only Batman books I bought were Batman, Detective Comics, and Nightwing (though that stopped after three or four issues).

I have to give Miss Simone credit for attempting to write a story about a character finding religion, especially when she herself has admitted to being an atheist. At least I believe's she an atheist. I also can't help but note a parallel between Cassandra finding religion, and the subject matter that Peter David handled when he wrote Supergirl, which dealt with redemption and joy and an analysis of certain religious beliefs in the case of Matrix and Linda Danvers.

All I know is, this seems like another representation of a boneheaded move made by DC's editing staff.

 I'm unsure how I feel about this pitch because I think in general there's this attitude in fiction of Christianity = Salvation that just doesn't exist for other religions so to an extent I think this would've made me uncomfortable. Particularly given the hypocrisy in most organized relgion.

BUT, I think if handled delicately and not done 100 percent "in your face", it might have worked. In particular I like how a lot of writers have handled Huntress' religion without having her force it on people or act like it's her defining characteristic.

Yeah, that was never going to be the story. I son't think Cass needed Salvation. Truthfully, pretty much any religion would've worked.

This may have been the problem, lotta preconceptions,

But it still seems weird that having her find religion, even for a story arc, is more controversial than making her an evil assassin or whatever.

Cass Cain, Angel of the Bat

Cass Cain, Angel of the Bat:

iamgwenslongroadhome:

fyeahlilbitoeverything:

bringbacklianharper:

As hokey as it sounds, I've teared up a little re-reading this.

This is the pitch Gail Simone made back when Cassandra Cain was still Batgirl. It would've involved Cass saving a minister from a robbery, and in the midst of her violent beatdown upon the thugs who've attacked him, the minister would've begged for Cass to stop. Cass is, at first, unable to comprehend his ability to forgive so easily, and she begins visiting him in the hospital. His faith in God and his compassion really moves Cassandra, and she begins to study the bible. From that point Cass becomes truly devout and spends her time helping the downtrodden of Gotham that the Bat Family doesn't normally deal with. The poor, the mentally ill, the immigrants, the runaways, and the homeless. She would've adopted an all-white costume, and people would start calling her the Angel of the Bat, Essentially, it would've been about Cass finding religion, but not in a hamfisted, Lifetime Movie/Mel Gibson's Passion sort of way.

For whatever reason, this idea was considered too controversial to the editing staff at the time, and they decided to go with Cass becoming evil and leading the League of Assassins, which was met with universal disdain and resulted in a few years of writers attempting to rectify the damage, only for Cass to give up the Batgirl name and give it to Stephanie Brown.

I don't know if I would've supported it then. I mean, back when Cass had just turned evil, I had only broken the surface of mainstream comics and started collecting them regularly instead of doing research on obscure characters from the 40s to 80s, buying the odd issue, and trade paperbacks. The only Batman books I bought were Batman, Detective Comics, and Nightwing (though that stopped after three or four issues).

I have to give Miss Simone credit for attempting to write a story about a character finding religion, especially when she herself has admitted to being an atheist. At least I believe's she an atheist. I also can't help but note a parallel between Cassandra finding religion, and the subject matter that Peter David handled when he wrote Supergirl, which dealt with redemption and joy and an analysis of certain religious beliefs in the case of Matrix and Linda Danvers.

All I know is, this seems like another representation of a boneheaded move made by DC's editing staff.

 I'm unsure how I feel about this pitch because I think in general there's this attitude in fiction of Christianity = Salvation that just doesn't exist for other religions so to an extent I think this would've made me uncomfortable. Particularly given the hypocrisy in most organized relgion.

BUT, I think if handled delicately and not done 100 percent "in your face", it might have worked. In particular I like how a lot of writers have handled Huntress' religion without having her force it on people or act like it's her defining characteristic.

While I cannot speak for anyone else outside of the Christian faith I have to say I find storylines like this exhausting. No matter how hard the attempt to avoid it there is always something that reeks of proselytizing because it is *always* Christianity that saves the souls. This story has been explored to the nth degree, I do not want to read it again, to watch it again. All other religions are explored as largely secular stereotypes while Christianity is a complex thing of beauty that changes lives. Fuck that. Seriously. Fuck that shit. 

********************

Right, that would definitely be a pitfall to avoid. It was really about the compassion of the priest, vs. the way Batman shows compassion.

Let me preface my question by saying I am not trying to challenge anything, just genuinely curious: In response to the Women in Refrigerator trope, how is it sexist for females to die when just as many male characters die? I mean, the majority of comic cha

****************

I'm sorry, I mean no offense, but holy god, I've answered this question a billion times. :)

Okay. It's math, very simple, to start with. There were, at the time, INFINITELY more viable and prominent male characters than female ones. So killing a male character diminished that pool by a fraction of a percent. Killing a female character might diminish the pool of viable female characters that were CURRENTLY getting exposure by several percentage points.  Killing or depowering a few dozen cut their pool down IMMENSELY.

There were other factors, three, basically.

1) The deaths of male and female characters were usually different. There was often a sexual component missing wholly from the male deaths. But also, male deaths were usually heroic, whereas the female deaths and depowerings tended to be sheer victimhood. Compare a heroic, FLASH-like death to, say, Barbara's being shot in the Killing Joke. It's a huge difference.

2) The deaths and depowerings of male characters were almost always undone within a year or two. It was more like a decade for the female characters.

3) Usually, the female deaths were purely plot points, they weren't even stories ABOUT the female characters. I'm thinking of Katma Tui, a long-standing and popular Green Lantern. The GL of the story comes home and finds her chopped up and dead in the kitchen (if I remember correctly). In essence, the deaths became a purely shock tactic cliche for the male character to get violent on the villain's skull. Their deaths were only plot points for vengeance stories, so they were tossed aside quite casually.

It's important to remember this was a dumbass trend during a kind of dumbass period in comics. It still happens, but at the time, publishers didn't think there WERE female readers in any numbers. So if you took out a few dozen viable, prominent female characters, you essentially left almost NO unmutilated female characters for female readers to read about.

"It happens to guys, too!" is just not looking at the whole question.

Hope that helps!

Cass Cain, Angel of the Bat

Cass Cain, Angel of the Bat:

bringbacklianharper:

As hokey as it sounds, I've teared up a little re-reading this.

This is the pitch Gail Simone made back when Cassandra Cain was still Batgirl. It would've involved Cass saving a minister from a robbery, and in the midst of her violent beatdown upon the thugs who've attacked him, the minister would've begged for Cass to stop. Cass is, at first, unable to comprehend his ability to forgive so easily, and she begins visiting him in the hospital. His faith in God and his compassion really moves Cassandra, and she begins to study the bible. From that point Cass becomes truly devout and spends her time helping the downtrodden of Gotham that the Bat Family doesn't normally deal with. The poor, the mentally ill, the immigrants, the runaways, and the homeless. She would've adopted an all-white costume, and people would start calling her the Angel of the Bat, Essentially, it would've been about Cass finding religion, but not in a hamfisted, Lifetime Movie/Mel Gibson's Passion sort of way.

For whatever reason, this idea was considered too controversial to the editing staff at the time, and they decided to go with Cass becoming evil and leading the League of Assassins, which was met with universal disdain and resulted in a few years of writers attempting to rectify the damage, only for Cass to give up the Batgirl name and give it to Stephanie Brown.

I don't know if I would've supported it then. I mean, back when Cass had just turned evil, I had only broken the surface of mainstream comics and started collecting them regularly instead of doing research on obscure characters from the 40s to 80s, buying the odd issue, and trade paperbacks. The only Batman books I bought were Batman, Detective Comics, and Nightwing (though that stopped after three or four issues).

I have to give Miss Simone credit for attempting to write a story about a character finding religion, especially when she herself has admitted to being an atheist. At least I believe's she an atheist. I also can't help but note a parallel between Cassandra finding religion, and the subject matter that Peter David handled when he wrote Supergirl, which dealt with redemption and joy and an analysis of certain religious beliefs in the case of Matrix and Linda Danvers.

All I know is, this seems like another representation of a boneheaded move made by DC's editing staff.

***********************************

This is something that happened a good while back. It didn't get that far, really.  What was happening was that both Nightwing and Batgirl were starting to drop in sales. For whatever reasons, readers were dropping both books.

My editor at the time, the fabulous Joan Hilty (one of the great editors in the business and an actual feminist), asked me what I would do if I had the books.  It was official/unofficial. DC asked me for my pitches, but it was all very tentative.

I didn't want to take over Nightwing…my friend Devin Grayson had been writing that book, and I felt she had not gotten a fair chance to really leave a mark on the book due to a ton of crossovers and such. I didn't want to step in after she had left unhappy.  So, I had some ideas for Nightwing, but told them I wouldn't write the book. I don't think it was intentional, this stuff happens, but I just didn't feel right about it.

But I had just started following Batgirl and I freaking loved it and that book's writer was leaving (not positive of the circumstances). So what I was trying to do was;

a) Save the book from cancellation, and

b) Create a buzz story, to get some attention, with the intention of bringing her back to her already-cool status quo once more eyes were on the book.

The idea was to have her be like she is with everything, a passionate, committed student. She sees this message that the priest gives, and she sees it as power, as a kind of combat, and immediately wants to master it.

But it was always meant to be a story, a long arc, maybe a year or so.

It's odd, but it's one of the most skeptical responses I've ever gotten from an editor. I don't know if it's because I'm an atheist, which I am, but they seemed to think it would not be played straight, that it might be offensive. My goal was the opposite, she would be deadly serious and committed, and would start to have a genuine philosophical difference with Batman, leading to some interesting friction.

In the end, she would regain her self and her previous belief system. But it was interesting that with all the violent, dark choices for story arcs out there, they would be skittish about a bat-character learning about her spiritual beliefs.

I don't know if it was 'boneheaded,' a lot of pitches happen when a book is getting a new direction, and this may genuinely not have been the best one. But I think it would have been very interesting.

From Women Write About Comics: Women In Refrigerators, 13 Years Later

From Women Write About Comics: Women In Refrigerators, 13 Years Later:

In 1999 Gail Simone asked the comics industry and fandom a question: why does this keep happening? Why do so many female characters keep turning up dead? Why are they so often tortured and raped? That was the start of Women In Refrigerators. Today WiR is a widely recognized trope in comics fandom and beyond. No doubt, Gail Simone opened up space for an important conversation that continues to this day.

This week we got together to look at WiR, to see what had changed in the intervening years, both in the comics we all love, and ourselves and our responses to the phenomenon.

This is the master list of responses to Women Write About Comics' first blog carnival,Women In Refrigerators: 13 Years Later. We hope that you will take the time to read all of these posts, to comment, and to take the opportunity to get to know each other, writers and readers all.

reflecting on the question, by didyoueverstoptothink.
Lois Lane Through the Years, by Saranga.
In which I am a negative nellie for some reason, but am actually passionate and excited!, by Claire.
responding to the issue, by certainshadesoflight.
Women In Refrigerators: 13 Years Later part one and part two, by Elisabeth Pfeiffer.
Women In Refrigerators: 13 Years Later, by Corrina Lawson.
 Breaking the Vicious Cycle, by Erik Bear.
WIR (huh) what is it good for?, by Erin of Literate Knits.
Women In Refrigerators 13 Years Later, by Megan.
Ms. Marvel, a History of Refrigerators, and the Modern Day Fridge, by Boudika.
Defrosting the DCnU (or not), by Jess Plummer.
Women In Refrigerators 13 Years Later: time for an additional way to examine women in comics, by Sue of DC Women Kicking Ass.
the evils of the evil that men do, by supergabbie.
Our Princess Is In Another Refrigerator, by Fuck Yeah Black Widow

Thanks to all of our contributors and readers, and to everyone who linked around a roundup or favourite post. Special thanks go to Sue, Kelly, and Ragnell, who gave the carnival a huge promotional push in its early days. You guys are rockstars.

And so, we bid round one of Women Write About Comics adieu. Stay tuned for news about our second round; nominations will open soon.

Someday, I'm going to write up my experiences dealing with the WiR baggage…it's been pretty remarkable. But worth it.

marsbattyangel:gailsimone:vbartilucci:More of the...

marsbattyangel:

gailsimone:

vbartilucci:

More of the Build-a-Hero Project - today it's the Catman I did for @GailSimone

And yes, now that you ask, I DID do another member of the Secret Six…Who was it?  Well, you could go look on the BAHP Website if you like…

I'm sorry, but if you think a Catman/Lion teddy bear is anything less than the best thing ever in the universe, I can't be friends with you anymore.

Vinnie made this for me, and I treasure it so much, it's right in my front room looking down at me all the time.

I WANT ONE

And a Huntress one to match? XD

HA!

All I know is that I am having a terrible hair day in that photo!

flutter-sassy:gailsimone:Oh, man, I cannot tell you how...

flutter-sassy:

gailsimone:

Oh, man, I cannot tell you how happy this page makes me.

They were wrapping up Wonder Woman, to have JMS take over the book. All fine, that's how it goes. They asked George Perez to draw a short goodbye story to the classic Wonder Woman, because it was felt that JMS was going to recreate everything and it was essentially a new character.

George said he would only draw it if I would write it. Me, write my Wonder hero's last WW story?

YES.

I wanted to do a story showing how WW inspired the newer generation of female heroes. If you look, all these heroines are recent, the last couple decades. He drew every one of them so beautifully, it just killed me.

A few months after the story came out, I got a package in the mail. George and the art team had sent me two pages of original art from the story and not even mentioned it, just as a gift.

This is a great job, sometimes.

I just love that Grace Choi is there. I just love her a lot okay. The only way it could be better would be if Anissa Pierce was there too. 

I asked for a couple people they wouldn't let me have for some reason, Rocket was one of them. They suggested Anissa Pierce as one of the alternate choices to Rocket, but for some reason, she didn't get on the page. I honestly can't recall if that was my fault, the editor's, or an artist choice. SORRY!

vbartilucci:More of the Build-a-Hero Project - today it's the...

vbartilucci:

More of the Build-a-Hero Project - today it's the Catman I did for @GailSimone

And yes, now that you ask, I DID do another member of the Secret Six…Who was it?  Well, you could go look on the BAHP Website if you like…

I'm sorry, but if you think a Catman/Lion teddy bear is anything less than the best thing ever in the universe, I can't be friends with you anymore.

Vinnie made this for me, and I treasure it so much, it's right in my front room looking down at me all the time.

Oh, man, I cannot tell you how happy this page makes me.They...

Oh, man, I cannot tell you how happy this page makes me.

They were wrapping up Wonder Woman, to have JMS take over the book. All fine, that's how it goes. They asked George Perez to draw a short goodbye story to the classic Wonder Woman, because it was felt that JMS was going to recreate everything and it was essentially a new character.

George said he would only draw it if I would write it. Me, write my Wonder hero's last WW story?

YES.

I wanted to do a story showing how WW inspired the newer generation of female heroes. If you look, all these heroines are recent, the last couple decades. He drew every one of them so beautifully, it just killed me.

A few months after the story came out, I got a package in the mail. George and the art team had sent me two pages of original art from the story and not even mentioned it, just as a gift.

This is a great job, sometimes.