Gail Simone's Blog, page 1098

Hi Gail! There's something I've always wanted to know about your Wonder Woman run. In Wonder Woman #34, Wonder Woman and Black Canary have an interesting conversation about their respective religious beliefs. Diana has abandoned her worship of Zeus, and sh

My thinking was that Dinah was always a bit of a polytheist, to be honest. The defining trait in my run with her was that she was a citizen of the world, intellectually, rather than simply another American citizen.  So she would have seen and done things from a much wider perspective than the average Gothamite, particularly in the DCU where there really ARE gods and goddesses and some are still walking about, as it were.

So my feeling was that she was probably raised Christian, but as she grew up and traveled the world, became a believer in more than one god.

I never saw religion as as big a part of her life as Helena, but it seems to me that she would be a believer, based on her history and being in love with a guy who returned from the dead, for example.

Hi Gail! There's something I've always wanted to know about your Wonder Woman run. In Wonder Woman #34, Wonder Woman and Black Canary have an interesting conversation about their respective religious beliefs. Diana has abandoned her worship of Zeus, and sh

My thinking was that Dinah was always a bit of a polytheist, to be honest. The defining trait in my run with her was that she was a citizen of the world, intellectually, rather than simply another American citizen.  So she would have seen and done things from a much wider perspective than the average Gothamite, particularly in the DCU where there really ARE gods and goddesses and some are still walking about, as it were.

So my feeling was that she was probably raised Christian, but as she grew up and traveled the world, became a believer in more than one god.

I never saw religion as as big a part of her life as Helena, but it seems to me that she would be a believer, based on her history and being in love with a guy who returned from the dead, for example.

"Cassandra Cain my boo, a woman of color with disabilities, outsold Green Arrow, Aquaman, Catwoman,..."

"

Cassandra Cain my boo, a woman of color with disabilities, outsold Green Arrow, Aquaman, Catwoman, Stephanie Brown, and whole slew of white characters and note how nearly all of them have been given reboot after reboot after reboot, no matter how many times they have flopped.

We're talking about the SAME Cassandra Cain that is DC brass has admitted is the most asked about character at conventions.

"

-

http://arsmarginal.wordpress.com/2012/01/16/just-in-time-for-mlk-day/

While I don't agree with the idea of the cancellation of Mr. Terrific as a bad thing (bad book, bad writer), this here I felt was important to point out.

(via fyeahlilbitoeverything)

When it's true, it's true.

My Number One Favorite Moment In My Career

The lovely and wonderful EALPERIN asked me what moment I was most proud of in my life/work/career, and I covered all of them except my number one moment, which I'm posting here.

This is a big one for me. I've been involved or tried to spearhead lots of emergency fundraisers for comics professionals in a desperate situations…home fires in the cases of Lea Hernandez and Karen Ellis, things of that nature. The generosity of the comics community always amazes me.

A few years back, one of the great writers, John Ostrander, developed glaucoma in his eyes so bad that he was in danger not just of losing his vision, but the actual eyes in his head. He has insurance, but it wasn't enough to cover the treatments. Worse, he couldn't work while recuperating. Couldn't afford the hotel stays necessary.  Just an awful situation.

I found out about it from Mike Gold, a great man and creator himself, who, along with a couple other great folks, was doing a fundraiser to pay for John's hideously expensive surgery. It was going okay, but not amazingly well.

I haven't really talked about this in detail. But it just made me really unhappy to think of, it just seemed so unfair.

So I started writing letters, dozens and dozens of letters to everyone I knew in comics. I don't know anything about organizing a charity (so thank GOD Mike and Adriane were there to do all that), but I know how to be a pest. And I was an excellent pest, it turns out.  People, GREAT people, big names, started donating art, and toys. Retailers put out a collection jar. Word spread.

But still, too slow. I had a secret weapon.

Comicon was coming up.

I had a plan to go bother every pro I could find to get them to donate art, scripts, whatever they could.  I would be RELENTLESS.

That was my plan. Then I got sick the day before the con. My husband tried to get me to cancel, but I just couldn't take that idea. I should have gone to the hospital, that was pretty stupid.

Anyway, I started asking artists for original art at the con for this fundraiser. At first, donations were a little bit slow. We got things like sketch cards, nothing that would raise any real money. I started to get very worried. Comic artists get hassled for donations all the time, and at MOST we had raised only a few hundred dollars.

We were hassling people the entire convention, I was sick, I had a busy schedule of my own, so I also enlisted my son and husband and sent THEM out to do scouting and follow-ups.

Eventually, we started getting some pieces that would really count, and I will never forget them. I went to Neal Adams, who was very skeptical, but once people vouched for me, he gave us an amazing Captain America piece, and he said, "Listen, if anyone stiffs you, you tell them NEAL ADAMS told them to get off their ass and donate a piece"  HA!

Then Francis Manapul donated a GORGEOUS Wonder Woman cover…that was the first real big money piece, and I was just beside myself, I was trying to make sure he really wanted to donate such an expensive piece (artists make a lot of their income from selling those big money covers!), and he insisted he did. LOVE YOU FRANCIS.

We learned a couple tricks right away…we got a huge portfolio with clear sleeves in it, and we put all the BIG pieces, the covers, the double page spreads, the huge name artists, right up front. We showed that to EVERYBODY.

It worked beautifully. I'm embarrassed to say it's manipulative, but nobody wanted to donate a little sketch card when the first page in our book was a huge full color cover by Stephane Roux, or a full color Usagi Yojimbo (those are rare as hell), by the great Stan Sakai, or a huge Groo color piece by Sergio Argones, or a color Batman by Matt Wagner. Joe Quesada donated a piece.  Mike and Adriane got a once-in-a-lifetime Miracleman statue prototype signed just for this by Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore, for Pete's sake.

I'll never forget those three days. We were warned that some artists would say, "come back later" and wouldn't actually donate anything. That NEVER happened. EVERY SINGLE ARTIST who told us to come back donated, kept their word and better. I can't explain what it was like holding a portfolio with art by the biggest names in comics, all given without a thought of being thanked, just to do a good thing for a great writer.

It was incredibly moving. Steve Lieber not only donated, he got all  the others in his Periscope Studios to donate. Stephane Roux hassled artists to get them to help. Patton Oswalt donated cash and called his standup comic friends to donate. Kevin Smith donated a big chunk. The great Bill Morrison got Simspons sketches from MATT GROENING, and donated classic art from his own collection. Retailers donated books…it just went on and on and on.  I cried a few times, people said such wonderful things about John. His kindness and decency and talent came back when he needed it…several people had worked with him and he had fought for them, and they remembered and were thrilled to pay him back.

I mentioned the auction on a panel and a bunch of readers wanted to donate on the spot. Jim Lee promised to do a piece, and sat at a table at the con to finish it, Wolverine and Batman, while the guards were pushing us out the door, literally, the last minute of the last day, to keep his word to me and to John.Terry Moore donated an Echo cover. Jeff Smith, Bernard Chang, Jill Thompson, David Lloyd, the entire Kubert art family, Paul Chadwick, Jamal Igle,  Tim Truman, Norm Breyfogle, Terry Dodson, Aaron Lopresti, Nicola Scott, Gene Ha, the Supergirl Adventures team, Eric Canete, the Tiny Titans guys…they all donated and many many more.

When the con was over, I actually just sort of collapsed…I cried again, partly from exhaustion. The con is already a non-stop thing, from morning til night. Adding on running the length of the con hall dozens of times on top of being sick, I just absolutely collapsed.  But we had a huge portfolio of art that still makes my heart well up.  I cataloged it all, and when we handed it over to the wonderful Adriane, who was responsible for the online auctions, we were handing over what might well have been one of the most amazing single portfolios in the history of the medium.

It hurt to LOOK at it, it was so amazing.I was absolutely terrified walking to my hotel, that something might happen to it.

This is a long story, but it was a very joyous experience.

I got better, we were all reminded of how wonderful people can be when called upon.

The upside is, the auctions and donations raised about 40,000 dollars. They were not only able to get John the surgery to save his sight, but also get him expense money for his recuperation, and a laptop computer so that he could continue to work. One of the best bits of news of the whole thing was that John got some new gigs out of the thing, and he and I got to even work together on a Secret Six/Suicide Squad crossover, like a dream come true for me.

John being who he is, he was very reluctant to ask for help, and he agreed to do it on one condition, that any money beyond what he needed would go straight to the Hero Initiative, which it did.

It's easy to get discouraged and down about things in the industry sometimes, especially if you spend as much time on message boards as I have where that does seem to be the focus sometimes. But a great talent needed some help and the story is that dozens and dozens of the busiest, most talented people I've ever met lent a hand without question and did a wonderful, wonderful thing.

THAT is my proudest moment in comics.

Clearing Out My Ask Box A Little Bit

I get a lot of asks, some of them are dupes of things I've answered previously, some I answer quickly…and some sort of sit there because the answers are long, or complicated. So I figured I would try to answer  a few this week, as time allows.

The lovely and talented Ealperin asked me, what I was most proud of. That seemed open ended, so I asked if she meant in my life, my work, or my career.

Of course the answer came back, "ALL THREE."

YIKES.

Okay, it always feels a little weird talking about these things. It's not what I'm good at, but let's give it a shot since it's come up a few times here, in various ways.

In my life, my personal life, I'm proud of a few things—I'm proud that I married the right guy. He's kind, strong, smart, funny as hell. I got lucky, and we are stuck for life. He's one of those guys who does the right thing, whether or not anyone is watching.

I'm proud of my son. I can't take credit for him, he seemed to do everything on his own, somehow. But he's this six foot blond kid with perfect teeth, he's a black belt in Okinawa Shuri-Te, he speaks and writes fluent Japanese and has taught himself some proficiency in several languages, he plays several instruments with remarkable talent, he reads classics in foreign languages for fun, he hates bullies and bigots, I just adore him. I know I'm biased, but he's just a remarkable kid. He has some social anxieties, and it's been a struggle for him to do some things other kids do without a thought. But he's working on that, and I admire his courage.

I'm proud that even after school and a decent career as a hairstylist, I did the bungee jump off the cliff to become a writer even though the idea scared the hell out of me.

As for my work. I've given this some thought.

I think it's possible that the thing I'm proudest of is giving Diana a human voice in Wonder Woman. Even people who didn't like the run seemed to feel empathy for her, to regard her as a person, in a way that they hadn't seen her before. There have been lots of great Wonder Woman writers in the past…but I think we humanized her. It may all be retconned out now, but I'm proud of that.

In a larger way, I'm proud that a lot of people felt that way about a LOT of the female characters I've written. I think I was part of a wave of writers that worked hard to make female characters more than just male gaze fodder or pointlessly violent rage-monkeys. I am pretty proud of my work with Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Oracle, Batgirl, Black Canary, Shiva, Huntress, Lady Blackhawk, Scandal Savage, Knockout, Tommy and Seresa Lindo, the Killer Princesses, Misfit, Black Alice, Rainmaker, Fairchild, Freefall, Outlaw, Kho Kharhi, the Queen of Fables,  etc. I think, if you look at those characters, you don't see the same character over and over. None of them exist only in relationship to male characters. It sounds freaky, but there really was a time when no one thought a female character could lead a book, that guys wouldn't read it. But everyone one of those characters has fans all over the gender spectrum. I'm proud of that.

I'm proud that (with lots of great artists and other creative people), we proved a girl team book could not only be a hit, but be a hit TWICE, and never lose its audience even after years. I don't know if people realize what a trailblazer bop was, in some ways.

As for my career, I'm proud of several things. I'm proud of working with a lot of my heroes, people like Dwayne McDuffie, George Perez, Keith Giffin, Paul Cornell, Dan Jurgens, Adam Hughes, Kevin Maguire, Phil Jimenez, Michael Golden, Mike Grell, Dan DeCarlo, Jill Thompson, dozens of others.

I'm proud of still being here when many predicted that a female writer couldn't hold an audience in mainstream comics.

But two things stand out for me above the rest, at least in my mind at this moment.

One had nothing to do with me, I was just honored to be there. That was the counter-protest to the Westboro Bapstist church hate-mongers at Comicon. I was there, and chanting and laughing and singing with that group was one of the proudest moments of my life. They turned that other group's hate into love for everything great in the world and in the comics community.  They were funny, wickedly smart, and just the most amazing damn people anywhere. I can't describe the catharsis of having a guy in a perfect Bender costume say into a microphone, drowning out the Westboro homophobic bullshit, "BITE MY SHINY METAL ASS."

I was never prouder to be a comic book fan, honest to god. I get misty thinking about it. And the WBC left early with their tails between their legs, and guess what? They haven't RETURNED to Comicon, either. :)

Okay…I am leaving the number one career pride moment for another post, to follow shortly!

Thanks for your patience. :)

comicbookkissyface:Birds of Prey v1 #109This is one of...

comicbookkissyface:

Birds of Prey v1 #109

This is one of the few Bop pages that I get credited for a lot that I didn't write.

It was written by the great Tony Bedard, one of the most underrated writers out there. Smart, imaginative, with great empathy and plotting skills, the fact that he's not a household name is just a crime.

Many times, even when friends wrote the Secret Six, or the Tranquility characters, or even the Boppers during my tenure, it would be a little painful. It often felt that the surface characteristics would be there, but the subtext that gave them life would be missing (I am not putting on airs, I've made the same mistake myself, more than once).

Tony wrote the Boppers in his own style, but it still FELT like the Boppers. Here, he has a very tricky and funny and sexy scene, it's very much about the characters, not the titillation (although, hell, there's some pretty good titillation).  Sigh.

Great writer, sad his run didn't last.

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:gailsimone:fyeahbatgirl:from...

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

gailsimone:

fyeahbatgirl:

from Batgirl #5

I like Gretel. She's fun.

She might have some issues.

First Shiva, then Alkyone, now Gretel. Should I be worried that so many of the DC characters I have a crush on are murdererous supervillains that you have created/written Gail? O.O

Ha! Yes, definitely worry.;)


But I can't take credit for Shiva, she was badass and awesome way before I ever got my grubby paws on her.

geekeryandhockey:I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED THAT TOP PIC TO...

geekeryandhockey:

I NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED THAT TOP PIC TO HAPPEN!

NEEEEEEEEEED IT LIKE AIR!!

Also, that's a bitchin' Donna redesign!

Oh.


That top one actually made my heart break a little bit.

durkinator27:gailsimone:cursethecosmos:gailsimone:invisib...

durkinator27:

gailsimone:

cursethecosmos:

gailsimone:

invisiblelad:

gailsimone:

comicbookkissyface:

Secret Six v3 #8

Hahaha, I got a bunch of scornful tweets and fb comments about this. :) But the "right on!" posts outnumbered them about fifty to one.

Scandal Savage far and away is one of the most badass characters in the past decade of comic books. Period. The fact that she's a deeply damaged, sympathetic layered character beyond her sexual orientation just makes her even more so. 

What on earth did the detractors have to say? (Secret Six was hardly a book for children)

I hesitate to even repeat it, you know the drill. Too much "gay stuff," blah blah blah. Several people wrote and said they could, "no longer support the book," often because of their religious beliefs. Fair enough, I would respond, that's your problem, …but you're okay with the cannibalism and necrophilia? A book where two characters have dinner on decomposed flesh is fine, but HOLY SHIT DON'T LET TWO WOMEN KISS. ;)

Where would this medium be without Gail Simone?! 

I don't want to imply that it was some big deal, I just found it kind of funny. The interesting thing about Secret Six, and I stress this is just an unintended by-product, but I had a LOT of conservative and religious people say that they really came to root for Scandal's love life when they hadn't expected to…one guy did a whole podcast about how she had made him rethink his positions on gay and polyamorous relationships. It wasn't ever the goal or the point, but I thought that was a nice side-effect, that she made people rethink some prejudices. Fiction is power, I swear. I want to be able to do that with a gay male hero sometime this year. Be nice to have that in more dc books.

Dear Gail Simone,

I love you.

Love your fan,
Derek

Seriously.  Why aren't there more mainstream writers like this in every form of media? 

Sweetie, I love you, too!

You give me far too much credit, but thank you so much.

jovenistheworst:gailsimone:invisiblelad:gailsimone:comicb...

jovenistheworst:

gailsimone:

invisiblelad:

gailsimone:

comicbookkissyface:

Secret Six v3 #8

Hahaha, I got a bunch of scornful tweets and fb comments about this. :) But the "right on!" posts outnumbered them about fifty to one.

Scandal Savage far and away is one of the most badass characters in the past decade of comic books. Period. The fact that she's a deeply damaged, sympathetic layered character beyond her sexual orientation just makes her even more so. 

What on earth did the detractors have to say? (Secret Six was hardly a book for children)

I hesitate to even repeat it, you know the drill. Too much "gay stuff," blah blah blah. Several people wrote and said they could, "no longer support the book," often because of their religious beliefs. Fair enough, I would respond, that's your problem, …but you're okay with the cannibalism and necrophilia? A book where two characters have dinner on decomposed flesh is fine, but HOLY SHIT DON'T LET TWO WOMEN KISS. ;)

Look how pumped that chihuahua is.

He's clearly on Venom.