Gail Simone's Blog, page 1112

"@evajackie I hope u can read english, because your magazine is a poor representation of the..."

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@evajackie I hope u can read english, because your magazine is a poor representation of the evolution of human rights! I find you disrespectful, and rather desperate!! You ran out of legit, civilized information to print! There are 1000's of Dutch girls who would love to be recognized for their contributions to your country, you could have given them an article. Instead, u paid to print one degrading an entire race! That's your contribution to this world! To encourage segregation, to mislead the future leaders to act in the past! You put two words together,with the intent of abasement, that made no sense…"NIGGA BITCH"?!….

Well with all respect, on behalf of my race, here are my two words for you…FUCK YOU!!!

"

-

-Rihanna's response to Eva Kroes, editor of Jackie mag, about their "Niggabitch" article. 

I think I love her. 

(via femmenoire)

offish team RiRi. OFFISH.

(via so-treu)

Well, I'm a fan.

(via dumbthingswhitepplsay)

I LOVE YOU, RIHANNA.

(via she-hulk-smash)

Joy!

Secret Six Gets Best Single Issue of the Year

at IGN.com!

http://www.ign.com/wikis/best-of-2011/Best_Single_Issue

They give our final issue, Secret Six #36, Best Single Issue of the Year.

Nifty, good way for the Six to go out!  :)

Thanks, everyone!

fyeahlilbitoeverything:One of my favorite...

fyeahlilbitoeverything:

One of my favorite fights.

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This is an interesting story, about this sequence. It sounds really odd, but at the time, there was quite a bit of fuss that Knockout was portrayed this way. She had always been portrayed as kind of a man-eater, sort of a larger-than-life male fantasy (which is why she was called Knockout). In fact, she would have been downright offensive if her creator hadn't handled her so well, and made her powerful in her own right. He took what COULD have been just a teenboy fantasy cliche and made her really charismatic and loveable.

That's Karl Kesel, one of my favorites, a great artist and a great writer. Also a great chef, I ate a meal at his house once, it was incredible…the guy has gourmet chops! Also, he had two hilarious corgis, so, you know, win.

Anyway, I didn't see her as just a man-eater, I saw her as someone who embraced sex and sexuality, and so this sequence is kind of a double reveal. We see that she's 1) bisexual, and 2) working for Scandal all along. It also means that the 'beloved,' that Scandal referred to in issue two was Knockout, who has been a mole on the other team.

Normally, I don't make big changes to a character without talking to the character's creator…but DC wanted this book to be SUPER secret because information had been leaked months early on some other surprise stuff. So I didn't get to talk to Karl to see if he was okay with this being added to Knockout's character.

I was a bit worried. She clearly had been boy crazy. And when this panel came out, like I said, some male fans were upset. To give the best possible interpretation, I think the thought was more, "this isn't how she's been portrayed," than, "ewww, lesbians."

When I finally got to talk to him, I was a bit sheepish. Would he be pissed? I'd seen characters I'd created treated badly, it's rough to watch.

But he was DELIGHTED. He said it was PERFECTLY in character for her to be omnivorous sexually, he loved it. That was such a huge relief!  He became a big fan of the book and even offered to draw some issues…he wanted to draw a pirate Secret Six issue in the style of the Western issue we did. He could not have been nicer…he wrote several encouraging letters.

Since he was so great, I was kind of upset on his behalf at the story (the story was well done by Tony Bedard, one of the most underrated writers out there, it's the editorial edict I hated) where Knockout was killed to make way for the new versions of the New Gods. I fought against that, but was no longer on the Bop book to do anything about it. My argument was that Knockout wasn't a New God, and thus shouldn't have to die.

I tried several times to bring her back. I hate the waste of a great character, and her death didn't serve any larger purpose.  We finally got to bring her back in Secret Six, when Scandal went to Hell to bring her lover back personally. That felt wonderful!

Oh, and I still get noise sometimes for bringing back Knockout and Ice. But I maintain that both are GODS.  If anyone is going to cheat death, I think you can make a fair case that gods don't count for the dead=dead rule. :)

During Greg Rucka's run on Wonder Woman he hinted at Diana being bisexual, had you ever considered exploring this side of the Amazons. Also was the end of her relationship with Tom Tresser your decision or a call from a higher power, also where did you s

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Yes, and no. I think Diana's bisexual without question. But my interpretation of the Amazons is that the Themiscyran Amazons all thought of Dinah as their daughter, equally. And they treated her thus…she was the first child born to those women in 3000 years and Hippolyta shared her with them all.

So I think her having any sort of thing with an island Amazon would be really wrong (I have an explanation for IO that works for me and keeps that element).

That doesn't mean she couldn't be with an Amazon, just not a Paradise Island Amazon.

Other than that, I think it's absurd to think that she wouldn't be bi, unless the gods specifically dictated otherwise, but we've never seen any evidence of such tampering (thankfully).

I was okay with Diana having a secret identity, I thought it could lead to interesting stories. But my ideal version of the character probably doesn't have a secret id.

And thank you, I love Ireland, I miss it terribly.

In the first issue of Villains United, the Fiddler gets killed and replaced by Catman. But was that their first mission? I find myself wondering if there were other members of the six who were killed-and-replaced behind the scenes before that. Are there an

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No, that was their first full-on mission.

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:so-crucial:polerin:keaneoncomics...

thefingerfuckingfemalefury:

so-crucial:

polerin:

keaneoncomics:

Comikaze Expo 2011-62 (by KamiDigitalMedia)

Miles Morales cosplay!

holy fuck that is awesome.

Indeed.

I'm not a huge fan of Bendis for several reasons but he has done two things that will forever make me happy that he writes for Marvel

One was the creation of Victoria Hand

And the other was the creation of Miles Morales and making him the star of Ultimate Spiderman wonderful cosplay of the character :)

This is incredible.

Hello, I recently picked up the book Masked and I just finished reading your story, Thug. Many times it had my eyes getting watery, especially the part about his mom and angels, which was just heartbreaking. I just wanted to thank you for writing such a b

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Thank you very much. I hadn't written much prose other than as a columnist, and I do get asked a lot to write novels and short stories. Mostly, I haven't had the time, but in this particular case, my dear friend and prose hero Paul Cornell is the one who put the editor in touch with me, for MASKED.

It was very intimidating to consider, my first prose story as a working pro would be in a book with all these amazing, award winning writers. Mike Carey, Marjorie M. Liu, Peter David, all these real writers with great resumes.  And this was my FIRST.

So it was a little terrifying. I had a story in mind, that I thought had some heart, and I sent it to the editor, with a note saying, listen, if you hate this, no harm done. You don't print it, no hard feelings. That was a scary wait for a response!  He wrote back very soon after and was just extremely happy and complimentary. I breathed a huge gasp of relief.

THUG has gotten a terrific response, lots of my pro friends have raved to me about it, and encouraged me to write more prose. I've been working on it a little. And lots of readers have taken it very personally.

I've come to the conclusion that a writing career is like a never-ending game of Russian Roulette, every new opportunity, every new risk, is a chamber, and some have bullets in them.

I'm glad the story moved you in that way, it means a great deal. Thank you.

Gail, I don't know if you've already shared your thoughts on this, but how do you feel about Bane being in The Dark Knight Rises?

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Bane isn't a character I invented, and big Batman villains never really 'belong' to one writer, even their creator…they end up being part of the myth. So I don't have huge feelings either way, I have to say. I'm happy he gets the exposure, hopeful that they get the different facets that make him interesting, but the comics version will still exist whether or not the film version is great.

The one thing I'm proud of with Bane is that he had fallen into a bit of a rut, and was being used almost as cannon fodder for a while there, in a few stories. So I think we did show some new sides of him that got people interested in the character again.

Anyone who says Bane is a horrible character has never read a comic with Bane in it.

operationfailure:

Ted knows what he's talking about.

Agreed. Great origin, great tortured soul…what's not to love?

What would Jeannette get the others for the Holidays?

Lap dances.