Gail Simone's Blog, page 1173
September 28, 2011
Favorite group from any other company besides Marvel or DC.... For me, it's Gen 13. ^_^
Sigh.
Yeah. That was a weird thing because it was by far the best-selling of the WS relaunch, and they didn't expect that at all. Of all the books I have written, that is one of the books I am most proud of.
It featured teenagers in a vulnerable state without being cheesy about it, I think. And we got a ton of mail and some press about Sarah from native lgbt groups, that was very lovely.
It's a bit of a secret…it was the first time I ever tried to actually use any 'clout.' I stink at company politics, I'm the worst. But when they wanted to write Gen13 for the relaunch and they REALLY did, Jim and all these important people called me on the phone to make THEIR pitch to ME, instead of the other way around…
…I said I would do it, but I wanted them to also print Welcome to Tranquility, which they had previously turned down. So that was a bit of blackmail that worked out because I ended up LOVING the Gen13 kids. I miss them terribly.
And Tranquility became a significant tpb hit, so it was a win all the way around!
You like the Marvel family, you also are VERY popular. Why on Earth haven't they let just write up a book of it yet?
There IS a good reason for it, one that makes me happy. But I can't yet answer this, I'm sorry.
And I'm unpopular, everyone says so! ;)
If DC let you pick one character that you haven't written to star in a book, who would it be and what would the first arc look like?
Definitely the Marvel family, no question.
It's so wonderful to peruse your blog and read about your thoughts and feelings on the current and previous incarnations of DCU - thank you so much for sharing with all of us! Will you by any chance be at NYCC in a few weeks? I've recently made last-minute
Urgh, thank you! I just talked about this, but unfortunately, no NYCC for me this year.
Next year, I hope! Have fun!
It's so wonderful to peruse your blog and read about your thoughts and feelings on the current and previous incarnations of DCU - thank you so much for sharing with all of us! Will you by any chance be at NYCC in a few weeks? I've recently made last-minute
Urgh, thank you! I just talked about this, but unfortunately, no NYCC for me this year.
Next year, I hope! Have fun!
It's so wonderful to peruse your blog and read about your thoughts and feelings on the current and previous incarnations of DCU - thank you so much for sharing with all of us! Will you by any chance be at NYCC in a few weeks? I've recently made last-minute
Urgh, thank you! I just talked about this, but unfortunately, no NYCC for me this year.
Next year, I hope! Have fun!
It's so wonderful to peruse your blog and read about your thoughts and feelings on the current and previous incarnations of DCU - thank you so much for sharing with all of us! Will you by any chance be at NYCC in a few weeks? I've recently made last-minute
Urgh, thank you! I just talked about this, but unfortunately, no NYCC for me this year.
Next year, I hope! Have fun!
TotalRandomness: The Fury of Firestorm Is REALLY Good Guys
I know Gail Simone is really unpopular around these parts (and I myself was very hard on her over the lack of POC women in Birds of Prey), but this was a really good read. I got some really good Alan Moore Swamp Thing vibes reading this, and it seems like far more than a mere superhero book.
The…
PS. You're right about the vanilla in Birds of Prey.
Oh, if only they had a little more Renee Montoya. :(
(I guess I should be grateful for what we got, since now she's all but gone entirely.)
I know people have gotten mad at me for saying this, but I was a little intimidated to put Renee in. She's been so much Greg Rucka's character…and he has been very nice about letting me use her, but I also know he loves her and has a direction for her that he wants to explore himself.
I loved writing her in Bop and I felt it really worked nicely…moved the tone of the book a little bit, for the better, in my opinion. But by that time we knew I was leaving the book so it didn't mean asking for her to join.
The first team list was given to me; Hawk, Black Canary, Oracle, Huntress, Zinda, and Dove. That was the mission they asked me to undertake. And I had so much on the plate just making that work in a way I liked (I think issue one is a ton of fun and along the lines of what the series should be).
But the screw up is still mine, I was paying attention to making what I had work, and I didn't really fit it together that it was a group of purely white people until I was well underway. When you're working with scripts and you love the characters, I don't know, sometimes incredibly obvious stuff gets missed. Somewhere before the art started coming in I realized we had a snow white team, and I started thinking who would be good to bring in.
I wanted it to be a character with her own fanbase and many of the best were not available, like Vixen and Rocket. Then we got the word that we could bring Cass in, we would just have to wait a little while. That made me ecstatic. Then they took her away in the middle of writing the issue where she debuts in the book and we had to scramble a bit.
So while I didn't pick the original team, I share some blame because I foolishly didn't really catch the problem until we were well along in the first issue. If I'd asked for a character up front, DC would have been okay with it for sure. A missed opportunity. From issue one on, whenever anyone remarked that the team was all white, I had to just bite my tongue because, YAY! CASS IS COMING. When it didn't happen, I was crushed.
Bop was enough of a hit that all the major things like cast changes had to be approved, which meant it took a good while to shift to try to get someone else great after losing Cass.
It's a business with a lot of variables, unfortunately.
I'm very curious. I had read that Secret Six would be returning later on, which would be the best thing ever for DC to do. But if that doesn't happen (or well, if it does, then just apply this question to that haha), I was wondering what random characters
I did have a story like that, a few random characters sent on a mission off-world. Let's see, just off the top of my head:
Rocket
Hawkwoman
Plastic Man
Black Alice
Rainmaker
Ryan Choi
Does that work?
I'm very curious. I had read that Secret Six would be returning later on, which would be the best thing ever for DC to do. But if that doesn't happen (or well, if it does, then just apply this question to that haha), I was wondering what random characters
I did have a story like that, a few random characters sent on a mission off-world. Let's see, just off the top of my head:
Rocket
Hawkwoman
Plastic Man
Black Alice
Rainmaker
Ryan Choi
Does that work?
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