Gail Simone's Blog, page 163

Since you're p/ much the iconic Wonder Woman writer of this age, I must ask, what do you think the "theme" of Wonder Woman's rogues gallery is/should be? Because, I've noticed that her rogues don't seem to have as much of a unified theme as, say Superman (

That’s nice of you to say, but I don’t think I’m the iconic WW writer by any stretch.

I do feel that most of her rogue’s gallery has some sort of gender element, either hatred of one gender, or the stereotyping of one gender to the point of extremism.  A lot of her villains are different aspects of misogyny or misandry, I think. We see a lot of female villains for her that resent her message of empowering ALL women, rather than self-empowerment. 

I think that’s as much of a theme as, say, Superman’s gallery. It’s interesting that most of Superman’s older villains seemed so woefully inadequate, and had such minor goals, like Toyman and the like. Later, maybe in response, his villains became sort of top-heavy.

Anyway, I like most of the Wonder Woman villains. I don’t feel they are conceptually flawed, it’s just that most of them have had fewer great stories under their belts. Comics reading at DC and Marvel is a bit like an addiction, the first time something grabs you, it’s electric, and next time you read those characters or that title or those creators, some of that electricity is in your sense memory. If you read a kickass Batman story, you want that sensation again, and you remember it the next time you’re in Gotham.

Wonder Woman’s stories, many of them, were more philosophical and a bit less powered by adrenaline, so I feel like for many, the first contact they had with some of these villains was not necessarily electrifying. So you approach your SECOND “VILLAIN X” story with less enthusiasm and more skepticism, and that’s a harder climb for the rider to make compelling.

But the characters are strong conceptually. I think as more wonderful writers use them, they will gain in stature and popularity. I found them a ton of fun to write.

Since you're p/ much the iconic Wonder Woman writer of this age, I must ask, what do you think the "theme" of Wonder Woman's rogues gallery is/should be? Because, I've noticed that her rogues don't seem to have as much of a unified theme as, say Superman (

That’s nice of you to say, but I don’t think I’m the iconic WW writer by any stretch.

I do feel that most of her rogue’s gallery has some sort of gender element, either hatred of one gender, or the stereotyping of one gender to the point of extremism.  A lot of her villains are different aspects of misogyny or misandry, I think. We see a lot of female villains for her that resent her message of empowering ALL women, rather than self-empowerment. 

I think that’s as much of a theme as, say, Superman’s gallery. It’s interesting that most of Superman’s older villains seemed so woefully inadequate, and had such minor goals, like Toyman and the like. Later, maybe in response, his villains became sort of top-heavy.

Anyway, I like most of the Wonder Woman villains. I don’t feel they are conceptually flawed, it’s just that most of them have had fewer great stories under their belts. Comics reading at DC and Marvel is a bit like an addiction, the first time something grabs you, it’s electric, and next time you read those characters or that title or those creators, some of that electricity is in your sense memory. If you read a kickass Batman story, you want that sensation again, and you remember it the next time you’re in Gotham.

Wonder Woman’s stories, many of them, were more philosophical and a bit less powered by adrenaline, so I feel like for many, the first contact they had with some of these villains was not necessarily electrifying. So you approach your SECOND “VILLAIN X” story with less enthusiasm and more skepticism, and that’s a harder climb for the rider to make compelling.

But the characters are strong conceptually. I think as more wonderful writers use them, they will gain in stature and popularity. I found them a ton of fun to write.

Damian Wayne is a raghead 'America should be for Americans, land of the free.

I bet Damian would get the punctuation right.

I know this is a long time ago and you probably don't know this, but did you give all of the gorillas names in your Wonder Woman run?

Wow.

Um.  I must have, I usually give names even to bit characters in my scripts, even if they don’t get named on panel. But I only remember Tolifhar!

i know you probably get tired of talking about wonder woman since people ask you about her ALL THE TIME but i just wanted to say i loved your take on the character and thought you really did find a great voice for her and didnt have any qualms about challe

Oh, thanks, I appreciate it. I had two goals when writing Diana. One was to, for God’s sake, give her back her sense of humor–that had long since been a casualty of the idea of her being ‘perfect’ and ‘flawless.’ I never saw her that way and think it’s a creative dead-end, however well-intentioned.

The other was that I wanted to do a run that, for once, DIDN’T say all the stuff previous to it never happened, I wanted to say it ALL happened. In retrospect, I’m not sure that was as important to the readers as I thought it was. 

Anyway, all new creators try to bring the good stuff to Wonder Woman, we all want her to be great. Some, like Greg Rucka and Phil Jimenez, are great, others less so, that’s just the roll of the creative dice, I think!

i know you probably get tired of talking about wonder woman since people ask you about her ALL THE TIME but i just wanted to say i loved your take on the character and thought you really did find a great voice for her and didnt have any qualms about challe

Oh, thanks, I appreciate it. I had two goals when writing Diana. One was to, for God’s sake, give her back her sense of humor–that had long since been a casualty of the idea of her being ‘perfect’ and ‘flawless.’ I never saw her that way and think it’s a creative dead-end, however well-intentioned.

The other was that I wanted to do a run that, for once, DIDN’T say all the stuff previous to it never happened, I wanted to say it ALL happened. In retrospect, I’m not sure that was as important to the readers as I thought it was. 

Anyway, all new creators try to bring the good stuff to Wonder Woman, we all want her to be great. Some, like Greg Rucka and Phil Jimenez, are great, others less so, that’s just the roll of the creative dice, I think!

Hey Gail, about a couple years ago I picked up your Firestorm issues, I hadn’t actually realised you...

Hey Gail, about a couple years ago I picked up your Firestorm issues, I hadn’t actually realised you had problems on that book until I searched it up. I was shocked when I saw all the headline stuff because I liked the book. Sorry if this brings up bad memory’s. Sucks that stuff didn’t go well for you on that book :( I know your usually into writing more comedic upbeat kinda stuff so when I took a second look at the book I kinda saw what might have been changed here and there. Hope you get a second chance writing Firestorm again sometime in the future on better terms.

P.S I know Dan Jurgens came on the book and gave it a upbeat tone so that’s cool, maybe that’s what you wanted for the book.

P.S.S Maybe Firestorm in Secret Six?(If I’m crazy enough to suggest).

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

I don’t hate the book, it’s just that we had a fantastic central concept everyone loved, Ethan Van Sciver had a million awesome ideas, and the company loved them, then we didn’t get to follow through and it still bugs me. There’s stuff in there I liked, but it just got edited out of being the book it should have been. 

I am probably not supposed to talk about this stuff. But as a rule, this doesn’t really happen. The two big cases were Firestorm and Batgirl, towards the end. And both those editors are gone, I believe. 

I don’t sit and simmer about it, it’s in the past, conflicts come up. In general, people hire me because they know what I do and what I care about, and they want those things. So it rarely comes up. I have fantastic editors I adore on every single title I’m on, and have for some time. I couldn’t be happier. SO this was a blip.

And thank God Dan Jurgens came on, he was the perfect guy to right the ship. I love him, love his work, and he came in and did a lot to correct the course, which I am very grateful about because I love Firestorm and hated leaving him in a muddle, but I just could not work to my best ability in that situation. It happens. 

How come you decided to go with a more humorous/less dark version of the Secret Six for the New 52? I know that the previous incarnations of the Secret Six had their funny moments (especially when Ragdoll acted as comic relief), but it, in my eyes, had a m

Part of it is just my nature, as a contrarian. I hate to be doing what everyone else is doing.

Before the New 52, there were pretty severe limits on content, and most books could be dark, but not as MORALLY dark as Secret Six. I wanted a book that pushed the boundaries and made it an ongoing question of whether or not the characters were even good people at all. In other words, if everyone is doing, say, Shrek, I wanted to be doing Pulp Fiction.

I think there was a lot of humor in those issues, but I admit a lot of it was gallows humor.

As a contrarian, I felt most of the New 52 was just pointlessly dark, it was grim without having an underlying context to give it all meaning. My struggle with that is a big part of why Firestorm didn’t go as I had hoped…I wanted one thing, they wanted something else. It was just a bad mix.

So I wanted to do something that wasn’t such a migraine, I wanted something that had a bit of charm in it, because that was in shorter supply (despite some excellent exceptions). A lot of other people seemed to feel the same way, which is how we got the revamped Batgirl and Black Canary and such.

Some of it is just me not ever wanting to do what the rest are doing. 

The final factor was that I didn’t want the make-up of the team to be exactly the same, and I didn’t want to just swap out, you know, say, Deathstroke for Deadshot or something like that, I didn’t want to replace some characters with very similar characters. Which led to me thinking, what if the Secret Six had an ACTUAL HERO on the team? Not an anti-hero, but a genuine hero?

The original choice was Ryan Choi. He was going to lead the team. Then that got nixed for reasons I don’t know, and Dan suggested Ralph Dibny. Since Identity Crisis is such a weird low point in some ways for me (it’s written and drawn beautifully but MAN, it’s annoying in its childish rape tropes), this seemed like a beautiful way to take advantage of the New 52, to put one of comics’ great romances back together.

I knew that having even a single GOOD GUY on the team would change the tone. Which I like, I didn’t want to try to recreate the original. And I’m really enjoying the team, it’s got unexpected surprises, like Ferdie wanting Strix to feel okay about herself, I just could never have imagined that happening a couple years ago when I created them.

I like to explore new territory, there’s always lots of time to go back and revisit old, familiar stuff. I’d rather try something new, even if it’s riskier.

Hope that makes sense.

How come you decided to go with a more humorous/less dark version of the Secret Six for the New 52? I know that the previous incarnations of the Secret Six had their funny moments (especially when Ragdoll acted as comic relief), but it, in my eyes, had a m

Part of it is just my nature, as a contrarian. I hate to be doing what everyone else is doing.

Before the New 52, there were pretty severe limits on content, and most books could be dark, but not as MORALLY dark as Secret Six. I wanted a book that pushed the boundaries and made it an ongoing question of whether or not the characters were even good people at all. In other words, if everyone is doing, say, Shrek, I wanted to be doing Pulp Fiction.

I think there was a lot of humor in those issues, but I admit a lot of it was gallows humor.

As a contrarian, I felt most of the New 52 was just pointlessly dark, it was grim without having an underlying context to give it all meaning. My struggle with that is a big part of why Firestorm didn’t go as I had hoped…I wanted one thing, they wanted something else. It was just a bad mix.

So I wanted to do something that wasn’t such a migraine, I wanted something that had a bit of charm in it, because that was in shorter supply (despite some excellent exceptions). A lot of other people seemed to feel the same way, which is how we got the revamped Batgirl and Black Canary and such.

Some of it is just me not ever wanting to do what the rest are doing. 

The final factor was that I didn’t want the make-up of the team to be exactly the same, and I didn’t want to just swap out, you know, say, Deathstroke for Deadshot or something like that, I didn’t want to replace some characters with very similar characters. Which led to me thinking, what if the Secret Six had an ACTUAL HERO on the team? Not an anti-hero, but a genuine hero?

The original choice was Ryan Choi. He was going to lead the team. Then that got nixed for reasons I don’t know, and Dan suggested Ralph Dibny. Since Identity Crisis is such a weird low point in some ways for me (it’s written and drawn beautifully but MAN, it’s annoying in its childish rape tropes), this seemed like a beautiful way to take advantage of the New 52, to put one of comics’ great romances back together.

I knew that having even a single GOOD GUY on the team would change the tone. Which I like, I didn’t want to try to recreate the original. And I’m really enjoying the team, it’s got unexpected surprises, like Ferdie wanting Strix to feel okay about herself, I just could never have imagined that happening a couple years ago when I created them.

I like to explore new territory, there’s always lots of time to go back and revisit old, familiar stuff. I’d rather try something new, even if it’s riskier.

Hope that makes sense.

How come you decided to go with a more humorous/less dark version of the Secret Six for the New 52? I know that the previous incarnations of the Secret Six had their funny moments (especially when Ragdoll acted as comic relief), but it, in my eyes, had a m

Part of it is just my nature, as a contrarian. I hate to be doing what everyone else is doing.

Before the New 52, there were pretty severe limits on content, and most books could be dark, but not as MORALLY dark as Secret Six. I wanted a book that pushed the boundaries and made it an ongoing question of whether or not the characters were even good people at all. In other words, if everyone is doing, say, Shrek, I wanted to be doing Pulp Fiction.

I think there was a lot of humor in those issues, but I admit a lot of it was gallows humor.

As a contrarian, I felt most of the New 52 was just pointlessly dark, it was grim without having an underlying context to give it all meaning. My struggle with that is a big part of why Firestorm didn’t go as I had hoped…I wanted one thing, they wanted something else. It was just a bad mix.

So I wanted to do something that wasn’t such a migraine, I wanted something that had a bit of charm in it, because that was in shorter supply (despite some excellent exceptions). A lot of other people seemed to feel the same way, which is how we got the revamped Batgirl and Black Canary and such.

Some of it is just me not ever wanting to do what the rest are doing. 

The final factor was that I didn’t want the make-up of the team to be exactly the same, and I didn’t want to just swap out, you know, say, Deathstroke for Deadshot or something like that, I didn’t want to replace some characters with very similar characters. Which led to me thinking, what if the Secret Six had an ACTUAL HERO on the team? Not an anti-hero, but a genuine hero?

The original choice was Ryan Choi. He was going to lead the team. Then that got nixed for reasons I don’t know, and Dan suggested Ralph Dibny. Since Identity Crisis is such a weird low point in some ways for me (it’s written and drawn beautifully but MAN, it’s annoying in its childish rape tropes), this seemed like a beautiful way to take advantage of the New 52, to put one of comics’ great romances back together.

I knew that having even a single GOOD GUY on the team would change the tone. Which I like, I didn’t want to try to recreate the original. And I’m really enjoying the team, it’s got unexpected surprises, like Ferdie wanting Strix to feel okay about herself, I just could never have imagined that happening a couple years ago when I created them.

I like to explore new territory, there’s always lots of time to go back and revisit old, familiar stuff. I’d rather try something new, even if it’s riskier.

Hope that makes sense.