Gail Simone's Blog, page 282
May 8, 2015
I just finished the second TPB of your Red Sonja run, and I just have to say, the reveal of Osric's vow made me laugh out loud for two minutes straight. Well played! That's not actually a question though, so: Is that series still ongoing in any sense or ar
I am doing six more issues, so there will be one more trade at least…
…but there is also LEGENDS of Red Sonja, which I did with a bunch of my favorite writers, and we are now doing SWORDS OF SORROW, which features Sonja in a big way. We are all having a blast!
And thank you for the kind words, LOVED having Osric guest star!
I just finished the second TPB of your Red Sonja run, and I just have to say, the reveal of Osric's vow made me laugh out loud for two minutes straight. Well played! That's not actually a question though, so: Is that series still ongoing in any sense or ar
I am doing six more issues, so there will be one more trade at least…
…but there is also LEGENDS of Red Sonja, which I did with a bunch of my favorite writers, and we are now doing SWORDS OF SORROW, which features Sonja in a big way. We are all having a blast!
And thank you for the kind words, LOVED having Osric guest star!
Are You Near the Portland/Vancouver Area?
Come to I LIKE COMICS in Vancouver, Washington, starting tomorrow, 5/9/15 tomorrow for a signing with me, and comics superstar artists PETE WOODS and ROBERT HACK!
The store is supposed to be amazing, and they will have exclusive PETE WOODS variant covers of SWORDS OF SORROW #1 that you can’t get anywhere else. WOOT!
It’s gonna be fun! Who is coming?
What time will you be there? We have tickets to Age of Ultron in the middle of the afternoon but I would like to come!
We start at noon and are going until at least 5:00, I believe, does that work out for you to still make the movie?
Are You Near the Portland/Vancouver Area?
Come to I LIKE COMICS in Vancouver, Washington, starting tomorrow, 5/9/15 tomorrow for a signing with me, and comics superstar artists PETE WOODS and ROBERT HACK!
The store is supposed to be amazing, and they will have exclusive PETE WOODS variant covers of SWORDS OF SORROW #1 that you can’t get anywhere else. WOOT!
It’s gonna be fun! Who is coming?
“Gotham goes PUNK” - Punk Batgirl and Nightwing -Sakura Matsuri...
“Gotham goes PUNK” - Punk Batgirl and Nightwing
-Sakura Matsuri 2015-
Cosplayers: FenixEmber Cosplay [Ember IG | Fenix IG]
Photos by: EDward Fotography (First three)
Edgar Bonifacio Photography
Batgirl Cowl: ReevzFx
Nightwing Mask: Tigerstone FX
Escrima: WebWorksProps
Punk Batgirl Design based on sketch by Babs Tarr
Breathtaking!
May 7, 2015
goodstuffhappenedtoday:
Why NASA Called The Northwest Indian...
Why NASA Called The Northwest Indian College Space Center
It started out as a joke.
The students at Northwest Indian College on the Lummi Reservation near Bellingham were launching little rockets made from recycled water bottles as a way to do some hands-on science.
Computer science teacher Gary Brandt says calling it a “space center” was just something one of the students came up with.
“And he said, ‘I called us the Northwest Indian College Space Center,‘” Brandt said. “I was kind of dumbfounded, basically. And I said, ‘OK, let’s do that. That’s kind of grandiose. Let’s really play it up.’”
The joke was funny because this was just a tiny, two-year college, with no engineering program. Getting into space was the last thing on the minds of these students; they were just trying to escape poverty. Next thing they knew, NASA was calling them up.
It was beyond their wildest dreams. Christian Cultee, a student there, grew up nearby.
“My uncle runs a fish hatchery up here,” Cultee said. “My biggest fear here, my whole life, was just kind of being trapped here on the reservation.”
Another student, Amy Irons, managed to get off the reservation in Kitsap County where she lived and worked as a line cook for 10 years.
“I did have the passion to be a chef one day,” she said. “As soon as that faded I was just burned out and just working for the check.”
At Northwest Indian College, they stumbled into another passion – launching pressurized water-bottle rockets for fun. Every time someone launched a rocket, students gathered to watch.
They read online about more advanced rocketry programs in other schools, but those programs were really expensive. One day, teacher Gary Brandt broke down and bought three rocket kits anyway.
Not long after their first real rocket launch, Brandt got a phone call – from NASA.
“She introduced herself and said, ‘I didn’t know you were big enough to have a space center,’” he said. “And I, of course, choked and chortled and told her the story of what happened. And she said, ‘Be that as it may, you are doing what we want, and that’s to get underrepresented students involved in science, technology, engineering and math programs.’”
NASA would give them $5,000 a year for three years. It was enough to get them to take themselves seriously.
The students began entering competitions. Each year, NASA organized a different challenge.
Such as, reach a specific altitude and take scientific readings from the atmosphere. Or use a robot to collect a soil sample, put the sample in a rocket, and prepare the rocket for launch – all with no help from humans.
Big schools like MIT and Vanderbilt University came to the competitions with fancy equipment: digital scales, specialized aluminum parts and fancy servo motors.
Northwest Indian College used discarded computer parts, bubble levels and mouse traps.
Irons said they worked with what they had.
“It comes down to sometimes, ‘Oh, do you have a paperclip, I need to put a paperclip in here to make sure this is secure,’” she said. “And so, honestly, it’s just whatever you have that works, you need to use it.”
And it did work.
That resourcefulness, borne out of poverty, has helped the Northwest Indian College Space Center outperform some schools with far greater resources. That gumption is what caught NASA’s attention.
Mamta Nagaraja, an engineer with the space agency, said these students have qualities NASA would love to have on a team.
“Being able to have somebody on the team who is resourceful will give you that perspective,” she said.
“‘Well, we could do it this way, and we don’t really need to buy that product because it’d be quite easy to reuse this product that we have from this past mission and it’s not being used currently, it’s just sitting in a box.’”
Cultee has interned with NASA for the last two years. And he’s returning next year. He’s not thinking about working in his uncle’s fish hatchery anymore.
“The internship that I’m getting this summer will have to do with software development and communicating with satellites,” he said.
Amy Irons wants to be a marine biologist. But she’ll bring her rocketry skills to that profession.
Irons: “I’m hoping to get into underwater rovers and use underwater rovers to explore the sub-tidal areas. Which I would use for data collection.”
Now people are starting to take the space program at the Northwest Indian College seriously.
But for Brandt, the biggest reward is seeing his students take themselves seriously.
“It’s just an amazing feeling for me to see the look of competence,” he said. “The look of self-esteem. And when I see them talking with these big engineering graduate-level students from Vanderbilt and these things on an absolutely equal basis – you can see how it makes me feel.”
Other tribal colleges are catching rocket fever too.
This weekend, they’ll compete in the fifth annual First Nations Launch, a competition just for tribal teams.
WOOT! Signing this Saturday in VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON! I am...
WOOT! Signing this Saturday in VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON!
I am really, really excited to be signing this Saturday at
https://www.facebook.com/ILikeComicsVancouver in Vancouver, Washington!
WOOT!
We will start signing at noon, I am happy to sign as many books as you bring. No charge for signings, photos or hugs, but if you want a punch in the junk, I may charge a junkpunch fee. It depends on my mood.
The best thing is, we will have a variant of Swords of Sorrow that is a I LIKE COMICS exclusive you can’t get ANYWHERE ELSE, and it’s drawn by the great Pete Woods. It’s gorgeous!
Also, just to make it cooler, DC star artist PETE WOODS and the fabulous cover artist ROBERT HACK will also be signing there, and both have done Swords of Sorrow covers, so that makes it a TRIFECTA OF AWESOME.
I LIKE COMICS is at
1715 Broadway St.
Vancouver, Washington.
I have never done a store signing in Washington, I think. And being a Pacific Northwest girl, this makes me happy that I finally get to do one at such a great store.
Please come say hi, it’s going to be a blast!
5/9/15 starting at NOON!
comicsodissey:
SWORDS OF SORROW #3
Oh my god, I hadn’t seen...
SWORDS OF SORROW #3
Oh my god, I hadn’t seen that. Robert Hack is AMAZING.
I asked him to do covers with gender reversals of classic Men’s Adventure magazines and he just got the humor of it right away, and has been KILLING it!
Is DC ever going to release a trade paperback of your run on Batgirl?
They have been releasing multiple printings of my Batgirl run in both hardback and softcover. Now sure what you mean?
May 5, 2015
A comic starring all iconic female characters! Written by all female writers!
And yet, this is the cover art Dynamite is leading with?:
I… what?
I mean, it’s so over-the-top that I double-checked to make sure it wasn’t a joke. But, no.
Assuming (HOPING) that the interior art is NOTHING LIKE THIS, I’ll be reading the book, because Gail Simone, but this artwork in no way jives with what she says about the series in the press release:
“I love pulp adventure, always have,” Simone said in Dynamite’s press release announcing the event. “But as male-dominated as comics have often been, the pulp adventure world seems to be even more so. Most of the big name stars and creators are dudes, and that’s fine, it’s great. But it hit me… what if that wasn’t the case? What if adventure pulps had also been written with female readers in mind, and awesome female characters in the spotlight? That’s the scenario we are imagining, and it’s just been a blast. The key players are Red Sonja, Vampirella and Dejah Thoris, but it’s such an epic-spanning, world-hopping event that we also have Kato, Jungle Girl, Lady Rawhide, Jennifer Blood and so many more.”
And, if you want to know why I’ve made the decision to bypass the cover in order to at least TRY reading the stories, here’s more about the project from an interview with Simone:
We have Marguerite Bennett, who is currently killing it on “Angela: Asgard’s Assassin” and writes deeply suspenseful stuff; G. Willow Wilson, who is redefining mainstream comics with “Ms. Marvel”; Nancy Collins, whom I personally dragged back into comics because I adore her horror stuff; Mikki Kendall, acclaimed science fiction writer and activist doing her first comics work; Leah Moore, who does the best “Sherlock Holmes” comics ever done; Emma Beeby, the first female writer of “Judge Dredd” in history; Mairghread Scott, who is nailing everything she does, including “Transformers”; and a real favorite of mine, Erica Schultz, who is going to be huge and has been doing things like “Revenge” for Marvel and her creator-owned “M3.”
Everyone brought something different. Nancy gave us a terrifying horror story, Willow envisioned a hilarious romp, Erica brought espionage to the table and Leah Moore gave us an incredibly convincing Victorian mystery/adventure tale. I just laughed and gasped through each of the stories. These women can write like bandits. Marguerite’s Sonja is one of my favorite takes ever. It’s just too fun and too snarky.
So. Here’s hoping, and WE SHALL SEE.
Via.
That cover is very odd for the issue…I like J. Scott Campbell, but I think the covers by Tula Lotay, Kate Leth and Robert Hack are much more indicative of the contents.
Glad you are giving us a try, it’s a labor of love!
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