Gail Simone's Blog, page 311

blackrnage:"Well, excuse the &*@% out of me for not wanting...

blackrnage:

"Well, excuse the &*@% out of me for not wanting to be a zombie-slave.”

This is a great shot!

This is the thing, I am always seeing articles comparing female...

This is the thing, I am always seeing articles comparing female creators, as if there is somehow a limited number of spaces for us to be creative in, if you get my meaning.

What they don’t get is that we work together and care about each other and are happy at each other’s successes. We’re friends, and we all want to see a bigger, more open readership. 

So there. :)

Unapologetically black. Unapologetically queer. Unapologetically Jewish. Unapologetically me.

if you had your dream choices who would you pick to play the birds of prey in a movie? And who would play the secret 6?

I honestly don’t know many actors, I don’t keep up with Hollywood at all. Sorry!

5robins:I am the Black Canary. And I take [shit] from precisely...

5robins:

I am the Black Canary. And I take [shit] from precisely no one.
— Birds of Prey #93

There you go, that’s the real Black Canary right there.

I have been a fan of Gail Simone for far too long to hear "Scrabble" and think of the board game.

bookjockey:

Dammit, gailsimone. 

TRIPLE WORD SCORE IS THIRD BASE.

Thinking about body type diversity (or lack thereof) in comic books, does the writer get to decide whether somebody is thin, fat, or muscular, or is that left in the hands of the artists? Also, do you have any recommendations for titles with fat heroines?

Character design is fluid a little bit, like most things in comics. If I ask for a character to look a certain way, the hope and expectation is that the artist will draw them that way. But some artists choose to draw something else.

It’s generally just assumed they will follow the script, but in some cases, I have had artists go completely the opposite way for a number of reasons. In one case, a very famous artist changed the gender of two important characters to girls so he could draw girls in sexy clothes throughout the book, even though it didn’t match their dialog at all.

A couple times, I have had the artists’ religion become a factor, where they felt uncomfortable drawing a character a certain way. 

And a few times, I have had an artist not really understand what I was asking for, I think because of cultural or language barriers. This came up quite a bit early on in Batgirl, where most of our artists were not from the US and sometimes had some difficulty present fashionable young Gotham girls in modern clothes. Fantastic artists, but that was not something they had experienced much (this is in their own words, not mine) and that was sometimes a little awkward.

On the other hand, just as often, all these artists would end up adding wonderful detail, bringing life to characters that had only been sketchily added to the script. 

So I guess the answer is it changes for everyone. 

But I will say it is often very difficult to get artists to draw women in particular as unattractive. Some artists spend so much time learning to draw conventionally attractive women that even if you can get them to draw someone less so, over time, they get prettied up until they become indistinguishable from all the other pretty characters. It’s a common problem, and the thing with heavier characters is similar…If you ask for a character to have a build other than a classic superhero, it can be a struggle to keep reinforcing that every issue.

It also happens with height, hair length, and ethnicity, you will often see these slowly default to a more generic version over time.

As for books with bigger females, I think both Harbinger and Bitch Planet might interest you!

VOTE: Top 50 Female Comic Writers & Artists of ALL-TIME!

comicbookshopde:

Comics Should Be Good wants your input!

Please read the article all the way through and send in your choices by 3.16.15! 

Make sure you do a little research first, okay?  See if you can pick the next Fiona, Gail, Kelly Sue, or Jordie!

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2015/03/02/vote-for-the-top-50-female-comic-book-writers-and-artists-of-all-time/

I wish there had been a (pre-Flashpoint) Birds of Prey vs/team-up-with Gotham Girls. I also can't believe I only thought about that now, but the notion of Oracle, Dinah, and Helena, and Harley, Ivy, and Selina... would just have been so awesome.

Dang.

I wonder why we never did that? It seems really obvious somehow.

Weird. WE SHOULD HAVE DONE THAT!

dynamitecomics:Artist Emma Vieceli makes her Dynamite debut with...

dynamitecomics:

Artist Emma Vieceli makes her Dynamite debut with this stunning variant cover to Red Sonja #15! 

All we can say is WOW!

That cover is AMAZING.