Gail Simone's Blog, page 643
September 25, 2013
billcorbett:
This is a very alarming picture of myself, but...
This is a very alarming picture of myself, but there is nobody to blame but my face. Shame on you, My Face.
That aside! …I have the privilege of mini-touring with the great John Hodgman through several midwestern points NEXT WEEK. Please check details below!
We will have fun, and I will try not make that face at anyone. But do carry mace, just to be safe. Thank you.
I interrupt this (my) morning of watching videos of GTA-V cheats to proudly announce that:
BILL CORBETT HIMSELF will be joining me on my upcoming visits to Minneapolis, Iowa City, and Madison, Wisconsin.
You know Bill, of course, from RiffTrax and MST3K and my previous visits to the mid-west. You may even know him personally. Look, I don’t know who you know. That’s your business.
THE POINT IS HE IS A GENIUS and a friend and an inspiration, so it is not merely requested but now REQUIRED THAT YOU JOIN US.
Click the city of your choice for details:
10/3/13 in MINNEAPOLIS!
10/4/13 in IOWA CITY!
10/5/13 in MADISON!
And now, five questions and five answers:
Q1: Will you be performing new comedy or old comedy?
A1: NEW COMEDY, if you consider me channeling the ghost of Ayn Rand comedy.
Q2: Will you be meeting and greeting and signing after these shows?
A2: YES, and I bet Bill will probably hang around as well, but if he feels snuffly or anything, who knows. I don’t control him.
Q3: Will you be honoring Friends of Tom discounts?
A3: YES I WILL BE DOING THAT.
Q4: Will you ever visit San Francisco or Seattle again?
A5: Pre-sale for those shows and special guest announcements are forthcoming TODAY at 10AM Pacific.
Q5: Is there anything I can do?
A5: If you cannot attend due to finances or geography, I understand. But/and/or if you have seen any of the new material (or not) and felt inclined to retweet, retumbl, upthumb, and generally spread the word to your friends and social medias, I would be very very grateful. And I will be honoring FOT discounts.
Live performance is the most terrifying fun that I have experienced in my career. But I cannot terrify and fun you unless you are there.
Whatever the case, I thank you for your kind attention, again and again.
That is all.
Two brilliant and wonderful dudes.
That is one of the best Stephanies I have seen. Wow.
That is one of the best Stephanies I have seen. Wow.
I'm a Black Female Cosplayer And Some People Hate It
After my pictures started making the rounds on deviantArt, tumblr and 4chan, it became pretty clear that my cosplay brings all the racists to the yard, and they’re like…white cosplay is better than yours.
'For a black cosplayer (not to be racist) she did an amazing job!' the original Tumblr post read. It was later was edited to include “I love her skin tone” after all hell broke loose.
Personally, I’ve always been stuck on those first few words: ‘for a black cosplayer.’ As if the bar was set lower for us, as if we weren’t expected to perform on the same level as white cosplayers.
H/T Ronaldo Jones
great article.
Every time I see this article I just get angry again.
Chaka is so ridiculously beautiful and such a gifted cosplayer that she takes your breath away just to be AROUND her and on top of that, she’s funny, charming, intelligent and kind. People like her are the best reason to go to cons in the first place.
The people trolling her aren’t fit to be the gum on her shoe.
September 24, 2013
danschkade:
gailsimone:
Whenever people ask me for a tip on...
Whenever people ask me for a tip on becoming a writer, the first tip, literally the first one that comes to mind, is to build a library. Seriously, whenever I can, I go to bookstores and I buy up anything on their remainder shelf relating to history in particular. Biographies and reference books as well, but history first.
I believe that a shelf full of history books is the greatest possible idea machine someone can have. The internet is not the same, exactly, holding a history book and reading the close details of our past in particular serves as inspiration every single time. Many, many stories you guys might have read of mine had their roots in these books I bought on clearance at sidewalk sales and in remainder aisles.
For example, the first villain I created, The Black Swan, in Deadpool, is based on a biography of King Ludwig II, the ‘mad king of Bavaria,’ who was obsessed with the fantasy operas of Wagner, and helped create a renaissance of architecture and art that has lasted to this day.
You can’t read history as a writer and not get ideas, it’s just impossible.
I’m sure a lot of you already know this, but Kilmainham Gaol is a real place, a prison built in Dublin, Ireland, built right around the year 1800. At the time, it was considered quite ‘humane’ and progressive, even. It’s been out of commission since, I think, the 1980’s, and is now a museum.
It’s disturbing as hell, and was one of the least ‘humane’ places I have ever been in. It held, at one time or another, nearly all of the imprisoned Irish Nationalists, and at one time, public hangings were held right out in front, later, the executions were no longer public.
There are things about it that are very haunting…it’s several levels, the main room is shaped like an oval, so a few guards could see every cell. Doors did have this design, that of an eye with a viewing hole in the center, on the cell’s interior, so that the prisoners felt they were being watched 24 hours a day by both the guards and by God, never a moment’s privacy. They were made to feel like hopeless sinners. No peace, even in sleep.
They were also not allowed to speak, not even to themselves.
Perhaps the oddest thing is that the jail did not separate men from women, even children. They were tossed together, five and six in a cell, regardless of sex or age. Children as young as five were incarcerated for petty theft.
Also, it’s odd, but women were deliberately treated worse than the men, at both an institutional and practical level. Men had beds, cots, anyway, women slept on filthy hay on the floor and were often subject to particularly brutal torture and treatment.
One of the most horrifying stories is that of Anne Devlin. In another issue of Secret Six, Jeannette describes having been a prisoner here at the Gaol, and her story is essentially an abridged version of Anne’s story.
Anne was an Irish nationalist posing as a housekeeper for Robert Emmett, who was planning an uprising. She was arrested and tortured, but would not reveal anything.
Later, she was arrested again, and became the particular target of brutal treatment, vengeful actions because she refused to tell anything about her employer. Police surrounded her with bayonets and stabbed her, she refused to talk. They tried to bribe her, they threatened her with ‘ribald’ comments, and she refused to say anything.
Robert Emmett was captured, and when he heard of her refusal to say a word against him, he begged her to tell the guards everything about him that she knew, he was doomed anyway and it would end her torment. She refused.
She was repeatedly tortured, and deliberately kept in a cell where, as Jeannette says, all the sewage from the jail ran over her feet each day. She was tortured and otherwise abused, kept in the dark and in solitary, for three years. Her family was arrested, her twelve year old brother died in jail just a few cells away.
She refused to utter a single word against her compatriots, and this became an embarrassment for the police, who treated her with endless cruelty. When she was released, she had several illnesses that would stay with her the rest of her life and looked like a broken old woman at the age of 28.
Again, the people who built the gaol were quite proud of the ‘humane’ qualities of the prison.
If you read the Secret Six volume, DEPTHS, much of that story is informed by Kilmainham Gaol, as well as prisons in North Korea and China that function to this day. It was about moral relativism, and how being in power doesn’t necessarily mean being moral, or decent, or humane. About how the state can be allowed to do things that would make us aghast if committed by a serial killer. Some of the tortures used in these places, and even, as we have seen, by our own government, are little different from what we have seen the worst serial killers do, the only difference is the tacit or explicit approval of that country’s government.
This is why I believe we can’t listen to the family friendly rebranding of torture as ‘enhanced interrogation.’ It is still torture. It is still applied to force confessions from the innocent. It is applied for political gain. It is applied to silence opposing viewpoints. It is applied against the poor, the disadvantaged, and in greatly distorted numbers against the ethnic and religious minorities.
But it is still torture.
It’s said that you can judge a country by how it treats its prisoners. I leave it to the reader to decide what that says about your own country.
In any case, the entire story was inspired by a visit to Kilmainham Gaol.
Reblogged mainly because I know of at least three people watching this blog who’ll get something out of it. Also because I didn’t know thing one about the Kilmainham Gaol before reading this, and when that happens, there’s something of a moral imperative to pass it along, don’t you think? Well, time permitting.
"You can’t read history as a writer and not get ideas, it’s just impossible." True as hell, but especially applicable to comics creators, I think. There’s an that immediate download of visual information married to the ability to hang succinct, wikipedia-like descriptions on those visuals that enables the creator to transfer fast chunks of information to the reader without throwing off the rhythm of the story. I’m thinking of The Invisibles in particular, or Immortal Iron Fist, or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I’m not saying comics are the ubermedium, superior to all, but I do think the technology of comic books is uniquely suited to a creator using history like this to enhance the texture of a piece.
(The inversion: comics that don’t take advantage of this tend to be pretty boring. Like GI Joe cartoons on paper. When people decry comics as being ‘storyboards for movies,’ this is usually what they’re talking about it. Graphic literature, as with all things, is all about Tell Me Something I Don’t Know.*)
(*with the frequent attachment: But Please Don’t Make Me Feel Stupid While You’re Doing It, I’m Fragile.)
Reblogging this by request…
Also...
Someone sent me a DM inviting me to be a guest of an awards ceremony in Orlando, but didn’t leave an address for me to contact them back.
I don’t know if it’s a mistake or a troll, but if it’s just an error, could that person please DM me again with contact info?
If it’s not a mistake, Black Canary helped Roy Harper, formerly known as SPEEDY and later as ARSENAL, get off his drug addiction through her kind but firm support. Roy credited her with helping him stay clean and sober!
I Will Be In Dublin In October! Also, Suggestions?
I will be at a signing at SubCity Comics in Dublin on Friday, October 11th, from 5:30-7:30. And I will be at OCTOCON on Saturday and Sunday, lots of cool panels and stuff, gonna be a great show.
Also, just a quick question for people from there…
What cool stuff would you suggest we do while there?
We have been there before, once, and did a lot of stuff. We saw Wicklow, Limerick, Bunratty Castle, the Giants Causeway, the Abbey Theater, the Literary museum, and a few other things.
Any cool suggestions for fun things to see, or good places to eat or see theater or music?
bentlantern:
New 52 Batgirl by ~dangerousladies
Every time I...
New 52 Batgirl by ~dangerousladies
Every time I see this cosplay, I freak out a little because holy CRAP that looks like Barbara!
ardentnerd:
Got this new mug in the mail today! Dang I love it...
Got this new mug in the mail today! Dang I love it so much!!
I have this mug.
Honest to god, on bad days, it gives me a little smile and strength.
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