Gail Simone's Blog, page 649

Excellent Sonja!

Excellent Sonja!

Oh, MAN!

The workshop on character building was FANTASTIC.

It was two hours long, and the first half was the technical work of building characters—the tricks I use, the techniques I rely on.  Then we put it in practice by having half the class create a Norwegian superhero team, and the other half creating an opposing supervillain team.

Most of the people in the class were young people, more girls than boys, many of them came from a college in Eastern Norway (so they traveled a good way to be here for the comics festival). They are students in a comics study program, they are high school age and they will have a minor in comics, which is cool beyond words.

I had asked, in the middle of the night, for a bunch of my writer friends to give me their BEST snippet of character building advice, and a ton responded, people like Mark Waid, Mercedes Lackey and a lot more. This advice is pure gold, any new writer would give their teeth for this stuff.

The workshop went FANTASTICALLY well, and part of it was because of the advice on character building my writer friends sent. I was worried how we were going to fill time but we discussed character, we read a bunch of the suggestions and tips my friends sent, and then they created their own Norwegian superhero and supervillain teams, and the ideas were surprisingly great.
 
Many of them sketched the characters as they were tossing out suggestions and the ideas were REALLY cool and fun, and the sketches were awesome. Norway doesn’t really HAVE a superhero, really, so these kids were doing something really pretty new.
 
I loved it. What a fun morning, showing a little bit of what this job is like to a room full of aspiring creators in a new country!
 
Just big fun. Hopefully some of them will post their sketches so I can share!
 

WOW. Just Wow.

Okay, so this is the coolest.

I am in Bergen, Norway, for the RAPTUS Comics Festival.  And it’s funny, because I’ve been told all month that not that many people here read Western comics, that Norway only produces humor comics, most people wouldn’t know who I am, on and on, so I was prepared to have to explain who I am and what I do to the audience.

It didn’t turn out to be that way at all, my first panel was packed, and it was more girls than boys, and most of them had read US produced comics, and they asked great questions and had books to sign and were completely lovely and fierce and very friendly.

What was most exciting was how many of them want to make comics. This is always thrilling to me, but it turns out that many of these young people were students of actual college courses on comics. I loved the universal love of comics that we all shared—they are used to entirely different books (Donald Duck is HUGE here, it’s practically a religion) and formats, but we are all bound by the love of pictures and words together.

Tomorrow, I am supposed to do a two hour seminar on character creation. My own process for creating characters is weird and difficult, I am not sure I can teach it or that it will be helpful to others. So I was nervous, these kids deserve a great class.

So I had this idea…and in the middle of the night here, I emailed a bunch of my favorite writer friends, and I asked them, if they were to just give ONE small piece of advice on how to make characters, what would it be? What would you tell these passionate aspiring comics creators in Norway?

I didn’t think anyone would respond, it’s the middle of the night here and late there. And everyone’s busy, and they’ve heard this question so many times.

WOW.

I was wrong.

Almost instantly, I started getting AMAZING advice from people like Mark Waid, Devin Grayson, Greg Pak, Paul Storrie, Mercedes Lackey, Dan Jurgens, Jimmy Palmiotti, Joe Kelly, Dan Slott, Marv Wolfman, Adam Glass, Gerry Duggan, Kurt Busiek, Gerry Conway, Colleen Doran, Chuck Dixon and Kelly Sue DeConnick.

And I’m telling you, there’s a reason why these people are successful and great at their jobs, this stuff is liquid gold. It made me look at my own process again, it’s the stuff that makes you want to write all day.

I’m going to share a bunch of this with these Norwegian aspiring creators, I hope the small language gap isn’t a problem because man, if I could sit in a class and get writing advice from THIS group of writers, I would be glued to my seat. Wow.

This stuff is too great to just be used once. I may ask permission to share some of it here, if the writers are okay with that. If we do, I strongly advise everyone to read this stuff and absorb it, it is incredibly powerful advise from the best in the business!

Ps. I have awesome friends!

Is Keith Giffen going to be writing Black Alice in Justice League 3000? The only other title that I know of him writing right now is Larfleeze, and she would be... incongruous in that title..

My understanding is that she is in a Justice League vs. Masters of the Universe book, I think?

I'm watching JLU for the first time and what the poop, I thought Black Canary had a southern accent! GAIL FIX IT

Black Canary doesn’t have a Southern accent, Lady Blackhawk has a Southern accent!

So, are you excited Ragdoll will be in Arkham War? I sure as hell am.

I am VERY excited to hear that Black Alice and Ragdoll are back. I don’t know who is writing Arkham War, but Keith Giffen is doing the book Alice is in and he always writes her perfectly, so hooray!

Legends Of Red Sonja

blugoblin:

YES! YES! YES!  I know another series that I’m putting on my pull list at Arkham Comics!!  Hell, I’d love to have that cover as a poster on my wall.  All the brilliant people who’ll be working on this; Gail Simone, Nancy A. Collins, Devin Grayson doing the writing with art byJack Jadson, Noah Salonga, and Carla McNeil.  Ohhhhh!  I’m ready for extra goodness from our favorite she-devil with a sword!

I am so excited for this, it is an actual dream come true. I picked a ton of my favorite writers and they all said yes. THAT IS AWESOME.

 

Gail! The preview art for Forever Evil: Arkham War has Ragdoll in it! He's on the first page in the Newsarama preview.

What?

I want to see! Where is the link?

Ayla and Nias are so cute. I love how all your non-terrifying characters are adorable :)

Thanks, I love them, too…they get a nice spotlight VERY SOON.

ghislainmc:Batgirl #ballpen #batgirl #draw365 #drawing...

ghislainmc:

Batgirl #ballpen #batgirl #draw365 #drawing #sketchbook #sketch

That looks really beautiful!