Gail Simone's Blog, page 692

July 19, 2013

Best Moment Of Yesterday At SDCC

A LOT of things happened that made me really happy, but my favorite moment came during the DC All Access panel yesterday.

We were all talking about things that we had coming up in our books, and then the audience question time came and the questions were about that, all fine.

Then a lovely young lady got up and thanked me for including Alysia in Batgirl and she got a big hand from this hardcore DC comics crowd.

This made me really happy for a number of reasons. I’ve talked about this several times, but years ago I was at a Gays In Comics panel when one of my favorite writers, Greg Rucka, said that there would be real progress when a gay male was on the cover of a DC comic. And then he followed that with, there would be real progress when a TRANS character was on the cover of a DC comic.

It immediately got me thinking, that has to happen. It has to. It’s fucking ridiculous that it hadn’t happened yet.

It took a while, but we got Alysia in the Batgirl cast. Next up, we need a trans superhero, full stop.

Sorry if my thoughts are a little jumbled, I’m kind of exhausted!

Anyway, I know a lot of well-intentioned people were probably worried about the backlash over a trans character in a core superhero title, not because they opposed the idea but because they thought it would bring out the creeps and bigots and be hurtful to trans readers.

Those people are out there, make no mistake.

But the VAST majority of the comments have been neutral at the very worst, and the rest overwhelmingly positive. I say it again, the majority of the comments have been POSITIVE.

This makes me happy. This thing that would have been super controversial a few years ago, to the point where it seemed like it might never happen, was met not with scorn for the most part, but with a positive reaction. People like Alysia, we get constant requests for MORE of her story in the book.

This makes me happy because there is so much bad news out there, and the notion that a trans character would be embraced by the comics community, well, that’s very nice. It makes me happy because when I was growing up, in a small, very white town, the first interracial marriage I ever saw was in a comic. The first out gay hero character I ever saw was in a comic. If we’re telling stories about heroes, inclusion follows naturally, or we’re doing it wrong.

The questioner went on to ask if Alysia will face any of the difficulties trans characters commonly face in the real world, which is a great question…I kinda fumbled the answer a little bit because I hate spoiling things. But we do have a trans character coming in another book who has had a bit rougher time with it.

Barbara’s friendship with Alysia is one of my favorite parts of the book…I love Alysia’s amazing loyalty. She has a story coming up where we see her steel and I am very happy about that.

Thank you, everyone at the DC panel, that visible show of support means a LOT. I also want to thank DC because honest to god, they have been fantastic about including Alysia as trans…I had to explain why it was important and what it would mean to Barbara’s story, but once that was done, they never blinked once.

And especially thanks to the young lady audience member, you made my day!

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Published on July 19, 2013 06:53

mistureba77:

God damn that is good // ‪#‎Joker‬ from...

mistureba77:

God damn that is good // ‪#‎Joker‬ from the ‪#‎New52‬.‪#‎Batman‬ ‪#‎DCComics‬ ‪#‎comiccon‬ ‪#‎sdcc‬

Check out the video of this cosplayer!http://instagram.com/p/b7MTo-uY3q/

Source photo is from: http://instagram.com/p/b7fEPZMoqZ/