Gail Simone's Blog, page 754

Thank you for The Movement. I love exploring socioeconomic and political issues in comics, I'm actually writing a story with similar themes, and I think you're the perfect writer to tackle it. After all, your writing made me realize that I didn't have to a

Very few things would make me as happy as bringing back Scott and Barda.

It may have been a mistake to talk at all about unbenching characters, people really are focusing on it when it’s a fairly minor part of the overall picture.

It’s just that we got two characters back that I really loved and I was happy about it. They are NOT big guns in the sense that people are hoping it’s Renee or Steph or someone like that.

ANd thanks!

If there was a Birds of Prey-type team that was half DC and half Marvel (3-4 of each), who would you choose to be in it?

Hmm.

Just off the top of my head, Black Canary and Misty Knight are a must, then maybe Black Widow, Manhunter, Misfit and Shadowcat.

Excited for the MOVEMENT

angrysunbird:

gailsimone:

It looks like nothing else on the stands, and the cast is just amazing to me.

I can’t wait!

So we finally find out who the unbenched not Donna or Steph or Cass is….

There’s one unbenched character in #1, and another in #2. But they’re not the big guns like Cass or Steph or Donna, which I’ve tried to be very clear about from the beginning. They may not be the huge characters, but they are very dear to me and I’m glad for small victories.

Excited for the MOVEMENT

It looks like nothing else on the stands, and the cast is just amazing to me.

I can’t wait!

The interesting thing about this is, I have worked with a lot of...

The interesting thing about this is, I have worked with a lot of kids over the years, in volunteer groups and through other situations. I’ve met a LOT of kids who wouldn’t think twice saying something like this, and we all sort of dismiss it. We think it’s just a morbid sense of humor, or desensitization to violence or something of that nature.

I said a lot of morbid things myself as a kid.

Quite a few readers asked, if Babs heard him say this, why didn’t she know he was messed up?

But I’ve heard kids say much weirder stuff every time they sit down at an X-box.

I don’t think people would leap to a conclusion that he’s going to be a serial killer based on this comment.

Thoughts? Am I wrong, here?

optimysticals:Do you miss the six, or eight, or seven, or...

optimysticals:

Do you miss the six, or eight, or seven, or however many members of the Secret Six like we do?

Well you can get a fix for these Smelly Jerks* in our Secret Six Collection, here. 

*Jewelry should not smell, just King Shark’s** term for the rest of the team. 

**Did you know, King Shark, is a SHARK!

I have a bunch of stuff from Optimysticals, and it’s very high quality geek gear. I love it! I heartily endorse these folks!

ilovecharts:Percent of female membership in superhero teams by...

ilovecharts:

Percent of female membership in superhero teams by decade

Wow, what a cool chart. Huh. Very interesting!

What, do you feel, is your #1 accomplishment in comics, so far, in your career?

I don’t really think in those terms very often, I mostly think of stuff that I haven’t managed to accomplish yet

I guess if pushed, I would say I am probably most proud of disproving the long-held mythology about female lead books.

For decades, there was a virtual brick wall of bullshit about books with female leads. That the only way they can sell is if it’s a ‘bad girl’ t and a book, that the audience won’t stay for a female lead book, that they won’t sell at all, that you have to aim only at a male readership, that the female characters have to fight over guys, on and on and on, just a massive mound of horseshit that people actually believed. Myths that people perpetuated endlessly.

I think Birds of Prey in particular, but other books as well, showed that it was possible to not only gain a sizable audience, but a LOYAL audience that stuck with the title over its entire run.

Once something has been done, it’s a thousand times harder for people to continue to pretend that it’s impossible. And Bop not only did that, it also became a bit of a standard bearer, other books followed in its wake, some great, some not so great, but it showed that it could be done. I think if you really, really look at how the industry has changed in the past several years, Birds of Prey has turned out to be really influential—it was a huge gateway book for female first-time comics readers, and it made it so that someone could go to a publisher and propose a female lead book and actually be taken seriously.

I honestly believe part of the reason we have some good female lead books right now is the success of Birds of Prey.

I don’t take credit for that, I didn’t create the book, and there’s no question that gorgeous (sometimes gratuitous) art was a huge seller…but dozens of female lead books with gorgeous and gratuitous art had been tried and failed. Bop was, to my knowledge, the first such book to succeed in real, concrete terms, as a critical and financial success, in a long, long time. So I think it was a game changer.

I don’t talk about this stuff often. When I look back at Bop, there are things I would do differently, maybe.

But the core of that cast, Oracle, Black Canary, and Huntress (and later, Zinda), I think that formula was impossible to beat. It was a team people wanted to read about, wanted to spend time with. I think people mostly forgot to think of it as an all-female team, in some ways, it was just this fun book that had a different vibe than anything else on the stands.

Again, it was more the book than me, but I am proud to have been a part of that. I genuinely feel that a good chunk of the female fandom that exists for comics now can be traced in some way to the success of Birds of Prey.

catinatemple:Dinah Laurel Lance, I adore you for...

catinatemple:

Dinah Laurel Lance, I adore you for that reference.

It was Walt Disney’s favorite song from Mary Poppins, he used to make the composers, the Sherman Brothers, come and play it, and he would cry every time.

thehappysorceress:jaebird88:Lady BLACKHAWK ECCC 2013 by...

thehappysorceress:

jaebird88:

Lady BLACKHAWK ECCC 2013 by *TerryDodson

Lookin’ good, Zinda!

Dang!  This looks fantastic…I wonder if he drew this at Supanova?