Gail Simone's Blog, page 855

Pardon me, Miss Simone? There's been a little bit of controversy around Tumblr lately with people claiming that the Disney short that preceded Wreck-It Ralph, titled Paper Man, was pretty much endorsing stalking and was 'Rape Culture Lite', and I was wond

I have to admit, the short was so charming, it never even occurred to me. Is trying to meet someone you shared a moment with stalking?

I better see it again before I comment further, I completely missed this context and don’t want to dismiss the idea with just the memory of seeing it once.

Anti Social Justice AaronHahahahahahaha, I talked with all...

Anti Social Justice Aaron

Hahahahahahaha, I talked with all these memes today.

ramblingsofayoungman:Mom makes epic Doctor Who costume...

ramblingsofayoungman:

Mom makes epic Doctor Who costume for son

Everybody wants to be the Doctor, but unfortunately Matt Smith’s trademark tweed jacket doesn’t come in everyone’s size. Fortunately for this kid, he’s got a crafty mom who found a way to fashion an Eleventh Doctor jacket that fits him perfectly, and she even fashioned his wheelchair into a sweet TARDIS.

Well, there you go, PERFECT KID AND PERFECT MOM.

Because I'm a huge Arrowette fan I feel the need to ask this of one of my favorite writers. If you had the chance to bring Cissie into the reboot and do anything with her what would you do? What would you change, or keep the same, to fit her with the unive

I am incredibly fond of Arrowette, for the simple reason that my good friend Tom Peyer created her, and we talked a lot when he came up with the character (I had nothing to do with her creation, that was totally Tom, one of my favorite writers of all time).

What I liked about her was that she seemed very human and girly, it didn’t seem like she was created to be a little mini-Wolverine. Her costume and her name made her sort of precious and adorable to me immediately, like she was trying so hard. Which I relate to a lot. In high school, I was smart, and I was moved ahead so I was younger than the other kids. And  I did try to fit in with my goofy rural community, I was a cheerleader (which I HATED) and all that stuff. But it wasn’t me.

That’s what I felt about Arrowette, I liked her optimism and her desire to fit in. I liked that her look reflected a real girl personality in a way that most comics would never even try to approach.

I’d bring her back to that, I think.

Because I'm a huge Arrowette fan I feel the need to ask this of one of my favorite writers. If you had the chance to bring Cissie into the reboot and do anything with her what would you do? What would you change, or keep the same, to fit her with the unive

I am incredibly fond of Arrowette, for the simple reason that my good friend Tom Peyer created her, and we talked a lot when he came up with the character (I had nothing to do with her creation, that was totally Tom, one of my favorite writers of all time).

What I liked about her was that she seemed very human and girly, it didn’t seem like she was created to be a little mini-Wolverine. Her costume and her name made her sort of precious and adorable to me immediately, like she was trying so hard. Which I relate to a lot. In high school, I was smart, and I was moved ahead so I was younger than the other kids. And  I did try to fit in with my goofy rural community, I was a cheerleader (which I HATED) and all that stuff. But it wasn’t me.

That’s what I felt about Arrowette, I liked her optimism and her desire to fit in. I liked that her look reflected a real girl personality in a way that most comics would never even try to approach.

I’d bring her back to that, I think.

Going Rebloggable

Got a couple requests to make this rebloggable, so here it is, short as it may be!

Dear, Gail do you think there will ever be a stand alone female superhero flick thats doesn’t have the same problems like Catwoman?
Anonymous

I ABSOLUTELY DO.

Listen, that floodgate is open. The water is just a trickle now, but you can’t put that water back.

Each success with female leads knocks out a couple dinosaurs in comics, film, and television.

DO NOT EXPECT INSTANT RESULTS. That won’t happen. But Hunger Games, Buffy, these things DO make a difference.

Trust me, the narrative still sucks. It’s still saying women can’t open action films.

But now the dissenters to this nonsense have evidence. And they are gaining in number.

It’s going to happen. It won’t be this year. It won’t be next year.

But it’ll happen and honest to god, I hope it knocks a bunch of naysaying doubters in Hollywood right into the tar pits where they belong.

lionsilverwolf:gailsimone:daggerpen: wishyouweremegan replied to your post: As much as I loved...

lionsilverwolf:

gailsimone:

daggerpen:

wishyouweremegan replied to your post: As much as I loved Secret Six…

Not just you.

Like

She’s about as dark as Talia is, and clearly darker than the very white Knockout?

And then in the later issues-

Now she and Knockout are the same skin tone?

I’m not blaming Gail for this, since I don’t think the writers have much power to change this type of stuff if a colorist can’t find the goddamn brown crayon, but it’s still bleh.

Nope, you are absolutely right. It happened gradually enough that it slipped by in most cases.

And I don’t let myself off the hook whatsoever. We don’t usually get to see color proofs anymore, the last stage we are usually involved in is proofing final lettering in black and white.

But I didn’t notice the gradual whitewashing until it was later. I did ask to have it changed several times. But it kept fading back to white.

And before anyone says it, yes, I am aware that there are lots of Caucasian Brazilians. The point being made is that Scandal is supposed to be darker complected.

You guys have every right to point this out, it’s irritating. I’m sorry on behalf of the whole team.

The infuriating thing is that MOST of the colorists I work with are people of color themselves. I had whitewashing of Asians once in a book where the entire art team was Asian.

I’m not trying to dilute the message, I’m not even BLAMING the colorists. To me, it seems an endemic problem that it’s just assumed almost all the characters are white. I can’t blame them for thinking characters are white if 99.91879% of the characters are white already.

There must be a way to make this not happen all the time, it’s really just unfair. it just seems that little extra bit sad when the colorists are themselves POC, somehow. Makes me think we are not doing our job at all on diversity. The expectation should NOT default to white every time.

I will try harder to make sure that the colorists know who is POC. Oddly, putting it in the script is not enough, many colorists don’t read the script…some don’t speak English.

There’s got to be a way to avoid this.

Well you’d think it would be simple enough at the beginning of the development or whenever a character is introduced, to make a palette for them that should be drawn upon. Obviously the lighting of a situation would effect colors in an individual panel but it’s pretty easy to look at a page, look at the palette, and decide whether that’s TOO far removed. 

I honestly have no idea how it is with professional comic coloring but really that seems like the easiest solution and requires very little effort on the part of the colorists…

Okay, again, I’m pulling the curtain back a little bit on this, and I kind of hate doing that.

But here’s how it goes. It’s a rare book that maintains a single person as a colorist for long periods of time. They are often switched or moved, usually because a book is running hot, or late.

In such cases, the colorist may have been brought in on very short notice. And as I said, often, they are totally unfamiliar with the book, they sometimes don’t read the script. A colorist has to do a lot of pages to make a decent wage, sadly.

Also, many colorists actually share the job with assistants or studio mates, which can sometimes lead to color errors. The thing that is a bit hard to hear in this particular discussion is that color mistakes happen ALL THE TIME. All the time. It’s not laziness or a lack of professionalism, it’s simply a matter of the colorist trying to glean the intentions and history of every character, background and location correctly, often with little or not contact with the artist and writer.

It’s not optimal. What I’m getting at here is that if you look at an issue, white-washing may be one of many color mistakes, but others are more clearly accidental and no one is concerned of the political context of a blue car that was red last issue. White-washing is a real problem with real world meaning. A car, less so, so it’s less noticed and certainly doesn’t get a post on Tumblr. It happens a lot.

What’s egregious about the white-washing is two-fold; first, when it’s unintentional, it assumes a Caucasian, light-skinned default for all characters, which is obviously hugely problematic.

Also, it’s ugly to talk about, but obviously there is sometimes intentional white-washing, where a character like Storm, who is clearly and undeniably black-skinned and African, is colored with white or nearly-white skin. Sometimes, there’s no excusing that as a mistake. Anyone working in comics knows damn well that Ororo is black. If they color her white, that’s a huge, huge problem and is inexcusable.

This is even further complicated by the fact that, I’m sorry, but many artists simply cannot draw characters, especially female ones, with other than a kind of generic, Caucasian set of features. I can’t tell you how difficult it can be to get an African American female character with facial features that deviate from a sort of generic Caucasian default face.

In that case, the colorist has even fewer clues as to the character’s ethnicity. Even in the case of someone like, say, Renee Montoya, if you saw her in black and white pages without context, and were asked to color her, you might just assume she’s Caucasian, sadly.

This stuff is why it’s serious, and can’t keep being dismissed as a series of unfortunate accidents. Sometimes that’s what it is, but that’s not a decent excuse for the sheer number of times it happens.

In my previous post, I talked about colorists making these errors, which kinda sorta made it sound like they should take the blame, which is not exactly correct. In the proper working of things, it’s actually the editor who is responsible for the final color correcting. In the final say, they are the ones who say yes or no to the colors and ask for fixes.

But man alive, I have sympathy for editors. If I’m late, the artist is later, the inker’s later still, and the colorist is in a hurry before rushing to print and there may have to be prioritizing. Editing is an impossible job in comics, they just have to put up with endless delays and frustrations and pains-in-the-ass like me and other creators who fret over tiny little things (not skin color, I mean other things).

So I have sympathy for everyone involved. I think MOST of the time, it’s accidental (but common enough to be inexcusable). But none of that lets us off the hook. We need to do better.

Style guides aren’t really COMMON in most superhero comics. But it’s not a bad idea.  If I do a new series any time soon, I will approach the artist about this.

keaneoncomics:Wonder Girl (by homie bear)From SDCC...

keaneoncomics:

Wonder Girl (by homie bear)

From SDCC ‘11.

Adorable.

I can’t believe I actually miss this costume.

josephquick:Simple costume made for Daz’s V4...

josephquick:

Simple costume made for Daz’s V4 figure.

Wait…what is this, exactly?  What’s a V4 figure?

AND this looks SO COOL.

femmebotshaveemotion:I re-dyed my hair red and now I feel like...

femmebotshaveemotion:

I re-dyed my hair red and now I feel like I could dress up as Scandal Savage and be awesome.  True story.

But I guess I could also be Babs or Black Widow or…Ariel (it’s funny because my name is Ariel).

NO! BE SCANDAL!  :)

You would make an awesome Sixer!