Gail Simone's Blog, page 861

"We’re not all like that"

“We’re not all like that”

- all of them (via madeofmetals)

Are you as eager for Marvel's Deadpool Classic collections to get to your run as I am? Do you know if your Agent X stuff will be collected in the Deadpool Classic books, or at all?

I don’t know…this stuff has been in high demand for years, I’m not sure why it took so long to get reprirnted!

Not sure if Agent X is going to be reprinted or not. But it would be lovely, the coloring is pretty ghastly, would love to see that fixed a little bit.

Did you read Garth Ennis' recent run on THE SHADOW?

Just the first issue, was going to pick up the rest soon. Good?

Have you any opinions on Grant Morrison using a wheelchair-bound Barbara Gordon in the latest issue of Batman Incorporated? As it's set in the future as seen in Batman #666 it's not necessarily guaranteed to happen, but do you have any misgivings over this

I haven’t seen it, but I think we should just admit that Batman, Inc. is really not new52 in any way that is clear. I think the two characters are not connected except by name.

Edited to add: I agree that ‘re-crippled’ is pretty problematic as a term to throw around like that.

Since Scott Lobdell has been brought up a few times, he also has a Comic Vine profile and has made personal attacks against other users who constructively criticized his writing. The point is, he's doing this on a regular basis and it does not reflect well

I talked with him about it this morning at length, in fact.

So, if you could do it all again, would you have waited, or taken the first opportunity offered to you by a Big name comic industry insider?

I would have waited, and here’s why.

Mentoring is a nice thing, a fine thing, and it’s usually done with good intentions. BUT, it puts a stigma on the mentored writer. That person is forever seen as someone who was given a shortcut, who got a golden ticket. Even if they do brilliant stuff and work hard, they can often be seen as just a shadow of the person who mentored and championed them.

I think, if I am going to do creative stuff, I want to earn it. I’m quite certain that (hate to bring this up but it’s true), as a woman, that would be a stick critics would beat me with for a long time. “She couldn’t break in on her own, she had to get help from _____.”

A perfect case in point for me is Devin Grayson.

Now, Devin did everything the right way, the hard way. She established contact with a bat editor, she worked for TWO SOLID YEARS writing pitches and making adjustments before she got work. Think about that, think about starting writing something today and working for TWO YEARS on it, with no hope of getting paid and no assurance it would even get read.

When she finally got her chance, she wrote BRILLIANT stuff that got her noticed immediately. She bashed her own way in, no shortcut, no line-jumping.

Well after all that, after her first, critically acclaimed work came out, she met and had a relationship with a well-established writer. It didn’t work out, and they broke up.

And immediately, I mean IMMEDIATELY, the message boards were filled with people posting how she had broken in because ‘her boyfriend is famous,’ and much, much worse allegations (I’m sure you can guess what people were implying, but I won’t even fucking say it here, it’s so vile).

Now, I want to get this out because this will bother me forever. Here is a talented women, a gifted writer, who broke in the VERY VERY hardest way possible, on her own, in an industry where female writers were almost unheard of, and because of her talent, she became a favorite of many editors, pros and readers right away.

Do you know how hard that is? The odds are astronomical, but she did it with hard work and talent.

And these people wanted to dismiss her, diminish her achievements, so they made up this myth that she got work through a boyfriend she hadn’t even MET yet.

That’s the mindset that is out there, still, in some quarters. You don’t have to look very far to see people out there still believe this about Devin and many other writers, particularly those who are not white, cis, straight and male. 

It bothers me tremendously because it’s unjust, it’s theft of a person’s achievements and reputation.

If I’d come in as someone’s mentored project, I believe that would still be a stigma attached to my name to this day. I’ve seen it happen many times.

But more than that, I want my successes and failures to be my own, to belong to me.I didn’t want to jump the line that others had been working hard at for years.

I hope that makes sense.

Hi there Gail! I'm still a fairly new follower of yours here, so you've likely already answered this particular question but I'll ask it all the same. How hard was it for you to get into the business? Did you meet a lot of opposition?

First, welcome, and thanks.

As to your question, it’s completely weird. I mean, it makes no sense at all, how I got in.

I had been writing some parody pieces on a website, and several pros took note of them, and several offered to help me break into comics. People like Mark Waid, Mark Millar, Ed Brubaker, and a few others. Big names. They were all sure I could write real comics well before I was.

But I strongly felt that breaking in that way was wrong, it seemed like jumping the line. If I was ever going to write comics, I wanted to do it because I had earned it, not because someone opened a secret door for me.

I also had a slightly goofy idea in my head that it was cheating…I was a hairdresser with no writing experience. I hadn’t gone to cons for years, pestering editors. I felt that if I got a writing gig, it would be taking that job from the hands of a ‘REAL writer.’

That was my thinking, I didn’t know any better. Later, I talked to my reluctance to Adam Hughes, and he said, “Gail, EVERYONE worth a damn in this industry was recruited.”

Anyway, I turned down several opportunities…part of it was fear that I wouldn’t be able to do it. It seemed impossible.

Then what happened is Scott Shaw, four time Emmy winning comic and animation artist, read my parody pieces and loved them. He was working at Bongo Comics, who do the Simpsons books, and were having a hard time getting funny writers who could write the books in character.

He said, you should pitch to them. I said, no, it would never work.

He said, “I’ve already given them your contact information. They’re calling in the morning.”

So, someone had to literally push me off a cliff to get me to take the chance. I couldn’t say NO to a call, right?

Later, those same pieces are what inspired Joe Quesada to ask me to pitch for Deadpool and for Lea Hernandez to ask me to write Killer Princesses.

So, the point of all of this is…I still find this very odd.

Before I became a comics writer, I was known for precisely two things in the industry.  One, a brutal parody column where I made fun of every publisher, the readers, the creators, and the distributors BY NAME.

And two, probably the most telling indictment of gender issues in comics that comics had ever experienced at the time, Women In Refrigerators.

So this is what I don’t get, it still amazes me. Why did they pursue me?

Seriously, it just doesn’t make much sense in some ways. I was doing a brutal parody column, some of the people I had been rough on were the very people who wanted to hire me. I had created the Women in Refrigerators page, which many felt gave the industry a black eye they are still dealing with, and which made the national press multiple times.

It wasn’t meant to tear down comics, to me, I was just a reader with some questions and a desire to make fun of some of the goofier things at the time. I think it was pretty clear that I criticized BECAUSE I loved comics. But there’s no question that I was a vocal critic.

So, the answer is no, I didn’t meet a lot of opposition. I was literally pushed into the industry despite my own fear and reluctance. And I have to say, the industry almost entirely was incredibly welcoming and supportive.

For years, every interviewer I talked to tried to get me to reveal all the juicy sexism stories they were sure I MUST have experienced. And I didn’t HAVE any to tell. I had heard other women had experienced all kinds of different levels of bullshit, but for the vast majority of my time in comics, I have been treated with respect by publishers, creators and readers.

Anyway, I went long, but I am posting it to encourage others. There are definitely downsides and things the industry needs to do better. But in my experience, I was welcomed with open arms. I’ve never been without work, I’ve never had a serious gender-related complaint with any company I’ve worked for.

People always want the inside scoop, the ugly truth. But that was my experience breaking in, as surprising as that sounds.

just to be clear: The woman that Scott Lobdell singled out and humiliated on his Facebook page yesterday did nothing wrong. She abused no one. All she did was point out (as many others have) that the writing for Lois Lane in the Superman books right now

I honest to god have no idea what’s going on here. I was asked a hypothetical question and responded to it. I haven’t seen the FB page or the woman’s comments or Scott’s response and it doesn’t sound like I want to, in fact.

But I stand by what I said, I don’t think pros should respond to this stuff for the most part, it benefits no one.

just to be clear: The woman that Scott Lobdell singled out and humiliated on his Facebook page yesterday did nothing wrong. She abused no one. All she did was point out (as many others have) that the writing for Lois Lane in the Superman books right now

I honest to god have no idea what’s going on here. I was asked a hypothetical question and responded to it. I haven’t seen the FB page or the woman’s comments or Scott’s response and it doesn’t sound like I want to, in fact.

But I stand by what I said, I don’t think pros should respond to this stuff for the most part, it benefits no one.

It's funny the previous question was about Scott Lobdell's attitude to fan opinion of him. I never made any secret on my blog that his take on the Teen Titans or Superman is not my favourite but I never attacked him as a person. However three weeks ago or

I have to be blunt here, and we have all done it, responded in anger at some particular comment or poster.

It’s nothing to be proud of, but I also think the only sure way to avoid it is not to respond at all, and that seems a bit of a sad solution.