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.