Gail Simone's Blog, page 1167

I LOVE Black Lightning, love, love, love him. I think he was one of the last great potentially iconic characters, and if DC used him properly, he could be as famous as, say, the Flash. I love him.

That said, I have no idea what the plans are for him. There's a lot more keeping things under wraps in comics now than there used to be and even inner circle people only know what's going on in books that directly affect them sometimes.  Sorry!

Catman is bisexual, and when we bring him back, that will be explicitly in canon.

Hetero, probably the Hawks.  Lgbtq, I got to write Midnighter and Apollo together briefly, in Gen13, and I swear to god, I could have written them together forever. I just, I can't explain how happy it made me. It's not that they're gay so much as that those two personalities, being parents and being together and being awesome…man, I'm telling you, sometimes this job is the BEST.

I would have loved to have written Peter and MJ as married. Abby and Swamp Thing, too.

Favorite story as a kid. Hmm. Well, I was poor as a kid, we lived on a farm in the boonies and had very little money. So I got my comics from garage sales and such, or coverless books people were throwing out (I know, I'm such a crybaby, right? It all worked out, but we were desperately poor-I've been poor most of my life).

At one garage sale, the guy was selling those huge Treasury Edition comics for like a quarter each, and I bought all I could grab. Those felt incredibly special to me and I read them to tatters…Superman and Spider-man, Batman Vs. The Hulk, Superman Vs. Shazam, the reprints of Golden age classics, even weird stuff like Wizard of Oz and Rudolph and the Bible adaptation DC did (which was AMAZING). 

When you have no television and you can't afford books, things like that are really, really precious. I still buy those big editions at cons when I see them, and they STILL feel way too expensive for me (in good condition they are often thirty dollars or more!).  But it's very enjoyable to read that stuff and just know I own them.

Thank you, that is the hope.

I like subversive messages, I like to take something that is fairly straightforward and routine and try to show a meaning to it that people may not have thought of.  That is what appeals to me about doing a crossover.

I have done the tie-in books in the past, and I really enjoy it. The secret for me is to try to tell a story that BENEFITS from a crossover, but isn't steamrolled over by a crossover.

When they did the four Infinite Crisis tie-in books, they had the idea to not give any of them real endings, so that they could lead into other books. We fought hard against that and for that reason, I think Villains United stands up really well even as the Infinite Crisis story is now in the past…VU still sells really well, because it's a complete story, I think.

You have to fight to get your story in that context, to make it not about just crossover fever.

Thank you, that is the hope.

I like subversive messages, I like to take something that is fairly straightforward and routine and try to show a meaning to it that people may not have thought of.  That is what appeals to me about doing a crossover.

I have done the tie-in books in the past, and I really enjoy it. The secret for me is to try to tell a story that BENEFITS from a crossover, but isn't steamrolled over by a crossover.

When they did the four Infinite Crisis tie-in books, they had the idea to not give any of them real endings, so that they could lead into other books. We fought hard against that and for that reason, I think Villains United stands up really well even as the Infinite Crisis story is now in the past…VU still sells really well, because it's a complete story, I think.

You have to fight to get your story in that context, to make it not about just crossover fever.

At DC, the Marvel Family.  At Marvel, Spider-man, or Iron Fist (or Kitty or Storm if we're going X).

I'd love to write a Tarzan story. I've been asked to write Conan several times, it'd be fun to try.

Jonah Hex.  Swamp Thing.

This is a tough one…I have to say right up front that I have ZERO objectivity about new teams on books I have worked on. I am way too possessive and filled with separation anxiety to judge anything fairly. And I have only read part of the issue—my pdf isn't complete, I don't think. So there's that.

However, i did meet the writer of the book, he cornered me at SDCC and asked a million questions about writing comics and writing the Squad. He seemed very nice, very intense, and he seemed like he had a plan. Hopefully future issues will meet your expectations? 

I really liked the last image on the last page, that was original and interesting.

One of the things that hit me about the end of Secret Six is that in one swoop, we wiped a lot of good stuff off the table, sadly.

That book had, just in the core team and what was going to be the ongoing cast; a black woman (Waller), an asexual woman, a Bengali woman, a Latin male, a Brazilian woman, a pansexual man, a bisexual man, a polyamorous relationship, two lesbians, two bisexual women, and a shark, and that's just the core characters and the close supporting cast.

I don't think there's another book at DC with that kind of cast yet, and it's hard to put that big a cast in a solo book like Batgirl. But we do plan to do some interesting cast choices in Firestorm, if that all works out!

I miss the Secret Six a lot. Hopefully Suicide Squad, and other books, will fill that gap S6 left behind.

This is a tough one…I have to say right up front that I have ZERO objectivity about new teams on books I have worked on. I am way too possessive and filled with separation anxiety to judge anything fairly. And I have only read part of the issue—my pdf isn't complete, I don't think. So there's that.

However, i did meet the writer of the book, he cornered me at SDCC and asked a million questions about writing comics and writing the Squad. He seemed very nice, very intense, and he seemed like he had a plan. Hopefully future issues will meet your expectations? 

I really liked the last image on the last page, that was original and interesting.

One of the things that hit me about the end of Secret Six is that in one swoop, we wiped a lot of good stuff off the table, sadly.

That book had, just in the core team and what was going to be the ongoing cast; a black woman (Waller), an asexual woman, a Bengali woman, a Latin male, a Brazilian woman, a pansexual man, a bisexual man, a polyamorous relationship, two lesbians, two bisexual women, and a shark, and that's just the core characters and the close supporting cast.

I don't think there's another book at DC with that kind of cast yet, and it's hard to put that big a cast in a solo book like Batgirl. But we do plan to do some interesting cast choices in Firestorm, if that all works out!

I miss the Secret Six a lot. Hopefully Suicide Squad, and other books, will fill that gap S6 left behind.

Not exactly…we did discuss quite a lot what job she should be going for, and the idea of being a cop did come up. I can't recall offhand who suggested it or why it was shot down. I think the thinking was that they wanted her day job to not make her night job too easy. Something of that nature.

Not exactly…we did discuss quite a lot what job she should be going for, and the idea of being a cop did come up. I can't recall offhand who suggested it or why it was shot down. I think the thinking was that they wanted her day job to not make her night job too easy. Something of that nature.