Gail Simone's Blog, page 24

hargreeves-diego:

I will destroy this place, you hear me? I will tell every-fucking-body what you’ve done, Astrid. 
Well. I was hoping we might actually be friends. Chloe Tona Pierce.

profession-awesomeness:

I am swag

goodbyemidnight:

If only we’d found a Black Canary! Partial Birds of Prey are still better than no Birds of Prey :D

media-exegesis:

Getting amped up for this year’s DragonCon, and for the return of our impersonations of the fabulous @gailsimone creation, the Secret Six! My wig is freshly sprayed, Scandal’s tattoo is printed, Deadshot’s eye is charged, and Ragdoll is warming up with some back bends.

This picture was taken last year at the SCF DC photoshoot by Allen Finley, of Allen Finley Fine Art & Photography, https://m.facebook.com/AllenFinley.Photography/. We think it turned out pretty rad.

neysaadept:

Apparently I missed a few things in comics

graphicpolicy:

Gail Simone’s Red Sonja Run Gets Reprinted in a Hardcover Omnibus! #comics #comicbooks

Dynamite is releasing a deluxe all-in-one oversized hardcover volume of Gail Simone and Walter Geovani’s history-making Red Sonja run.

Red Sonja by Gail Simone Omnibus reprints Red Sonja #0-18, as well as various extras. The 528-page premium hardcover tome is 8.2 by 12.2 inches and features a dust jacket. The book sports a Jenny Frison cover and reprints all of the series covers from Frison, N…

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taffystake:

Tony Stark Iron Man #13 Review

Written by: Gail Simone

Art by: Paolo Villanelli

Colors by: Edgar Delgado

Cover by: Alexander Lozano

Well, last issue was entirely about fighting a dragon with the most modern technology available and watching as magic rendered all that modern tech a mess. So whats a man of science to do against this sort of magic? Well, stayed tuned to this……written review, to read and find out. 

The comic opens with our friendly neighborhood dragon, Sadurang, marching on the New York Stock Exchange to get at Tony Stark’s ‘gold’. And after talking with the homeless man outside, who had previously been a stock trader, Sadurang rewards him gold for the information of how much money goes through the Stock Exchange. A number that is so alien to Sadurang that he is almost baffled until he simply decides to claim all that money as his own (No one tell him he wants a  bunch of ones and zeros to sit on for a horde).

Back with Tony, we get to watch as he desperately attempts to think around the magic invading his suit, a process that, in his words, ‘is his kryptonite’. So, taht magic inevitably transforms the Iron Man suit into what appears to be medieval knight armor with an ability to use magic. Which he promptly demonstrates by making it rain frogs by accident. And while Rhodey attempts to talk him into getting out of the suit, Tony takes off after Sadurang when he sees the three dead guards. And enroute, he makes a call to Janet Van Dyne to try and get hmself some backup against a reality warping dragon. A dragon who is still tearing up the trading floor of the Stock Exchange as he attempts to find coins and crystals.

So when Tony shows up, he manages to make his armor doing a bit of offensive lightning magic by uttering the word ‘Shazam.’ But unfortunately, one magic word doesn’t stop a fifty ton dragon from backhanding you across a room and pinning you under his claw. So Sadurang goes bite Tony in half, Tony summons up his rain of frogs directly inside of Sadurang’s mouth before beating a hasty retreat back towards Stark Unlimited with orders for everything to go dark except the Hulkbot. 

Once he gets there, he explains that Sadurang’s magic is essentially a mystical computer virus. So since Hulkbot is already a glitchy mess, he either won’t be affected or won’t be a loss if he gets magicked. So Tony has Hulkbot rip him out of his armor just as Janet arrives. Asking her to run interference while he sets up something, Janet quickly sets work blasting and pestering the dragon with a few hit-and-run attacks before he is left yelling at her and blasting fire at her. Which is when Tony comes out with what exactly he planned on using to face Sadurang: the Mark I Armor. And the Mark I Armor, powered by Tony’s Arc Reactor, makes for a hell of a bruiser. So we get an entire page of the most iron of Iron Man just beating this dragon down through fists and anger before he gets pulled back from the unconscious dragon by Janet. And as the comic closes we get a remark on if Tony has any Elfbuster armor as the story leads into War Of The Realms.

The art is extremely fun to see, with every impact in the fights and all the expressions outside of them working extremely well to help convey the story. While the paneling can be a bit basic, it makes the few times it becomes dynamic stand out all the more as it tries to emphasis the power of these moments. And I would remiss if I forgot to talk specifically about the writing. The level of charm and humor that Gail Simone is able to get out of all the characters involved here is great, especially with the unspoken irony of where Sadurang’s hunt for treasure leads him and the little quippy nicknames that Tony gives Sadurang that just feel like exactly something Robert Downey Jr would’ve ad-libbed for the movies. 

Now then, I will talk about the one mild thing that may have some people confused. Namely, the fact that Tony is dropping a few DC Universe specific terms in the midst of the comic here. And this isn’t just a slip of the tongue or anything, this is a reference towards the crossovers that DC and Marvel had in the past. Which has now inspired a small amount of questioning as to whether the two companies could do this again that I am all for. But, on the topic of the comic, it is still a fun as hell read, with great jokes and action that just keep you engaged and wanting to see where they end up. 

ty-talks-comics:

Best of Marvel: Week of June 20th, 2019

Best of this Week: Guardians of the Galaxy #6 (Legacy #156) - Donny Cates, Geoff Shaw, David Curiel and Cory Petit

Talk about an explosive end to the first arc, huh?

Battered and bruised from their fight with Hela and the Black Order, Quill and the rest of the Guardians are pissed off and ready for round two. With Lockjaw’s help, they teleport to Knowhere, taking the fight directly to villains.

Geoff Shaw takes this story to its absolute peak with his amazing art. Propelled by a psychic dragon construct created by Moondragon, Beta Ray Bill sends his Stormbreaker hammer into Hela, taking her out of the fight. The sight is awesome, but unfortunately the only teamwork really seen here. The dragon looks ferocious and rightfully takes Hela out, or else the fight would have been very one sided again.

Shots are far and mostly wide, showcasing the various means of attack as the Guardians tear through Thanos’ alien creatures, mostly with Gladiator shooting everything in sight with his laser eyes. Shaw makes things look grand in scale, even when things are focused on one character such as Phyla-Vell after taking Proxima Midnight out of the fight with rays from her hands.

Things get even more tense as Peter confronts Cosmic Ghost Rider, who betrayed the Guardians in the last issue because of Hela’s control of the dead. He falls apart as Hela’s control over him fades and it’s actually pretty sad, mostly thanks to Petit’s lettering making The Riders apology even more melancholic.

Quill catches up to Gamora, who went to stop Thanos from being resurrected, and tries to convince her against killing her Uncle Eros, aka Starfox. Starfox had been the main antagonist of this Guardians book, thinking that Thanos would use Gamora’s body to house his consciousness when it turned out to be his Brother, the only other Titan left. Gamora rationalizes that if it had indeed been her that Thanos took over and she were in Peter’s shoes, she would have killed the possessed body in an instant, stabbing Eros through the heart and preventing Thanos from being resurrected.

That one panel was absolutely beautiful, if a bit marred by the lettering covering the exit wound. Eros snaps out of his trance and looks like he’s gasping in pain. Gamora is resolute in her decision, much like she was when she killed Thanos in the beginning of Infinity Wars (2018). She apologizes to her Uncle who muses that the plot was miserably predictable. It’s heart wrenching, especially knowing how light hearted and heroic Eros was before all of this started, seeing him fall as low as he did, almost killing Gamora before the gambit was discovered.

Suddenly, Thanos’ body erupts awake, though his mind not fully intact due to the transfer not being completed.Hela returns and in her anger, fires a black hole missile at Gamora, but it gets deflected back at the Incomplete Thanos, causing him to become the center of the black hole. The Guardians escape as Hela and presumably everyone else gets sucked into the black hole.

Setting up the Death of Rocket arc at the end, I really enjoyed this issue. Not only was it action packed, it also subverted my expectations about its outcome. I absolutely thought that Thanos would come back in full force in the final pages of the story and while he may in the future, it was great to see that it won’t be a YEAR after he was killed in the first place. I had some initial bad feelings about this team of Guardians, but they meld together very well. The power of Beta Ray Bill, Phyla-Vell and Moondragon combined with the skill of Star Lord, Groot and Gamora makes for an absolutely interesting and banterful team. Also because I’m a huge Phyla-Dragon fan and I can’t wait to see more of them. High recommend!

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There’s a lot to be said for how greed changes a man.

Runner Up: Iron Man #13 (Legacy #613) War of the Realms tie-in - Gail Simone, Paolo Villanelli, Edgar Delgado and Joe Caramagna

Tony Stark, eccentric, billionaire tech mogul, loved by millions across the world definitely had his flaws. He used to be a terrible alcoholic who sold weapons of war to the highest bidder until his failings led him down the path of heroism. His is a very heartwarming story and it’s intriguing to see what he used to be reflected back to him in the form of a greedy, magic leaking dragon as the War of the Realms reaches his front door.

With Tony’s armor being transformed due to being infected after his first encounter with Sadurang, he has to contend with one of the few things he tends to avoid like a plague: Magic. As a man of science and technology, it makes sense that Tony is averse to such things, taking a more structured approach to fighting people like Doctor Doom. He figures that it has to function similarly to coding and does his best to figure things out as lives are in danger.

Hs thoughts immediately drift to Saduran and how similar they are. Sadurang, the All-Consuming is a gold hungry dragon, sometimes in the form of a man, whose appetite causes him to destroy everything that will be a profit to him. Tony used to be much the same and claims that while he was changed, his time in the eScape let him hit the bottle again and he hasn’t managed to tell his new girlfriend, Janet van Dyne aka. The Wasp. To me, this seems like the next step to a destructive end after Rhodey manages to stop him from walking into a bar in the last issue. He’s not dealing with his problem by telling her and only seems to be pulled further in as Sadurang mocks him for his weakness.

With Janet and Rhodey’s help, they manage to take down Sadurang by distraction and utilizing an improved Mk. I armor. Villanelli’s art shined throughout this issue. I have a weakness for stipple shading and this issue is full of it, almost giving it sort of Pop Art feel that really helps with the gleans and reflections of Tony’s armor. Delgado’s coloring accentuates this by making everything much brighter. Tony’s red and gold stand out amongst the beautiful purple magic effects and Sadurang is beautiful in a similar shade of red. Wasps yellow makes her look downright angelic as she zips around before the bright silver of the Mk. I armor steals the show.

With the upcoming Ultron Agenda being teased by Mike Deodato Jr. and Marvel a few days ago and the secrets that Tony is keeping from Janet, this book is a high recommend from me because of the story possibilities that are likely to follow from this. Tony has an awful habit of pushing the women he loves away and as Ultron returns, will his secrets spill out then? Who knows, but buy this book!