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I feel humanity is often displayed in how we react to our mistakes and the misdeeds committed against us.
Gail Simone
Actually, the notion of what is acceptable for a moral government to do seems to have eroded in some ways since 9-11. Not to get too political here, but countries, including our own, seem to have accepted what was once almost unimaginable - condoning torture, for example, and even criminalizing peaceful protest.
I have had a lot of dreams come true as a writer... I've gotten to work with artists I adored as a reader; I've gotten to write characters that changed my life as a kid.
I do a lot of book signings and conventions every year, and I meet a great many readers who are struggling... they're working through illness, injury, addiction, depression, grief, or some other trauma. It seems to me that there's a lot of heroism in fighting those things as well, as best you can.
I get asked a lot about writing for games and prose and film, and I will do some, but I can never see myself leaving comics. I love it too much.
As time goes on, at both DC and Marvel, characters notch up so many victories that we often start to think of them as infallible, which is kind of death for adventure fiction.
If you love Tarzan, you can read stories from the 'Jungle Tales of Tarzan', where he's just a kid, all the way up until he has a son of his own and beyond. Same with 'Batman' - you can follow him from Gotham, as a kid, to 'Dark Knight', as a cranky old weirdo. I really love that.
Famously, DC has been pretty great showing gay women, with characters like Batwoman, but has shown fewer prominent men on the sexuality spectrum outside of hetero. It's something we need to address. I also think it's lovely how the readers respond to this.
We have so many fantastic creators - female creators as well as male creators that have their own followings, their own fans, and their own books that are successful.
One of the things I am most excited about personally is a five-issue anthology I put together, 'Legends of Red Sonja', which is full of wonderful little short stories written exclusively by my favorite female writers of comics, prose, and gaming.
I've said this many times: I don't care which hero punches which hero to get the Infinity Jockstrap or whatever. I do care that people find humanity in these stories, and maybe something connects, makes the world a little better for having read it.
When I write a team book, it's all about how they relate to each other and what they bring to the team and the book. Whether it's Black Canary and Huntress or Bane and Scandal, I look for a relationship that people can believe in, that they want to follow and learn more about.
When I started in comics, people were always trying to classify me as either/or. Either a writer who appealed to women or a writer who appealed to guys. This need to categorize was just exhausting.
My thing with the Secret Six is that they never win. The odds are always against them; everyone wants them gone. So they never win. But they never give up, either.
Ideas are not - ideas come at me all the time; it's just the way I'm wired. It's just a matter of focusing it in and figuring out what to do with that.
I admire writers who can remain objective and distanced, but that doesn't seem to be in my toolbox somehow. I have to care, I have to have skin in the game.
I love crossovers, I love Wonder Woman, and being able to bring the undisputed greatest warriors of the DCU and Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age together for the very first time is a dream come true.
If you succeed at all, you find yourself suddenly working with artists whose work you don't just admire but you deeply love.
The first Knightfall story is four issues, and it is extremely focused and intense. People who have read, say, the 'Cats In the Cradle' arc in 'Secret Six' will get some idea of the primal tone of this story. It doesn't let up at all, and it ends in a new place.
Red Sonja, she was a hellraiser before Buffy, Xena, and Ripley even existed. When so many heroines in comics were all hung up on romance and the bizarre gender politics of comics at the time, Sonja was out cutting off the heads of dragons and pirates.
I think Tumblr tends to be - you can get more in-depth with things and more blogging, and Tumblr has been real great for me in terms of research because I have contacts with people from all walks of life all over the globe.
Leaving a book is hard - 'Secret Six' was a book that people cared about. Even years later, the digital sales are great; the trades and single issues are expensive and highly sought after. It was meaningful to a lot of readers, which is endlessly gratifying.
I have worked with a lot of great artists, including some of my heroes like Michael Golden, George Perez, and Jose Garcia Lopez, just to name a couple. I have been spoiled.
Nothing really prevented me from showing Catman as bi, but it's how I thought of him.
I'm excited for Christy Marx taking over 'Birds of Prey'. I adore 'Rachel Rising' by the great Terry Moore. I'm also a stone cold Scott Snyder fan; the guy is a joy to read and a pleasure to work with.
I get very invested in characters; it's the only way I find that I can write a book and really make it work.
I was a fan of the idea of Red Sonja, but the gender politics of the character made her hard to read, for me, at times.
It's time for a trans hero in a mainstream comic.
The fishnets on Black Canary never bothered me: they fit her character. It's the same for me with the bikini... most people don't wear a lot of clothes in these stories, and it's a big part of what makes her instantly recognizable. Do I want her in a raincoat? Not really.
Catman - what I really like about him is he's a really grounded character in terms of - he's an excellent tracker. We're giving him a set of new skills for 'Secret Six' as it starts again anew. But he's very sexy, very dangerous, unpredictable.
A lot of readers and a lot of editors had a story problem with Oracle, in that she made for such an easy, convenient story accelerator, that we missed the sense of having characters have to struggle to discover, to solve mysteries. Famously, it helped make Batman less of a detective and more of a monster hunter.
Greg Rucka always writes lovely, believable female characters in books like 'Whiteout', 'Queen and Country', and 'Lazarus.' I am a fan of Kelly Sue DeConnick, who does a wonderful female lead in 'Captain Marvel.' And DC's 'Batwoman' is currently the only book at the Big Two with a lesbian solo lead character, and it's always outstanding.
I always look for a story that hasn't been told in the same way. I don't care about a lot of the usual elements people use for a quick drama boost. I want to know, for example, what happens when a man who was victimized by his father tries to be a father to a woman sixty years his senior.
My career path is the weirdest thing. I was a hairdresser, I worked at Marvel for a few months, and then I was signed to a DC exclusive for eight years.
I've written, like, 450 comics, and 'Secret Six' was the first one I've had ship late, ever. So it took a lot to make that happen. So we had a little bit of a stop-and-start, and then we had Convergence, and then Issue No. 2 of 'Secret Six'.
I love DC. I love the people there, and I am deeply in love with that universe, but it meant that for a long time, when other offers came up, I always had to turn them down.
A lot of action heroes, we're told they are heroic primarily because they commit violence upon the bad guy. It can be cathartic; it can be thrilling. But at some point, I think you want more from your heroes than just the ability and willingness to pummel someone.
I try to make every issue new-reader friendly. I remember being frustrated many times trying to pick up new series that were overladen with baggage. The trick is to make that backstory seem like something compelling that they will want to explore rather than an obstacle course they have to crawl through to get to the story.
People resist and fight against things that are new that they haven't seen before, especially if they make them uncomfortable. But fiction is a safe place to tell these stories and to reach out to people and maybe affect them and make a difference in their lives.
I think it's important to have diversity in comics for a thousand reasons. It's not just some airy conceptual thing: it's important to reflect the humanity of the readership.
I feel like Vertigo is a place to have an adult discussion for adult readers.
When I think about Plastic Man, he was genuinely the first funny super hero. I'm obviously attracted to that. There's also this great mixture of tragedy in there, too, that I love. The humor comes from a place of pain.
I love any books by Kelly Sue DeConnick or Marjorie M. Liu; it's lovely to have successful, talented female writers doing great work in comics.
When I created Mary for the 'Batgirl' issue of 'Night of the Owls', there was a lot of excitement at DC. Scott Snyder in particular was a champion for the character, bless him.
What I feel responsible for is, if my name is on a comic, I want it to be the best-written comic that I can possibly do. I want it to include some new things we haven't seen before, new story ideas, new characters. Quality, quality art, all those kinds of things.
I've always said my whole career that I wanted to write by the improv credo, 'don't negate', which means, even if you didn't care for something, you try to make it work. You don't say, 'Oh, that particular story didn't happen.'
The stuff we're seeing in 'Deadpool' and 'Harley Quinn' now, Plastic Man was doing in the 1940s. It's a character that was ahead of its time back then and the stories are still funny and still relevant.
Secret Six has always had a special place in the DCU, just because they're the misfits. The content is a little bit different than the rest of the mainstream titles. It has a completely different tone than any of the other books out there.
I like DC, and I love the DC Universe. It's a source of never-ending joy to me.
With 'Red Sonja', it's a single character leading a book although there's a supporting cast, whereas 'Secret Six' is basically six characters who have equal time and equal place in the book, so it's got a team dynamic that 'Red Sonja' doesn't have.
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