Archive for June, 2007
New Wonder Woman writer Gail Simone.
Gail Simone is one of the hardest working writers in comic books.
She first caught readers’ eyes with her witty wordplay for Marvel Comics’ Deadpool and quickly rose to stardom by taking DC Comics’ Birds Of Prey to new heights, leading to her taking on the adventures of Superman in Action Comics and showing why being bad is so darned good in the acclaimed miniseries, Villains United.
More recently she’s completed a Secret Six miniseries and writes the monthly comics: The All New Atom, Gen 13 and Welcome To Tranquility.
And now comes Simone’s greatest challenge, as she’s signed on to tackle the adventures of one of DC’s most iconic creations, Wonder Woman.
“Wonder Woman is the premiere female action hero of all time, in my opinion,” Simone said in a phone interview this week from her Oregon home, ahead of her trip to Toronto where she’ll be a guest at the Women Of Comics symposium as part of this weekend’s Paradise Toronto Comicon (www.torontocomicon.com).
“I’ve written Wonder Woman in a few different projects — in a JLA Classified six-issue arc and once in Birds Of Prey — and I really love writing her character.”
Penning tales of the Amazon princess is rife with challenges, Simone said.
“There’s going to be some difficulty because she has such a long history and everyone knows Wonder Woman and everything, but I’m just really just excited to get her back to being the No. 1 female super-hero in the world and to make her the star of her own book,” she said.
The fact that Simone is the first woman to write the character on an ongoing basis is fun, but daunting, the creator admits.
“I’m really excited and I’m kind of nervous, too, because I have the added thing of a mainstream female comic book writer getting to do Wonder Woman and there seems to be a lot of anticipation,” Simone said.
“I don’t want to let people down.”
And making the move to Wonder Woman hasn’t come without a price.
Simone is ending her over four-year run on Birds Of Prey as a result.
“It was really hard,” Simone said of leaving the book. “I still have moments where I’m really sad because I really miss the characters because I wrote them for so long.
“(But) I feel that I reached my goal, which was to make those three characters — (Black) Canary, Huntress and Oracle — lead characters, not just sidekicks or plot points for the male characters.”
And Simone hopes readers will agree that the move is worth it.
“I don’t want to give away too much, but I can guarantee you it is not going to be a boring book,” she said.
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Grendel creator Matt Wagner.
Comic book icon Matt Wagner is returning to his signature character, thanks in large part to a very smart woman.
Ahead of this year’s 25 anniversary of the first printing of Grendel, Wagner’s cult-favourite series, the writer/artist said he was inspired to revisit the character by his editor, and sister-in-law, Canadian-born Diana Schutz.
“She said ‘Look if it’s going to be something big for the anniversary, if it’s going to be a Grendel project, you have to draw it, not just write it — you really have to make it something special and put your mark on it’ and I said ‘yeah, absolutely,’” Wagner said in a telephone interview this week from his home outside Portland, Ore., ahead of a trip to Canada to attend the 5th annual Paradise Toronto Comicon (www.torontocomicon.com).
“And she said ‘and if it’s you drawing it, it should be Hunter Rose’ because that’s the one I’m associated with most artwork-wise and I said ‘yeah, you’re right.’”
“And she said ‘and if it’s going to be a Hunter Rose story, it’s got to be something important, it can’t just be a caper’ and I said ‘oh, shit, I already told all his important stuff.’”
Then the wheels started turning, Wagner said.
“I found a narrative loophole and kernel of an idea and before too long it was a full-blown story.”
If you’re not yet familiar with Grendel — a generations-spanning epic containing multiple protagonists all taking on the same name in the pursuit of things like money, power and revenge — Dark Horse Comics is hoping you soon will be.
In addition to this new miniseries, Grendel: Behold The Devil, the publisher recently released a 25th anniversary hardcover edition of Grendel: Devil By The Deed, Wagner’s first complete Grendel tale, and is soon to deliver Grendel Archives, the first-ever reprinting of Wagner’s first four Grendel stories from 1982 and the deluxe Art Of Grendel hardcover, featuring work by dozens of renowned creators.
What’s made Grendel last so long is how eclectic it has been, Wagner said.
“The key to Grendel’s success has been my willingness to continually reinvent it, to never think it was all done, to never think I’ve said all there was to be said,” he said.
“I had no original plans to keep it rolling on. I had no inkling that there were going to be other versions of Grendel, but once I started down that road I realized what a wide-open path that it was and never looked back.”
While it has been a long time since he’s written stories featuring Hunter Rose, Wagner said it took no time to get back into the groove.
“It’s incredibly natural,” he said. “There’s just something about coming back to Grendel that’s like speaking a language I was born to.”
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Cecil Castellucci
She already had two novels published and was working on a third, but Cecil Castellucci was forced to learn how to write all over again for her latest project.
The 37-year-old former Montrealer, now living in Los Angeles, is the author of The Plain Janes, the first book from DC Comics’ new Minx imprint — graphic novels aimed primarily at young, female readers.
Figuring out how to go from her successful experiences penning young adult novels like Boyproof and The Queen Of Cool to the sequential storytelling of comics was a thrill, but took some getting used to, Castellucci admits.
“It was totally exciting because I love writing and I love telling stories and I like telling them in many, many different ways,” she said in a telephone interview from L.A. this week.
“It was difficult to figure out at first how to move the action forward with panels. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. I was completely overwhelmed.
“But (artist) Jim Rugg really had my back and he drew the first seven pages from the first seven pages of script that I’d written and once I saw those pages and I saw how my words could be translated into a picture, then I began to understand how move the action forward.”
The novel centres around four teenaged girls named Jane who find friendship as they undertake a guerrilla art project that turns their whole community on its ear.
“It’s about the reject table at lunch and trying to find beauty in the world and trying to make friends with people who are being true to themselves,” Castellucci said.
“I think everybody feels like they were a misfit in high school a little bit, even the popular kids, and so I think that everyone will find a bit of themselves in one of the many characters in there.”
Helping to launch the Minx line and to produce stories that will hopefully get more young girls reading comics is exciting, the author said, but she doesn’t necessarily want The Plain Janes labeled as a ‘girl book’.
“I always think it’s silly when we say ‘this is specifically a girl book’ or ‘this is specifically a boy book,’” Castellucci said. “People like a good story.”
As for whether this was a one-time thing or a life-changing experience…?
“I loved working on The Plain Janes, I loved working with Jim Rugg, I loved working with (editor) Shelly Bond” the author said.
“It was an awesome, awesome experience and I’m chomping at the bit to do another comic book or graphic novel.”
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