In the same week that long-time Vertigo executive editor Karen Berger left DC Entertainment, DC fired its most prominent female creator from her most popular book, Batgirl .
The firing was not over sales. Batgirl was last ranked #36 on the list of top 100 comics, ahead of books featuring two previous Robins, Nightwing and Red Hood & the Outlaws , but over creative differences. Simone said in a later post that DC “nixed” everything she had planned for the next arc and the company has pulled the next two issues that were solicited in her name.
It appears that she will not be writing any other books for DC Comics in the immediate future, as she posted on the Brian Bendis forums that “I am indeed now without a paycheck from DC.” She does have a Kickstarter comic, Leaving Megalopolis coming next year with artist Jim Calafiore and will be doing a webcomic for Thrillbent, a sited co-founded by creator Mark Waid.
I’ve written numerous posts about DC’s gender issues, with over-sexualized art, with stories that too often marginalize women, and with the small number of female creators currently employed by DC. While Simone was once the only female creator on the new 52 reboot from DC, her departure doesn’t mean the company is without female talent. Nicola Scott is the artist on Earth-2 , Christy Marx is writing Sword & Sorcery , Ann Nocenti is writing Catwoman and Amanda Conner just finished up the Before Watchman: Silk Spectre mini-series.
But Simone was the most prominent of DC’s female writers, often using twitter, tumblr and her message board to interact with fans to promote her projects and talk on various issues from cosplaying to the need for more female, LGBT and minority representation in superhero comics. She created the site Women in Refrigerators even before she was a comics creator in to bring attention to the treatment of female characters. I’ve followed her career since she first starting writing Birds of Prey for DC in 2003, and she was often one of the most vocal voices (and hilarious, check her Twitter) for those who seemed to have no voice.
She knew Babara Gordon’s previous identity of wheelchair-bound hacker Oracle was a symbol for fans with similar challenges and when that identity was discarded, her new Batgirl series shifted the character’s challenges to recovery from injury and PTSD so some of that would not be lost. I started reading Batgirl with trepidation, as I loved Barbara Gordon as Oracle, but I came to enjoy the new series immensely. At this point, I cannot imagine another creator will be able to match Simone’s understanding of the character.
What were the creative differences?
It’s unclear as Simone hasn’t been specific but I have heard from a number of people that DC editorial has some serious issues in how they are handling their talent. On Twitter, Marjorie Liu said “I’ve been silently, professionally irritated at DC for some time now but this with @GailSimone sealed the deal. Now I’m disgusted.” Liu told me some time ago that she’d been asked to pitch a new setup for Birds of Prey when it rebooted but turned down the opportunity because of time constraints and because she didn’t “trust” those in charge of editorial.
Gail had a twitter exchange that seemed to indicate it might have been a disagreement over how to handle a female character to the point of killing the character off. That could be the newly reintroduced Barbara Gordon Sr., Batgirl’s mother. But Gail also hinted on her forums and foreshadowed the possibility that Babs’ new roommate was a transwoman. She said today on her tumblr that this plot point is likely to never be followed up.
This is not even the first time Gail has been unceremoniously pulled from a book. It’s the third time. She was pulled from Wonder Woman to make way for J. Michael Straczynski’s aborted revamp and her second run of Birds of Prey was ended abruptly because of the reboot.
It is true that creators get pulled from books all the time. As a comic fan for over 30 years, I’ve gotten mostly used to runs I’m enjoying ending or getting cut off abruptly. But Simone’s departure, coming the same week that Berger ended her career at DC and combined from what I’ve been told by various creators about difficult conditions for talent at DC comics makes me view this as far more than a favorite creator being pulled from a book but as a symbol of a larger problem.
Simone’s departure seems to indicate those problems are getting worse, not better, and it’s shame that a talented writer and strong advocate who brought many female fans into reading superheroes was forced off a book and it seems rather cold it was done by email.
But readers may be the winner if Simone moves over to creator-owned projects without this kind of editorial interference.