Meet Gail Simone

Location... National Public Library
Date....... December 5, 2007
Time....... 6:45 PM

Not many people read "western" comic books religiously.
Not many people pay attention to the names on a comic book.
It's no wonder that the turn out for Gail Simone's talk was rather small  =( 

A pity because she hosted a rather enciteful discussion on The New Diversity of Comics a couple days ago.  It was interesting to look back and see the evolution that comic books have undergone.  Developing from something only for kids, into a medium for mature stories to flourish. 

If you pick up any old Action Comics or Detective Comics (as in pre-80's) the storylines were laughable, the characters were flat, the artwork was cringe-worthy, and the lines were super cheesy.  Every other girl with her own super powers still needed saving.  And the ending's are predictable -- good guy wins, bad guy loses.  Boring stuff.

Nowadays, there are a lot of comics and graphic novels with very interesting characters, well developed plots and very good artwork.  And not only are there comics following the mainstream giants DC and Marvel, there's other indepedent publishers and of course, tons of japanse stuff.

Here's some of Gail Simone's suggested reading:

Oops crappy picture =P  Here's the list in text...

Maus - Art Spiegelman
Gon - Masashi Tanaka
Uzumaki - Junji Ito  (this is very good and actually quite a scary read)
Monster - Naoki Urasawa
Pride of Baghdad - Brian K. Vaughan, Niko Henrichon
Sandman - Neil Gaiman


As for Gail Simone... she writes for DC and is most well known for doing Birds of Prey.  I'll admit that her name didn't ring any bells for me, even though I've read a fair amount from the series.  Most of the times I don't remember writers unless I fall in love with the story. 

Anyway she talked about how she got into the comic book industry and it was interesting to find out she'd been a hairdresser for the longest time before switching to writing.  She's an inspirational example for people aspiring to take that first step into the industry.  She'll soon be the first woman writer for the Wonder Woman series. 

She went on to tell us what it was like to work in the comic industry... what writers needed to do to get out a normal 22-page comic -- that's equivalent to 50+ pages of writing!  And not only does she need to think about a good plot that readers will enjoy, she needs to plan the panels as well as their shapes, she needs to plan out each panel's shot (whether it's a close up view of the hero's eyes or an overview of the city), she needs to make important notes for colorists so that they don't mess up important details like flag colors, and she needs to ensure the story progresses in a manner that makes sense.

My biggest shocker was finding out that she created the character Black Alice!!!  A young uber powerful stealing majick user in the DC realm, and a gothette to top it off!  Yes, well, I have a thing with anything magick and gothy  =P

At the end of the talk, she generously gave out copies of singles she'd written and was even kind enough to sign them!  =)  And I even got to take a picture with her but I'm all fugly looking in that picture because my idiot friend passed my camera to my other friend who didn't know how to use my camera T_T  Oh well...


Here's my list of favourite writers (not in any order) :

1. Neil Gaiman's Sandman series
(the Books of Magic is also good)
2. J Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars
(there's quite a number of very good Spidey stories done by him too)
3. Alan Moore's Watchmen
4. James Robinson's Witchcraft
(also the Starman series... very good stuff, but the library's missing one book)
5. Alex Ross
(technically he's not a writer but anything painted by him is worth the read)
6. Bill Willingham's Fables
(especially 1001 Nights of Snowfall)
7. Paul Jenkins' The Sentry
8. Kevin Smith's Green Arrow