Creator / Gail Simone

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Gail Simone (born July 29, 1974 in Oregon) has written multiple books, mostly for DC Comics (including Birds of Prey, The All-New Atom, and Wonder Woman), though she also had a famous run on Marvel's Deadpool. She is the one charged with coining the infamous phrase 'women in refrigerators', and has an entire website dedicated to such instances.

Gail is known for being unfailingly polite and friendly to her fellow creators (going as far as to say Amazons Attack has good points and defending the artwork of Rob Liefeld when they did a Teen Titans arc together), and interacting a lot with the Internet fandom. She visits and debates with members of scans_daily, has founded the Wonder Woman section on the CBR boards and hangs around Comic Bloc as well. She used to be found on the You'll All Be Sorry! forum on Comic Book Resources, named for a satiric column on comics she used to write before working for mainstream comics. She now has her own website at gailsimone.net.

In 2010, she finished Secret Six and concluded a second run on Birds of Prey, which she started writing after her years on Wonder Woman. Most recently, she enjoyed a long run on Batgirl (2011) and a somewhat shorter run co-writing The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men with Ethan Van Sciver. When she was fired from the former, the backlash resulted in her quickly being put back on the book. She also worked on a Domino book for Marvel, a Plastic Man book for DC, and a Red Sonja/Tarzan book for Dynamite. She also rather unexpectedly contributed a script for the final season of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "Between Dark and Dawn".

Works credited to Gail Simone:

Simone's body of work embodies these tropes:

• Author Appeal:
  • She likes writing teams of women, from the Birds of Prey to Domino's Posse. You should also expect lots and lots of sex jokes.
  • There will be LGBT+ characters. Like Creote and Savant from Birds of Prey, Scandal, Knockout and Catman from Secret Six, Red Sonja in her own book and Jitter/Calico from Uncanny X-Men.
• Breaking Old Trends: Starting in August 2024, she'll become the first woman to ever headline Uncanny X-Men in 61 years.
• Creator's Favorite: One of her favorite minor characters is King Shark. Her only mention of the movie Justice League Dark: Apokolips War regards the 30 seconds scene where King Shark is revealed to be John Constantine's ex-boyfriend.
• Family of Choice: Invokes this trope in pretty much every comic she writes, whether it's Birds of Prey, Secret Six, Red Sonja or Clean Room. Characters will build bonds through bleeding for eachother and by the end they will treat eachother like family. Her Uncanny X-Men run heavily focuses on the X-Men as a family first and superhero team second.
• Fanservice: Notably, for a writer who is famously feminist, Gail has defended this trope, or at least argued its not as harmful as other tropes that mistreat women (such as Dropped a Bridge on Him). Part of this is that she often collaborates with artists who tend to draw this way, but even when it's not the case, Gail is prone to putting in raunchy humour all on her own that tends to put female characters' sexualities on display. In fact, when she was writing Red Sonja, she did away with the whole "can't have sex except with the one who defeats you" thing, and turned her into an example of Really Gets Around. To be fair, she also tends to be equal opportunity with fanservice (Savant, Creote, Catman, Deadshot, Bane...)
• The Farmer and the Viper: If one of her characters shows mercy to the enemy, expect that character to suffer for it. Examples of this are her Wonder Woman run (Alkyone and Genocide) and her Red Sonja novel.
• Most Writers Are Male: Initially, she was the only woman working on the 2011 DC reboot (out of 52 creative teams). The second wave added three more: one writer and two artists.
• Ms. Fanservice: She LOVES this trope. Expect tons of women proudly flaunting their sexual attractiveness.
• Promoted Fangirl:
  • She started out as a hairdresser who just liked comics before getting a job writing Simpsons comics. Then Marvel hired her to write the last storyline for the Deadpool comic and the opening arc of Agent X, before jumping ship to DC and writing many of their comics.
  • Getting to write Red Sonja was a dream job, according to her foreword to the Queen of Plagues collection: she describes Sonja as singlehandedly making her appreciate fantasy comics (where before she had disdained them as male Power Fantasy).
• Troll: Gail's Twitter account gleefully plays The Gadfly with nonsensical bait posts that often manage to start trending hashtags or go viral. Recurring comic bits include claiming that British tea is made in the microwave, and incessant protests that she is not really a bear.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Twice. Firstly, she wanted to bring Cassandra Cain into Birds of Prey with a story that would transform her into a Christian, citing the fact that while an atheist herself she feels religion is misrepresented in comics. Secondly, she pitched a new book for the New 52 which involved Stephanie Brown and a handful of other missing female characters and form a team and would be co-written by Bryan Q Miller. Both were unable to come to pass due to some issues involving both Cass and Steph.
  • She had several scripts written that were scrapped when she was briefly fired from Batgirl, and her concept for the "Zero Year" crossover issue of Batgirl was "cool," but DC wanted someone else to write it. But the crossover isn't editorially mandated— the writers of the various books all expressed interest!
  • DC also rejected a pitch for a Shazam family comic that would be written by her, Mark Waid, and Grant Morrison.
  • She wrote the episode "Double Date" for Justice League Unlimited. It was originally going to be about Barbara Gordon getting injured when working on a case, so she calls Black Canary and Huntress to solve it for her. Gail also wanted to write an episode with the Queen of Fables as the villain.
  • Gail was offered to write for Static by Dwayne McDuffie four times, but she turned down every offer because she thought only Dwayne could do it right.
• World of Snark: One of the defining aspects of her work is how pretty much every issue is peppered with some kind of casual snark.
• Writer Revolt: Flat-out refused to do some part of the Death of the Family storyline and was fired for it. DC re-hired her after the backlash.
• You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: Infamously, a user on Twitter once tried to correct a joke she had made about The Punisher's personality. When he didn't make the connection even after having it pointed out to him that she was a comic book writer herself, Gail replied, "Dude, between the two of us, which one has actually written the Punisher, do you think?"