Simone Says

Once again, Beau Smith regails us with an installment of Five Manly Questions on SilverBulletComicBooks.com. This time the subject is the very female Gail Simone. Answering a question about her favorite manly movies, Simone ventures into an interesting tangent regarding the Birds of Prey fighting styles:

If you read my comics, I've been criticized occasionally for making my fight scenes too brutal. There are a lot of people who really don't want to see Black Canary fighting that hard, or getting broken bones and bloody noses. They want sort of sterile, graceful kicks where the villain is painlessly knocked out.

What's weird is that it's rare anyone is killed in my fight scenes, whereas in Wolverine or Punisher, the death count may be in the dozens. But I believe a fight SHOULD be intense and a little bit dirty. Black Canary, in my mind, is one of the baddest badasses in DCU history. She does the great majority of her dirty work with her fists and the soles of her feet, against wide numbers of much bigger and stronger opponents. So when she throws down, brother, SOMEONE's gonna get hurt. I love writing action sequences… I was stunned to find out a lot of writers just leave fight scenes to the artist. To me, a huge amount of character work can be carried by those scenes.

In Birds of Prey, I've got this guideline in my mind, that every character fights differently, not just in style but in personality. For instance, while Black Canary is ten times the hand to hand fighter that Huntress is, if you shot Canary in the head a couple times, she'd probably go down. With Huntress, you'd better use every bullet in your gun, and it might not be a bad idea to reload a couple times.

Can't argue with her fighting philosophy. I for one am glad that someone has made a conscious effort to differentiate between street fighting and various forms of martial arts. Just because someone is a fighter, doesn't mean they necessarily know kung-fu from kung-pow chicken.

In addition to continuing her work on BoP, Simone has the following irons in the fire:

I've completed a six-issue JLA arc, with art by two of my all-time favorites; Jose Garcia Lopez and Klaus Janson. That's just a dream come true, and to me, the JLA is the Porsche of comics. It's not a B-book. It's an A-book. It's THE A-book.

I'm still doing some Simpsons work for Bongo comics, including the first-ever Simpsons novel. I've finished a JLU episode for television that should be aired in a couple months. Most of the rest is still secret, but I will say, these will be huge launches, I think. I know I've been very fortunate these past couple years, but this year just blows my mind. Some of these things are dream projects for me as a reader, so I'm dying to get them in the hands of the readership. By the way, let me ask YOU a question…

A Simpsons novel? Sounds interesting and with Simone behind the keyboard, it's guaranteed to be entertaining. As for her upcoming JLA run, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't excited to see her take on these iconic characters. The last few stories have been subpar at best and I'm still waiting to see how this Crime syndicate arc turns out. Simone will be a breath of fresh air.

Check out the rest of the interview for Gail Simone's thoughts on everything manly.