Gail Simone: A Short Biography

Introduction

Unlike Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, if we lived in an utopia then anyone could do or be anything with a bit of hard work and determination. Sadly, we do not live in that world. In the world of comic books, this sometimes means that female characters are nothing but tropes, stereotypes and plot devices. Part of this may come from there only being a handful of women who create comic books. One such woman is Gail Simone. Born in Oregon in 1974, Simone was a hairdresser, who studied theater. So how did she get involved in comic books? She started as a fan of comics. Along with other fans Simone contributed to a site called Women in Refrigerators.

Major Works

Women in Refrigerators was created after a scene in Green Lantern #54. During the scene in question, Kyle Rayner finds his girlfriend dead and stuffed in the fridge. This caused Gail Simone to realize the reoccurrence of women being depowered, raped, murdered and/or their lives destroyed for the purpose of moving the stories of men forwarded. As part of this revelation, Simone and other fans made a list of other female characters who suffered under similar circumstances.

After her work for Women in Refrigerators and for Comic Book Resources, Simone began writing comic books, like the Simpsons. From the Simpsons, Simone has almost exclusively been writing for DC. The biggest titles she wrote for included runs of Birds of Prey, Secret Six and Wonder Woman. Some controversy arose during her recent turn at Batgirl. In December 2012, Simone was seemingly fired from writing Batgirl, but only a few days after being fired Simone was brought back to continue writing Batgirl. Since Batgirl, Gail Simone has done some writing for Red Sonja among expanding her skills to writing for animated series and sharing her wit of social media, especially Twitter.

Impact

During the second wave of DC comics (or also known as the New 52) Gail Simone was the only female writer. A reminder of the diversity problems within comic books. Include that knowledge with the fact that Gail Simone has been a long time critic of female characters, and you can feel her fighting for better representation and inclusion of women in comic books. Her work sort of speaks for itself. Female characters always play a sizable role in her storylines, whether its in a team series, like Secret Six, or a solo series, like Batgirl. Her work plus her constant presence in public forums and on social media argues that women can write great comic books, as well as can be popular among readers. As women become more accepted as fans, creators and protagonist of comic books, the more important Gail Simone will become. Her work and activism has helped create a platform that has brought to light the need for inclusivity in comic books. So hopefully because of Gail Simone (and others) there will be more women writers and artists in comic books in the near future.