Can We Talk About Gail For A Minute?

Picture borrowed from The Nerdy Bird, who would HATE this post!

So, did anyone miss me the past 24 hrs? Probably not, but I had to take a twiatus (I created that. No, honest) because I just couldn’t deal with all the kvetching about Gail Simone being fired from Batgirl. Every DC fanboy I follow started professing undying love and vowed never to buy another DC comic. I just can’t get down with that. The Gail Simone fan base is the comic equivalent of Neil deGrasse Tyson fans. My Twitter timeline is littered with RTs from her account where she thinks she’s being cheeky and they just eat it up. My problem with them is that they’re simply not objective. I’m not a Gail hater. In fact, I’ve enjoyed much of her work. That said, I’m willing to call a spade a spade. When Gail is on, she’s ON. At the same time, though, Batgirl simply wasn’t that good.

Sure, he’s smart, but he also kinda looks like the manager of an Old Country Buffet…

People are now praising the book like it was this shining gem in DC’s crown, but these were the same people upset by the idea that Barbara Gordon would walk again. These were the same people who, like me, were disappointed that they made it to #4 without really addressing how she was walking. Now, these people are telling me it’s the greatest book on the stands, and DC Editorial is full of morons for firing her. Yeah, I’m not buying that.

Comics currently cost $4 each, in a pseudo recession. Most of us buy monthly books out of some sense of loyalty, but as I said on Twitter, comics aren’t bullying. You can’t expect me to pay $4 a month on the promise of “it gets better”. If the book is good now, great. But she sure took her sweet ass time getting there.

And this is where the problem starts. I’ve read stuff like “Well, it probably wasn’t her fault it was bad.  It was editorial.” At what point does she share the blame for a failure? It’s always too easy for her. The All-New Atom sucked, and she walked so John Byrne would get all the blame. The Fury of Firestorm was HORRID. It was City Guys with nuclear powers. She walked, so Van Sciver got the blame. In those cases, it was never “Gail’s fault”. People love to laud her successes, but an oral report of her career would be so unbalanced you’d swear it came from Fox News.

Others want to see this as an attack of women on comics, but that’s too easy. That sexism stuff is only used one way. I remember when people felt that the only person who’d understand Wonder Woman would be a woman writer. This is after Rucka had already proved that wrong, but fangirls, right? So, along this line of thinking, only one person in DC’s camp could pull it off: Gail. And she embarked on a stint that no one likes to mention, like the retarded cousin peeing in the corner at Thanksgiving. Comics’ Great Female Hope failed where people thought she’d most succeed.

Yes, she was good on Birds of Prey, Agent X, and Welcome to Tranquilty, BUT she failed on All-New Atom, Fury of Firestorm, Wonder Woman, the second Gen 13 reboot. Hell, even her last stint on Birds of Prey was less “Birds of Prey” than Gotham City Sirens. Sure, people could say “Only focus on the positives”, but that’s not how this hobby operates. Two words: Rob Liefeld. So, why does Gail get special treatment? Let’s look at it from a business standpoint. It could be said that she just wasn’t justifying her current contractual terms. I’m not sure when she renegotiated, but when The New 52 launched, it was understood that she would be on two books: Batgirl and Firestorm. But, as she’s wont to do, she walked off Firestorm. Now, I can’t verify this, but it seems like she has a higher than average rate of walking off books than other creators on exclusive contracts. So, for the past 8 months or so, she was being paid to not go elsewhere, while delivering half of the originally expected work. When other creators walked off books (Judd Winick, Rob Liefeld) in the recent DC climate, that was the end of them at the company. This is just another case of that. It just so happened it occurred once her exclusive was over. It’s just business.

Look, I’ve already lost followers and made enemies, but this needed to be said. I like Gail’s work, and wish her well, but cut the fucking bullshit. Stop with the candlelight vigils and the ragetweets. Gail’s gonna be just fine, and you know it. She had a job, and from my perspective, she didn’t give it her best and got fired. Hell, I had a job where I didn’t give my best, and I got fired. It taught me to try harder next time. Maybe next time, she’ll try harder. Not a sermon, just a thought.