C2E2 is officially underway. And while DC may not have a booth for the second year in a row, they do have creators galore for a number of scheduled panels. While we have coverage coming from the panels later, the first bit from Chicago is an exclusive interview with Gail Simone.
Just to point out before we get to the questions, these interviews were arranged with DC ahead of time and as with most approved interview blocks, creators can’t reveal a lot outside of what has already been announced or outside the solicitations. These interviews are more of a discussion of things that have occurred rather than what is to come.
As TBU usually does when we have an interview set-up ahead of time, we head to our Facebook Group to get questions directly from the fans rather than asking a number of questions that have been asked multiple times in the past. There was a lot of good questions, but in the time we had allotted to talk, we picked a few that we knew would have more discussion around them being answered.
So without further ado, here are is our interview with Gail Simone.
TBU: You have been on Batgirl since the beginning of the New 52, and even prior to the New 52 you worked with Barbara Gordon in Birds of Prey. The biggest obvious change with the New 52 is that Barbara can walk. Because we are just about three years into the New 52, do you have any plans explaining how she is able to walk in future issues?
Gail Simone: Explaining what? I think we have covered it through the book pretty well. In terms of…
TBU: As far as how she can be able to walk?
Gail Simone: Yea, we have. Also what that has cost her because she has post-traumatic stress, not only from the event putting her in the wheelchair, but also some survivor’s guilt from getting out of the wheelchair. And we have covered that quite a bit in the book.
TBU: More recently in the title we have started to see more of her civilian life, as far as her relationship with her father, her having a boyfriend and her relationship with her mother when she comes back to Gotham. Do you have more plans to explore her civilian life even more in future issues?
Gail Simone: I certainly do. Coming up we have an issue where her roommate Alysia goes on a date and we get to explore that part of her civilian life as well. As unfortunate things happen in Gotham, Alysia gets on Ragdoll’s bad side and that creates some problems that Batgirl needs to come in and help with.
TBU: A lot of the characters you have used, as far as the villains go, were original villains outside of the use of Joker in the Death of the Family crossover. Do you have any plans outside of Ragdoll for other classic villains to appear? Or rather what is the process that you decide to use an original villain compared to an existing villain?
Gail Simone: We want to create something new that we don’t already have a character that can fill that. For instance, with Mirror his origin is very psychological, which I think is needed for Gotham and the bat characters. His feeling is that it is his job to go in and make sure that people who should have died in horrible accidents and things, do die. He suffered a horrible loss of his family and it kind of twisted his reasoning on that. He has a list and Barbara Gordon is on it because he feels that she should have died when she was shot in the spine. So these are the kinds of things that create immediate conflict, for one thing. But it’s specific to Batgirl herself. That villain would not necessarily be after someone else in the bat-verse if they didn’t have a moment that he felt they should have died. That’s kind of how I think about it of what is specific to Batgirl.
TBU: So when you are creating these new villains, you are thinking of how they can actually interact specifically with Batgirl compared to other characters?
Gail Simone: Yea. And what other problems it would put Batgirl against and how she would come out at the end of it. And what she would get out of it. Would her character become stronger or would it break her more? That is the main goal story wise.
That concluded the interview as Simone had a spotlight panel within a few minutes, three floors away.
While, the questions are not as juicy as one would hope, there was a feeling after we asked the first question that we should not have asked that question from Simone herself. She seemed taken a back by the question, which seems odd as fans on the Facebook Group agreed that that was the number one question that should be asked.
So what do you think? Has it been explained how Barbara is able to walk again within the pages of Batgirl written by Simone? Sound off in the comments section below.
Posted by Dustin Fritschel
