#FollowFriday: Gail Simone (@GailSimone)
Like badass lady superheroes? Then you'll love this badass lady writer.
Every week for #FollowFriday, we pick a notable account for you to follow on Twitter. This week, we think you should start paying more attention to Gail Simone, a comic book writer who’s definitely one of the coolest — and funniest — people in the business.
Who She Is
You’ve probably heard the term “fridge stuffing”, which is used to describe a fictional story where one character — usually a female family member or love interest — is killed or injured to affect the protagonist, who’s pretty much always a male character. Gail Simone invented that term way back in 1999 for her website “Women in Refrigerators,” where she made a comprehensive list of comic book women who’d been murdered so their titular hero boyfriends could be sad about it. (The “refrigerator” thing comes from a very specific storyline in The Green Lantern where a villain leaves Kyle Radner’s girlfriend’s body in Kyle’s refrigerator for him to find).
Since then, Gail has become a powerhouse in the comic books industry as a writer for many titles, including Deadpool, Birds of Prey, Secret Six, Wonder Woman, the new 52’s Batgirl, Leaving Megalopolis, The Movement, and Red Sonja. If you couldn’t tell from her resume, she’s particularly well known for writing interesting and diverse female superhero characters, especially in the DC Universe.
Why You Should Follow Her
If you’re a huge DC fan, then there’s no doubt that you’ve read something Gail’s written, or else have read something that’s been influenced by Gail’s work. So at the very least, it’s worth keeping track of what she’s up with with Batgirl, Red Sonja, and The Movement, which are the three biggest titles she’s working with right now.
However, it’s also worth following her for her sense of humor as well. Gail is generally a pretty optimistic, positive person, but she also likes to do this thing where, after she’s made her opinion on a subject abundantly clear, she’ll start unabashedly trolling her audience on a related topic. You know, for fun. It’s always hilarious.
Great Recent Tweets:
Instead of Idris Elba, they should have put someone handsome in that Pacific Rim role, someone sexy, you know?
— Gail Simone (@GailSimone) December 5, 2013
Gail loves engaging with her twitter followers and will often spin her anecdotes, interests, and trolling escapades into fun hashtag games; she’ll then end up retweeting the best ones to keep the game going. For example, here’s the set-up for her most recent hashtag, #Momcomics:
When I started, there was this group of creepy would-be pros who thought it was hilarious to call all comics by women, “Momcomics.” — Gail Simone (@GailSimone) December 2, 2013
I think it’s kind of hilarious that the worst insult they could think of was calling a woman a mother. OH MY GOD THE BURN STILL HURTS. — Gail Simone (@GailSimone) December 2, 2013
Also, at the time, I was writing Deadpool and Killer Princesses, two books known for their sparkly teatime gentility. — Gail Simone (@GailSimone) December 2, 2013
Writing a scene about a sword through the head… #Momcomics — Gail Simone (@GailSimone) December 3, 2013
And here’s where things start to get off the rails:
@GailSimone “I don’t care if you have TWO swords through your head, you put a hat on when you go outside, mister!” #Momcomics — Brandon Draga (@BrandonDraga) December 3, 2013
@GailSimone Young lady you aren’t leaving this house until you put on pants. Zatanna Zatara, don’t you backwards talk at me #momcomics — nerdgirl (@nerdgirlwalking) December 3, 2013
(via @GailSimone on Twitter)
- Last week we recommended the surreal Twitter account @BabbyTips
- Before that, we suggested JL8‘s Yale Stewart
- Before that, we showed you tweets from Commander Chris Hadfield
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