Gail Simone

It's time for a trans hero in a mainstream comic. ”

Ideas are not - ideas come at me all the time; it's just the way I'm wired. It's just a matter of focusing it in and figuring out what to do with that. ”

Leaving a book is hard - 'Secret Six' was a book that people cared about. Even years later, the digital sales are great; the trades and single issues are expensive and highly sought after. It was meaningful to a lot of readers, which is endlessly gratifying. ”

With 'Red Sonja', it's a single character leading a book although there's a supporting cast, whereas 'Secret Six' is basically six characters who have equal time and equal place in the book, so it's got a team dynamic that 'Red Sonja' doesn't have. ”

The stuff we're seeing in 'Deadpool' and 'Harley Quinn' now, Plastic Man was doing in the 1940s. It's a character that was ahead of its time back then and the stories are still funny and still relevant. ”

The 'Womanthology' book got a lot of people jobs, inside and outside the industry, and I think stuff like that tends to be really effective. You have something in print that you can point an editor or a publisher to, and it makes a huge difference for a lot of people. ”

If you succeed at all, you find yourself suddenly working with artists whose work you don't just admire but you deeply love. ”

I get very invested in characters; it's the only way I find that I can write a book and really make it work. ”

I've always said my whole career that I wanted to write by the improv credo, 'don't negate,' which means, even if you didn't care for something, you try to make it work. You don't say, 'Oh, that particular story didn't happen.' ”