Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, entertainment, gail simone, red sonja, Robert Place Napton

Gail Simone And The Dangerous Tribe Of Cannibalistic Foodies

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2014 18:00:43 -0600

As the Red Sonja series from Dynamite Entertainment banks into a new story arc, Robert Place Napton sat down with writer Gail Simone to ask her about her approach to writing the character, what's next for the series and is it fair for scantily clad females to be easily dismissed by the reading public?

ROBERT PLACE NAPTON: What's been your approach in general to the character?

GAIL SIMONE: If I really love a character, my goal is to present them in a way that evangelizes for them. I want people to feel the same excitement for them that I feel, and usually the best way to do that for me is to present their flaws and strengths in a new way.

With Sonja, I wanted her to be ill-mannered, and very rowdy and easily frustrated. She gets drunk, she fights, she can't hold her tongue. My version is very close to the beginning of her fame, she quite possibly grows up as she gets older.

But I still want her to be this absolute terror…I don't have a lot of interest in having characters talk about her being female, I like them to get the hell out of her way because she is such a tornado of danger. It's more fun for me if she is the thunder that comes to town. That's the Sonja I like to write.

RPN: Issue 7 finds her not in the best mood. What can you tell us about where she's at in the current story?

GS: Well, the previous arc left her in a bad place, where despite coming out as the ostensible victor, she also lost two of the people she cares about most in the world, AND she was near death from illness. She's barely recovering, and she's on a miserable quest and not to be too subtle about it, she thinks she's in desperate need of adult physical companionship.

That last part isn't working out too well.

We also included guest cameos by a few of my favorite comedy podcasters…

RPN: You are no stranger to witty dialogue and Sonja is no exception. What do you enjoy about writing her character?

GS: I like her code, actually. She's kind of a live-and-let-live type of heroine. Unless you piss her off, and then she's more of a stab-and-let-bleed sort.

RPN: There is a tendency by some readers and reviewers to dismiss scantily clad female comic book characters like Red Sonja or Dejah Thoris as insubstantial. Do you feel that's fair?

GS: Well, yeah, kinda. Historically, in pulp fiction, these characters were created BY guys FOR guys, and any female audience was kind of a surprising side benefit. A lot of these characters were appropriated by female readers because despite being at least partially created as pin-up queens, they could also be portrayed as strong and dangerous, and that was something many female readers desperately wanted.

But I say again, if the bikini was all Sonja was about, why has she steadfastly survived with a large female fanbase when a thousand half-naked imitators are long gone? Robert E. Howard was a bit of a proto-feminist, he did create some fantastic female asskickers, and that little germ of an idea made it into the comics' version of Sonja intact.

Nearly every female in comics that's been around 40 years has some goofy stuff in her history…it isn't new stuff to me, people have said similar things about Black Canary and Wonder Woman. But there's enough great stuff there that you can take it and really go sailing.

RPN: If someone hasn't given your run on Sonja a try yet, what's the thing you'd say to get them to take a look.

GS: It's a smart, deadly, ferocious and unstoppable warrior facing really unusual situations where her sword arm alone isn't enough. In issue seven, she faces a dangerous tribe of foodies, if you can believe that. The only problem is, they are also cannibals.

It's just one of the most wildly entertaining things I have ever worked on.