Creator Spotlight #2: Gail Simone

Since I just finished up my reviews for Welcome to Tranquility it made sense to me to do my next creator spotlight on the writer of the Tranquility series, Gail Simone.

Gail got her foot in the door early on by working for Bongo Comics working on The Simpsons. She hit the mainstream when she went to Marvel Comics and wrote issues of Deadpool but didn't stay at Marvel for very long as she reportedly had issues getting along with her editor.

Being in the mainstream and not wanting to work with Marvel anymore the logical choice was to make the move to DC Comics. Gail hit the jackpot with DC when she took over the Birds of Prey book and had a very long and critically acclaimed run before diving into other books for DC, including Action Comics, Villains United, Wonder Woman and eventually the spin off of Villains United, Secret Six.

Not only did Gail work on DC titles but she also dove into Wildstorm's Gen13 and created the series Welcome to Tranquility. To date, Welcome to Tranquility has had 13 issues published, 12 of which were written by Gail with the 13th was written by Christos Gage as part of Armageddon.

Today Gail Simone stays busy writing the Wonder Woman and Secret Six ongoing books but she is also making her return to the Tranquility book later in 2009 with a new six issue limited series.

I haven't reviewed Gail's Gen13 run yet in this blog but if you are curious about her work on Welcome to Tranquility I've reviewed the entire series in previous entries. In the future I hope to review her work on Gen13 after reviewing Gen13 vol. 1 (the 5 issue limited series and issue #0). Speaking of old books, I'm thinking about starting a series of blog entries titled "Blast From the Past" where I focus on old 90's Wildstorm books such as Wetworks vol. 1, WildC.A.T.S vol. 1 and maybe even some limited series such as Zealot or Team 7. If there's any interest for "Blast From the Past" entries please leave a comment and I'll try and cover what you're interested in.

Getting back to Gail's work I have to say I haven't read everything she's put out to date. What I have read includes her entire run on Birds of Prey and Welcome to Tranquility. My girlfriend has her complete runs for Villains United, Secret Six, Wonder Woman and All New Atom. Outside of Wildstorm, I'm really looking forward to reading her Wonder Woman stuff as I've heard she's really saved that book and hopefully the sales will pick up in the future to help spark interest in a second Wonder Woman title. What I have read from her has been overall excellent (I gave her Tranquility issues very good reviews) and I can't wait to see her get back to Tranquility later this year.