Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, dynamite, entertainment, gail simone, Sergio Davila, Swords of Sorrow

Gail Simone Provides A Writer's Commentary For Swords Of Sorrow #1

Published Sun, 10 May 2015 08:00:50 -0500

Writer Commentary by Gail Simone:

I have never done a writer's commentary before, but I've always enjoyed the little behind-the-scenes sneak peek when others have done it, so this is my attempt. I still want to keep some mystery and surprises, so mostly I am going to comment on oddball things that are completely irrelevant, because that's the fun stuff, after all.

The fun of this book, and the reason I wanted to do it is that it's a mash-up no other company could do. Marvel has superheroes, they don't have the pulp characters. DC doesn't have Miss Fury or Red Sonja or Jane Parker. That makes this really fun, that I can have Dejah Thoris riding on a horse behind Lady Rawhide. That's the stuff I always loved as a kid, and here we get the whole playground. FUN!

PAGE ONE-TWO: When I agreed to do this, and I brought along a bunch of my favorite female writers, we all had the same thought in mind, I'm sure… "God DAMN, that's a lot of bikinis." Most of us have nothing against cheesecake at all, and we all like these characters, but…well, it's a lot of bikinis.

A lot of our readers are probably not expecting a lot of half-nekkid wimmin running around, and a bunch of the characters (Miss Fury, Kato, and more) are dressed from head to toe, so we COULD have started with some of them to set the tone.

But I like playing the game on the hardest level, so I thought it'd be cheeky to start off with arguably the most cheesecakey character in the entire story, Jungle Girl.

When I first read about Jungle Girl, she didn't seem to have much compelling to say to me, but reading a little deeper, I started to see her as a teenager, someone going through a difficult time when no one around understands her, and that made her a lot of fun to write.

PAGE THREE: Almost the entire issue, may note that the scenes switch with a bit of connective tissue. On the top of this page, the child drops the doll, and in the next panel, different scene, but Sonja is in the same position as the doll. Nearly every scene change is connected in some way, a portent of the story to come.

Also, it was fun to write a filthy sea chanty for Sonja to sing.

PAGE FOUR: Again, connective, from the vulture on the previous page, to the 'Terror Crow' on this page. I have only gotten to write Vampirella once before, for a long-forgotten one-shot crossover. But I like her to be badass. And I'd like to see her get a new look, this one could use some updating.

PAGE FIVE: Again, the woman's face on the previous page, to the Thark woman on this one (I will stop pointing these out now!). I have never gotten to write and Edgar Rice Burroughs books before, despite being a huge E.R.B. fan when I was younger.

Probably the biggest thrill for me is that we got to put the worlds of Burroughs and Howard together for the first time in history and it's LICENSED. That is amazingly coo.

PAGE FIVE: I just have to point out here, what a phenomenal job Sergio Davila is doing on this book. They offered several choices, I had to choose him, he just did an amazing job on Legenderry. And he drew the women as people, not pin-ups.

PAGE SIX: LOVE the radio pulp heroes, love love love them. Writing Kato is a blast. There are problematic things in those stories, but as a kid, I always thought the sidekicks were the coolest; Robin, Tonto, Kato…I wanted to be them, not the 'mentors.'

Also, this was the only time I had to ask for a character to be redrawn, Kato was too busty and was wearing high heels. Sergio was actually relieved, he thought she looked weird that way!

PAGE SEVEN: Fun to pit these two against each other. There was concern that Jennifer Blood was too serious, too 'Sopranos,' to work in this story, but my opinion was, pbllbbbbbt.

PAGE NINE: We first see the mysterious Traveller, and her assistant, the Courier, who goes around giving out swords like the Lady of The Lake in the King Arthur legend.

PAGE TWELVE: This guy is a complete douchenozzle. Pardon me for slipping into technical jargon.

PAGE SIXTEEN: Part of the fun for me was figuring out which kind of sword each character might have as THEIR sword of sorrow.

PAGE SEVENTEEN: Never let Tharak of the Dirt People drive the Black Beauty.

PAGE EIGHTEEN: In crossover books, my favorite bits are always the cameos. Here we have a bunch!

PAGE NINETEEN: Hate to be meta-textual, but the dinosaur represents greed, thematically, here. Greed that almost ruined the comics industry, and greed that makes a vampire girl look good to nom nom nom.

PAGE TWENTY: My favorite page this issue. Sonja vs. Tars Tarkas. SO FUN.

PAGE TWENTY-TWO: It's funny, I know for a fact that a big part of the audience for Lady Death and the various other CHAOS characters is female, but when I tried to read them originally, I just found them baffling. So, because they are an important part of this story, I went back, and it IS fun to think of them as the ultimate expression of the 'bad girl' craze. A million others disappeared, they're still around, still popular, still weird and mean and strange. Which, again, makes them fun to write.

Don't forget to pick up SWORDS OF SORROW, please, plus the tie-in titles by writers like Marguerite Bennett, G. Willow Wilson, Emma Beeby, Nancy A. Collins, Mikki Kendall, Mairghread Scott, and Leah Moore. Thanks for reading this and may you get your own Sword someday!

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