Gail Simone Spills The Tea On The New 52

Gail Simone is often the champion of comic Twitter, dropping great jokes, getting the fans involved, and having fake feuds with other comic creators (her latest is with Tom Taylor and it’s delightful). Today, she took to Twitter when her workload lightened to answer some questions about the New 52, one of the most tumultuous periods in DC Comics’ history.

For those who don’t remember, the New 52 was DC’s controversial publishing initiative that began in September of 2011. While it was highly successful when it began, things started to go downhill quickly as creators started to be shuffled around books or were mysteriously fired, books were cancelled, and there were lots of rumors of behind the scene chaos. Simone at the time was given the reins to Batgirl and co-wrote Fury of Firestorm with Ethan Van Sciver and was in the thick of things. If anyone is qualified to comment on the events of that time at DC, it’s her.

Taking questions from fans, Simone intimated a lot of what people already suspected about the New 52- there was no overarching plan that she was aware of and the whole thing was very much controlled by editorial. For example, she was given a two paragraph treatment for Birds of Prey, a book she was already writing before the New 52, by editorial and refused to stay on the book because she just didn’t want to work on the book as it was pitched to her. This is a very strange way to go about things, as usually the writer pitches the story to the editors and not the other way around.

She also says that the whole thing was pitched to her and other creators as a "Year One" approach to the DC Universe, which is she was okay with. Barbara became Batgirl again- in her mind, Babs was destined to become Oracle no matter what. That said, she didn’t like that there were, in her words, twelve Robins and one Batgirl. When asked if she fought for Secret Six to keep getting published, she said she understood why it didn’t get picked up again- there were a lot of books that needed to be put out in the first wave, so some things got left on the shelf.

The biggest takeaway from the whole thing was how editorially controlled the New 52 was. For example, she said that the editors frowned upon creators talking with each other, preferring to keep things in their own titles, which cut down on crossovers, which the editorial saw as a crutch. The fact that there were no plans for anything confirms what many fans always suspected about the publishing initiative. Gail also said that the whole thing was pretty much sprung on the creators out of nowhere- the turnaround time between when it was announced to the creators and when things started was very quick.

This also confirms what a lot of fans had speculated on over the years. At the end of Flash: Rebirth, there was a page of things yet to come which was meant to hype up Flashpoint and what was shown there didn’t seem to match what would come. The fact that it was such a quick decision to reboot the DC Universe isn’t exactly a shock to most people but it was nice for it to be confirmed after all of this time.

However, whenever fans tried to get her to say anything negative about the product, she demurred completely. In fact, according to her, she loved a lot of the books being published and was pretty happy to have the opportunity she had. While things got pretty bad for her- to the extent that she was relieved to leave Batgirl- she enjoyed a lot of the books that were being published and didn’t have anything bad to say about the product or the people she worked with. When asked who she would have wanted to reboot given a chance, she named the Marvel family and Donna Troy. She also didn’t really like the Superman and Wonder Woman relationship.

All in all, it was a pretty rewarding read for any fan of DC. Simone confirmed a lot of what everyone always suspected about the New 52. Editorial control over the product seemed to be one of the biggest culprits in why the whole thing was so chaotic behind the scenes- they were holding all the cards and holding back the books. It was a great glimpse into the inner workings of DC at the time from someone who was there and it’s a must read thread for anyone interested. You can read all about it here- https://twitter.com/GailSimone/status/1411356126998777862.