Gail Simone

“I admire writers who can remain objective and distanced, but that doesn't seem to be in my toolbox somehow. I have to care, I have to have skin in the game.”

“People who are exposed to great Wonder Woman stories love her. You have to do your best work and get it out there so people can experience it.”

“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.”

“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.'”

“I just like to write stories about people who survive even very difficult, impossible things.”

“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.”

“Red Sonja, she was a hellraiser before Buffy, Xena, and Ripley even existed. When so many heroines in comics were all hung up on romance and the bizarre gender politics of comics at the time, Sonja was out cutting off the heads of dragons and pirates.”

“I think Tumblr tends to be - you can get more in-depth with things and more blogging, and Tumblr has been real great for me in terms of research because I have contacts with people from all walks of life all over the globe.”

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

“I think it's important to have diversity in comics for a thousand reasons. It's not just some airy conceptual thing: it's important to reflect the humanity of the readership.”

“Nothing really prevented me from showing Catman as bi, but it's how I thought of him.”

“My career path is the weirdest thing. I was a hairdresser, I worked at Marvel for a few months, and then I was signed to a DC exclusive for eight years.”

“I've said this many times: I don't care which hero punches which hero to get the Infinity Jockstrap or whatever. I do care that people find humanity in these stories, and maybe something connects, makes the world a little better for having read it.”

“Actually, the notion of what is acceptable for a moral government to do seems to have eroded in some ways since 9-11. Not to get too political here, but countries, including our own, seem to have accepted what was once almost unimaginable - condoning torture, for example, and even criminalizing peaceful protest.”

“For me, even though I love, love, love both Cliff Chiang and Brian Azzarello, I haven't read the new '52 Wonder Woman' past the first issue. It's just... you know, once I'm on a book for a really long time... it's like going through a divorce. It takes a while before I can be 'friends again' with the character.”

“I do a lot of book signings and conventions every year, and I meet a great many readers who are struggling... they're working through illness, injury, addiction, depression, grief, or some other trauma. It seems to me that there's a lot of heroism in fighting those things as well, as best you can.”

“Famously, DC has been pretty great showing gay women, with characters like Batwoman, but has shown fewer prominent men on the sexuality spectrum outside of hetero. It's something we need to address. I also think it's lovely how the readers respond to this.”

“People resist and fight against things that are new that they haven't seen before, especially if they make them uncomfortable. But fiction is a safe place to tell these stories and to reach out to people and maybe affect them and make a difference in their lives.”

“I have a terrific editor in Molly Mahan - she's the best - and Red Sonja has become up there with Black Canary as my favorite character to write, ever.”

“I love crossovers, I love Wonder Woman, and being able to bring the undisputed greatest warriors of the DCU and Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age together for the very first time is a dream come true.”