APE IN A CAPE

thehappysorceress:

Birds of Prey: Empty Nest, my latest commission from Mike Kevan

(inspired by Gail Simone)

Dang, actually made me cry a little. WAAAAAAAH!

You should have a warning!

The thing about the Birds at that time was, I think the relationships were almost singular in comics…there just weren’t many female friendships among superheroes, and so many that existed were more about guys. It would be, two women want the same guy, or two women had the same ex-boyfriend or whatever. Two women want to fit in in a group of dudes.  I wanted a book where the female relationships had nothing to do with that, so the only real romance element in almost the entire run was Creote and Savant, really.  I didn’t want the Birds talking about chocolate or guys’ butts.

And in a way, I think that was a bit of a problem. The people who loved the book, loved it HARD, and there were a lot of imitators, I think. But as is often the case, I felt people, even some people who worked on the book in some capacity, often had no idea what the specific appeal of that era of stories was. They looked and saw sexy women in sexy outfits kicking ass and being smartasses, and they thought that was what made the book successful (and it WAS successful and hopefully will remain so).  So we had all these books about those things and they tanked, one after another.

But I think the engine of the book was what you guys have captured on the panels in the original post—it was a female team that was together because they cared about each other, even loved each other. It’s hard to explain how rare something like that is in all media, where the default lead characters in most genre fiction are almost always male. It was about friendship, even friendship at a cost. That’s why I loved writing it.

I sometimes think that the real wish fulfillment in comics isn’t about powers at all, it’s about other things entirely. Who wouldn’t want to have a dad like Bane, who will punch the face off someone who insults you?  Who wouldn’t want to have a circle of friends who would die for you without even thinking about it?

That’s something I’m always looking for in comics, the relationships that ought to exist, but all too often do not. That’s what Birds of Prey was about for me.

itswallie:

thehappysorceress:

isaidquirky:

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about with Ed Benes. I could give this scene to a dozen critical darling artists and few of them could deliver the gut-punch that this scene has, as drawn by Ed. Note the darkening of the panel when Huntress appeals to Dinah, as if the darkness is closing in. Note how he barely varies the shot distance through the entire sequence, to not allow the reader to look away as the three women endure this painful moment. I could go on…but this stuff is why I loved working with Ed. Sometimes, we got shots that were sexier than they should have been, but his acting and respect for the script was just dead on. This sequence actually made me angry at Barbara for weeks and we’d been building to it for months. Ed made it heartbreaking…what he can do with emotion is sometimes amazing.

Gets me every time.

This is a perfect page. The writing. The art. Just … amazing. I’m about to cry. 

Thank you, we put our hearts in that book.

I always  make it through this page okay, but once Dinah and Zinda react to it, I get misty every time. It just felt like the characters had things to say.

deathlyillandalwaysbusy:

thehappysorceress:

isaidquirky:

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about with Ed Benes. I could give this scene to a dozen critical darling artists and few of them could deliver the gut-punch that this scene has, as drawn by Ed. Note the darkening of the panel when Huntress appeals to Dinah, as if the darkness is closing in. Note how he barely varies the shot distance through the entire sequence, to not allow the reader to look away as the three women endure this painful moment. I could go on…but this stuff is why I loved working with Ed. Sometimes, we got shots that were sexier than they should have been, but his acting and respect for the script was just dead on. This sequence actually made me angry at Barbara for weeks and we’d been building to it for months. Ed made it heartbreaking…what he can do with emotion is sometimes amazing.

Gets me every time.

I literally just read this part.
I wanted Babs to be right because she just wanted to help her. But I understnad why Helena felt so betrayed and I just—ieshlrghrgoigrh I WANT THEM ALL TO BE BEST FRIENDS FOREVER AND BE HAPPYYYY
Also Dick and Babs’ telephone tag. This trade is out to break my heart. (I want to hug Barbara. She has it so hard, and she just wants to do what’s right…)

It makes me sad to read it. I miss the Birds like crazy. Sigh.

That telephone tag thing is interesting. I think I’ve told this story before, but maybe not the whole story.

Devin Grayson was writing Nightwing at the time, and Devin came from the worlds of role-play and fanfic. And her connection with Nightwing was bone-deep, like mine to Barbara’s, but maybe with even less separation of author and character. She REALLY took Nightwing seriously.

I hadn’t been writing that long, I looked up to Devin tremendously (I really miss her in comics, working on that, I promise). And she had this scene in Nightwing coming up where they would miss each other on their answering machines. She asked me to write Barbara’s, to put in Nightwing, and she would write Dick’s, for me in Bop.

Devin sometimes so inhabited the characters that in our IMS and emails, she would write AS Dick Grayson, which took me totally by surprise. It sounds a little nutty, but it wasn’t, it was deadly serious, just part of her process. It was an adjustment.

So we wrote these message and they were just supposed to convey a little bit of, “miss you, love you, bye.”   But we both ended up writing these very brutal, painful, raw-wound type of missed-love messages and when they are read together back to back, it’s tremendously painful, in that way when two friends are meant for each other and can’t seem to quite face it.

Because Devin took Nightwing so seriously, that scene always reminds me of Devin, who left comics for a good while not long after, so it’s really sad for me on a whole other level. But it was lovely to write the very reserved Barbara laying it out on the line. It’s very moving to me still, and I hear about it from readers a  lot, I think they can sense that there was some very honest emotion, simply love of our characters, underneath those word balloons.

thehappysorceress:

isaidquirky:

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about with Ed Benes. I could give this scene to a dozen critical darling artists and few of them could deliver the gut-punch that this scene has, as drawn by Ed. Note the darkening of the panel when Huntress appeals to Dinah, as if the darkness is closing in. Note how he barely varies the shot distance through the entire sequence, to not allow the reader to look away as the three women endure this painful moment. I could go on…but this stuff is why I loved working with Ed. Sometimes, we got shots that were sexier than they should have been, but his acting and respect for the script was just dead on. This sequence actually made me angry at Barbara for weeks and we’d been building to it for months. Ed made it heartbreaking…what he can do with emotion is sometimes amazing.

Gets me every time.