Recently this morning a news pretty much shock the internet when Bleedingcool breakout the news that Gail Simone was out of the Batgirl book, which she later confirmed, and the news quickly spread to all other important comic news sites, IGN, Newsarama, CBR, and sadly no Comicvine XD

I wont hide the fact that I have detested Gail's work in this title since the beginning, the new Barbara Gordon just doesnt work for me at all and i will not hide the fact that this news fills me with an euphoric state of happiness cause it really opens the possibility that the book might become readable

agree or disagree in that regard, i really dont care, but it is very curious the way that the entire situation happen

This is Rare

this is a very out of the ordinary situation that has never happen in DC Before in recent times, at least since Dwayne Mcduffie was fired from JLA years ago

so, what happen?

before on this week Bleedingcool reported the rumor that she was off the title, Gail later responding that "she didnt left the title"

then we heard that a fill in writer is going to be doing chps 17 and 18, this one would not be a big surprice or a big news except for the fact that solicitations for issue 17 are already out and showing Gail as the writer

and now she informs us that since wednesday she was inform that she was nolonger in the book

This is high unusual because even if she was fired in regular circumstances she can still being given a notice, telling her what will be her last issue, lets remember, comics get produced with several months behind them, which means that by this week Gail Simone should already had have the scripts for chps 17-18-19 and maybe even 20 already prepared to be drawn edited or even released, it is work produced that will never see the light of day

so whatever happen, this wasnt expected at all

which brings 2 pieces to the puzzle

First DC's Exclusivity contract with Gail Simone expired exactly this week

for those who dont understand the idea of the contract, is just like any other contract but it gives certain job security to writers cause if a writer is fired with no fair justification otherwise the person in question have more options open to him/her

and second is the new editor of Batgirl Brian Cunningham, the guy who allegedly fired Gail

Lets be fair, Brian didnt fired Gail, he is the new editor, which to me means that the other editor was taken out of Batgirl just like Gail Simone was, Brian is just the replacement and the messenger

UPDATE

This is something that Gail said in her board

Originally Posted by Gail Simone on her board

The rumor is true, my new editor fired me on Wednesday. It was a crappy day.

I tried to save it, it seemed to me to be an easily fixable situation.

Not sure what my plans are, my email box is thankfully cool of interesting offers. And several DC higher-ups and reached
out with kind notes of support.

Thats definitely interesting

So it boil down to this

DC or someone at DC no longer wanted Gail to write Batgirl, for what reason?

for whatever that reason was, It is not good enough to fire her before her contract expires, but it is more than enough to fire her and end her run 1 issue too soon, after the contract expired, pretty much they didnt want to wait until her contract was over to fire her

there is a rumor going on with some of her twitter feeds which imply that the editorial wanted to do something violent in the book and Gail didnt wanted to follow up, theories imply crippling Barbara again, killing/maiming/crippling her roommate, among others

There is no way this is true.

Why would it be a problem to Gail Simone to cripple/maim/kill a character in this book, Batgirl after all has been a very violent book, last issue had Barbara's mother losing a finger. we get characters who are physically or mentally tortured, this would not make sense

and if DC wants to go back to Oracle, it would be a matter of methodology and not willing to do it from behalf of Gail since we know she loves oracle

Finally there is one last theory which is the Origin of Nu-Batgirl, or how she fixed her spine

Gail said that she wanted to tell the story of her recovery from the second arc, and it was pushed again, and again, until finally she said that it was going to happen after the current DoTF wraps up.

That sounds suspicious dont you think, maybe DC disagreed with the way that Gail wanted to do this and she was pressure to postpone it until her contract was over

The end of Gail's run ends up with a short run With a lot of holes and paths that are planted and lead absolutely nowhere

the story that Gail wanted to tell will be unfinished, whatever was the plan of Knightfall and the Batgirl goons, the secret behind her mother disappearance, the reason why she quit being batgirl for the first time.

Even the arc of James Jr is up to disclosure

Generally in this kind of cases it is too late to change, so it is possible that issues 17-18 will deal with James Jr, with the plot made by Gail Simone, but written by someone else, it is the same thing that happen with the Liefeld titles when he left suddenly

but thats what makes this case so strange, what could had possibly happen that forced DC to kick out Gail

Theories?

Not really much to work on to even offer a theory that is anything more than a complete guess. I have been somewhat underwhelmed by the Batgirl series so far, but I also liked her much better as oracle so I'm biased.

well there is an update

Gail talk about this on her own board

Originally Posted by Gail Simone on her board

The rumor is true, my new editor fired me on Wednesday. It was a crappy day.

I tried to save it, it seemed to me to be an easily fixable situation.

Not sure what my plans are, my email box is thankfully cool of interesting offers. And several DC higher-ups and reached

out with kind notes of support.

so she is pinning this on Brian Cunningham

the plot thickens

@arnoldoaad said:

well there is an update

Gail talk about this on her own board

Originally Posted by Gail Simone on her board

The rumor is true, my new editor fired me on Wednesday. It was a crappy day.

I tried to save it, it seemed to me to be an easily fixable situation.

Not sure what my plans are, my email box is thankfully cool of interesting offers. And several DC higher-ups and reached

out with kind notes of support.

so she is pinning this on Brian Cunningham

the plot thickens

Well, thats interesting

Looks like there is the usual serious disagreement with the editor. Batgirl sales are maybe down and the editor is dictating changes that the writer don't like. Maybe it is the Blue Beetle war all over again. Anyway, in the new 52, the editor always wins and the writers are just typists.

They need to clean house at DC. Which house? The editors. They're ruining all the good work New 52 has set up.

More business as usual at DC. They have a reputation for editors interfering with the writing process and dictating major changes on a book. I feel that if the book was bad, then it's more than likely an editorial problem rather than a Simone problem. She's a quality writer and understands the character better than most editors on staff. Almost the same thing happened to Liefeld (minus the quality writer and knowing anything about the character part).

@Night Thrasher said:

More business as usual at DC. They have a reputation for editors interfering with the writing process and dictating major changes on a book. I feel that if the book was bad, then it's more than likely an editorial problem rather than a Simone problem. She's a quality writer and understands the character better than most editors on staff. Almost the same thing happened to Liefeld (minus the quality writer and knowing anything about the character part).

The editor is new and he had only handled chp 14 and the annual, which begs the question

Why was the editor changed to begin with

@colonyofcells said:

Looks like there is the usual serious disagreement with the editor. Batgirl sales are maybe down and the editor is dictating changes that the writer don't like. Maybe it is the Blue Beetle war all over again. Anyway, in the new 52, the editor always wins and the writers are just typists.

The sales are actually relatively high, selling 50k but thats mostly due the Crossovers with Batman

I dont think this have anything to do with the sells of the book or even the quality of it, because even if that was the problem it would turn into this

I also feel like there has to be something to do with the recent reorganization of the editorial in the last few days

@arnoldoaad: sales have been steady since long before the Batman crossover. Hasn't dipped below ~42k since January (was as far back as I checked), and has sold between that and 58k (back in August). The past couple issues have been helped slightly by the Death of the Family crossover, but not nearly enough to say that the books' success in sales is "mostly due" to it.

@Ravager4 said:

@arnoldoaad: sales have been steady since long before the Batman crossover. Hasn't dipped below ~42k since January (was as far back as I checked), and has sold between that and 58k (back in August). The past couple issues have been helped slightly by the Death of the Family crossover, but not nearly enough to say that the books' success in sales is "mostly due" to it.

do you really want to discuss sales with me when im dedicating a blog every single week specifically dissecting how the thing works?

look, Im not saying that it the sales would be on the ground, they wont, I would expect them to be around 35-37k without the boost of the crossover or issue 0, which is around the Batwoman numbers, why? you may ask, cause the sales always go down, always unless there is an influential factor to them, and in this case its issue 0 and then DoTF, without them the sales keep going down a normal rate and if you take out NoTo too you end up with around 35-40

But again, thats not low sales and it is still far from the worst bat title, but it is not the highly successful title that some people are claiming it is

thats why i say that this has absolutely nothing to do with sales

The real reason DC let go of Lady Simone(Which we should totally make into a thing, the Duchess of Comics) is because DC hates consistently written females. HATES.

@arnoldoaad said:

do you really want to discuss sales with me when im dedicating a blog every single week specifically dissecting how the thing works?

Oh, well forgive my ignorance. Clearly you are an expert. Your rudeness is appreciated.

@Ravager4 said:

@arnoldoaad said:

do you really want to discuss sales with me when im dedicating a blog every single week specifically dissecting how the thing works?

Oh, well forgive my ignorance. Clearly you are an expert. Your rudeness is appreciated.

oh come on!

I wasnt tryign to be rude, I was just pointing out this: if Bg is selling 50k now, is because of the crossovers and not just because of Gail Simone's writing

now will the sales go down on issue 17

oh, you bet, in fact is very likely that sales go down immediately on next issue

but either way, the firing wasnt because of sales

@TheCrowbar said:

The real reason DC let go of Lady Simone(Which we should totally make into a thing, the Duchess of Comics) is because DC hates consistently written females. HATES.

which is why they decided to hire Christy Marx for Amethyst?

whatever this was, it has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman, thats crazy

@arnoldoaad said:

@Ravager4 said:

@arnoldoaad said:

do you really want to discuss sales with me when im dedicating a blog every single week specifically dissecting how the thing works?

Oh, well forgive my ignorance. Clearly you are an expert. Your rudeness is appreciated.

oh come on!

I wasnt tryign to be rude

If you weren't trying to be rude, then there was really no reason to precede your statement with that, which quite frankly comes off as rather egotistical in an "I know what I'm talking about, you don't" kind of way. That may not have been your intent, but that is how it came across as.

@Ravager4 said:

@arnoldoaad said:

@Ravager4 said:

@arnoldoaad said:

do you really want to discuss sales with me when im dedicating a blog every single week specifically dissecting how the thing works?

Oh, well forgive my ignorance. Clearly you are an expert. Your rudeness is appreciated.

oh come on!

I wasnt tryign to be rude

If you weren't trying to be rude, then there was really no reason to precede your statement with that, which quite frankly comes off as rather egotistical in an "I know what I'm talking about, you don't" kind of way. That may not have been your intent, but that is how it came across as.

I still dont know why would you focus on sales when thats not even a point of this

ok, sorry if I was a little of a jerk

but i still stand by my point, The sales are what they are know because of the crossovers and not Gail

Crazy, thanks for the news.

@arnoldoaad said:

@TheCrowbar said:

The real reason DC let go of Lady Simone(Which we should totally make into a thing, the Duchess of Comics) is because DC hates consistently written females. HATES.

which is why they decided to hire Christy Marx for Amethyst?

whatever this was, it has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman, thats crazy

Read what I said again. Your reply doesn't make sense.

@TheCrowbar said:

@arnoldoaad said:

@TheCrowbar said:

The real reason DC let go of Lady Simone(Which we should totally make into a thing, the Duchess of Comics) is because DC hates consistently written females. HATES.

which is why they decided to hire Christy Marx for Amethyst?

whatever this was, it has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman, thats crazy

Read what I said again. Your reply doesn't make sense.

well if DC fired Simone cause it hates consistently written females

then why hire Cristy Marx to write a consistently written female

and if we expand on more than just female writers how about Birds of Prey, Wonderwoman, Batwoman, and so on

@arnoldoaad said:

@TheCrowbar said:

@arnoldoaad said:

@TheCrowbar said:

The real reason DC let go of Lady Simone(Which we should totally make into a thing, the Duchess of Comics) is because DC hates consistently written females. HATES.

which is why they decided to hire Christy Marx for Amethyst?

whatever this was, it has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman, thats crazy

Read what I said again. Your reply doesn't make sense.

well if DC fired Simone cause it hates consistently written females

then why hire Cristy Marx to write a consistently written female

and if we expand on more than just female writers how about Birds of Prey, Wonderwoman, Batwoman, and so on

Wonder Woman is not consisently written, look at her depiction in JL and her own comic.

Amethyst just started.

Not reading Batwoman, but I've heard complaints.

@arnoldoaad said:

@TheCrowbar said:

@arnoldoaad said:

@TheCrowbar said:

The real reason DC let go of Lady Simone(Which we should totally make into a thing, the Duchess of Comics) is because DC hates consistently written females. HATES.

which is why they decided to hire Christy Marx for Amethyst?

whatever this was, it has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman, thats crazy

Read what I said again. Your reply doesn't make sense.

well if DC fired Simone cause it hates consistently written females

then why hire Cristy Marx to write a consistently written female

and if we expand on more than just female writers how about Birds of Prey, Wonderwoman, Batwoman, and so on

That's still not what his statement was. His statement was about the character being written consistently and since we have no idea what the new writer is going to do, his statement still stands until otherwise proven incorrect.

@DarkDay said:

@arnoldoaad said:

@TheCrowbar said:

@arnoldoaad said:

@TheCrowbar said:

The real reason DC let go of Lady Simone(Which we should totally make into a thing, the Duchess of Comics) is because DC hates consistently written females. HATES.

which is why they decided to hire Christy Marx for Amethyst?

whatever this was, it has nothing to do with the fact that she is a woman, thats crazy

Read what I said again. Your reply doesn't make sense.

well if DC fired Simone cause it hates consistently written females

then why hire Cristy Marx to write a consistently written female

and if we expand on more than just female writers how about Birds of Prey, Wonderwoman, Batwoman, and so on

That's still not what his statement was. His statement was about the character being written consistently and since we have no idea what the new writer is going to do, his statement still stands until otherwise proven incorrect.

OHHHHH

I get it now

but

how does that have to do with Gail being fired, after all she is also in BoP and she is completely different there