Gail Simone revisits her Birds of Prey run, and wonders about a cameo appearance that tore fandom apart!:

At the Armageddon convention, they had a pub-type thing where the guests could get lunch. I wanted to talk to kphoebe, but we sort of got sat where the handlers put us, and we were having a nice chat, my husband, myself, I think Nicola was there, and Kphoebe and her friend Jeff, and Bruce Timm came and sat down.

Now, I love Bruce, we spent a lot of time together, his family and mine, on this trip, but I couldn’t hear everything he was saying (it was loud) so some of this is paraphrased by my husband.

Anyway, we got on the topic of how sometimes it’s necessary to write things you KNOW the loyal, hardcore readers will hate, in order to make a bigger event later in the story, and we were tossing out examples where people, loyal loyal readers and viewers, had been furious.

And I mentioned the Josh thing, that a ton of readers loved Josh, but some, very nice, intelligent people, thought I had personally ruined Huntress forever by having her sleep with him. I really didn’t expect anyone at the table to know what I was talking about, even though I knew Bruce followed BOP pretty closely. But suddenly everyone was talking about Josh, and again, I was struck by how odd it is that this character struck such a chord. Now, here’s the first funny thing…at that table, though I didn’t realize it, was a huge Josh FAN and a huge Josh HATER. Kphoebe, one of my favorite comics commentators, had actually written a long piece about how when she got to that part of the story, she threw her Bop trade at the wall.

What I DIDN’T know was that Bruce LOVED that bit. He said it was a Bop high point. What I REALLY didn’t know is what he said next.

“I liked that bit so much we completely stole it for an episode of JLU.”

Now, this made my ears perk up, because I’m such a fan of that show, but I had no idea a Bop riff had been stuck in JLU, other than the episode I wrote. It turns out that there’s some scene with, I think, Hawkgirl and Hawkman, where they sleep together, that was lifted directly from the Bop episode.

Now, I’m sorry, but that slays me. First, that THAT contentious scene got used, and in the best comics cartoon series ever, no less. It’s flattering and funny at the same time.

Bruce said they got the same exact reaction, a mix of ‘RIGHT ON!’ and ‘HOW COULD YOU, YOU AWFUL SCUMBAGS?’

He said it was one of the biggest reactions to any scene in the entire series, with the positive and negative being utterly polarized.

I find that hilarious.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Creators, DC Comics, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.